I am no “techie”, but this camera is user friendly and takes beautiful pictures. It does all the adjustments automaticly. If you want a “point & shoot”, no-brainer I recommend this camera. AND it is “pretty”.

I bought this camera after reading all the + reviews on several web sites. This is a very good camera for the price.
Pro’s: price, simple to use, slips right into you shirt pocket or purse, very good pictures, bright LCD (sorry Kodak), uses AA batteries, good video.
Con’s: none! I highly recommend this camera.

I bought this camera because I wanted a camera that could both take high quality pictures of objects from a far away distance and took HD video. The Quality of the pictures of this camera are good from a far distance. I could easily read signs when zoomed in that I could not read from looking at them. I am a structural engineer so I needed something that I could read the structure types and be able to idetify the structures from a distance, in this it did its job.
Now the down side of the camera. The video quality of the video was excellent as well as the sound. The HUGE overlooked flaw is that recording indoors or out there is a high pitched squealing noise in the backround of every video no matter if it was played on lcd, computer, tube tv, or the camera itself. I tried the camera instore and it did the same thing (after I had taken it home and tested in depth). I have also seen example videos online where you can here the distinctive squeel.
If you are getting this camera for the picture quality only, look no further; but if like me you wanted HD video as well I would suggest looking at another camera.

Update***

I just purchased the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3, and wow. When comparing the photos I had saved with the Nikon and now the new photos I have taken of the exact same objects, the Panasonic clearly wins big. Along with my complaint of the Nikon’s video the Panasonic also has a clearer HD video and stereo sound with no annoying whine in the background. And now the best part. I purchased it off amazon at $235, which is $65 less than the Nikon. I would highly recommend checking out the Panasonic Lumix first.

I owned the very good Sony DSC-W350 (which I liked very much), but I managed to leave it in a rental car. Between the time I bought my Sony and now, Nikon released a new line, so I figured I’d give one of their best compact point and shoot cameras a try. I use a lot of Nikon’s DSLR equipment, but their point-and-shoots have been a bit disappointing to me over the years. But I liked the S8000 and decided to give it a try - and I’m glad I did…it’s a wonderful point-and-shoot, even better than the Sony in every way.

First, I place a lot of emphasis on the size and shape of the camera and whether it just feels natural in my hands. The S8000 is very small and light, and sometimes really petite cameras just feel awkward to me. I’m happy to say that the S8000 gets it about perfect - it’s easy to hold, the controls feel like they’re where you expect them, and I never accidentally hit say, the power button when I’m looking for something else. I also tend to like designs that put the lens in the middle of the camera, as opposed to some designs (like the otherwise very good Panasonics) that tend to put the lens off-center. With very little practice, I feel like I can work the Nikon with my eyes closed, and I never feel awkward with it.

The built-in LCD monitor is also very good and easy to read under most conditions, except maybe in very bright direct sunlight. Still, my eyes aren’t fantastic, but I have no trouble navigating the menus or reviewing shots after I’ve taken them. As an added plus, the menus are structured in a way that’s similar to Nikon’s DSLR cameras, so if you’re familiar with Nikon’s other products, you’ll feel right at home here.

It’s also a fast camera. I don’t find the start-up time to be particularly quick, but once you have it on, focus, zooming, shutter lag, flash recycle and so on are very, very fast indeed. The autofocus system seems to be about as fast as the system in my Nikon D3 most of the time, which is really impressive to say the least. With some of the older point and shoots I’ve owned, I felt like I’d miss shots because of shutter lag or how long it took to focus…not so with the S8000.

As for image quality, I have to say that I was skeptical that a 10x lens could perform as well as I want. Honestly, I’d rather have a super sharp 4x than a mediocre 10x, and this was my biggest concern with the Nikon. Well, I’m happy to say that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the wide zoom range in the Nikon - this is one really high performance lens, at least when you look at it in combination with all the other features the camera offers. It does great close-ups, letting you focus up to about half an inch from your subject. It seems to have a great optical anti-shake capability, permitting you to hand-hold the camera in fairly dark situations without resorting to a flash. The wide-angle end of the spectrum looks natural without some of the distortions you sometimes see on this type of camera. The worst thing I can say about the lens is that it has some purple fringing at the long end of the range - nothing that can’t be fixed in Photoshop, but it is noticeable.

Overall, I don’t see much difference in the 10x lens on the Nikon versus the excellent 4x lens on my former Sony in terms of image quality. The Nikon seems to produce slightly warmer colors with more saturation and just a generally more vivid appearance. The Sony was more natural looking, but not a lot of difference otherwise. I do notice that Nikon seems to apply slightly less digital sharpening than Sony, but this again is easily corrected in whatever editing software you use if you want to. Frankly, some cameras tend to push the sharpening a bit too far, and portraits tend to come out looking a bit harsh as a result. The Nikon gives you a more natural look that most people will find pleasing - plus you can always add sharpening after the fact if you need to.

If you’re a novice, one thing to keep in mind is that at the telephoto end of the zoom range, the S8000 is equivalent to a 300mm on a 35mm camera. This offers quite some magnification - but it also amplifies your tendency to get blurry pictures by inadvertently shaking the camera (for instance, as you press the shutter release). Nikon’s vibration reduction system helps a lot, but you really need bright lighting (hence, high shutter speeds) to get consistently sharp pictures with this end of the zoom range. I’m sure we’ll see subsequent reviewers complaining about fuzzy images at the long end of the zoom range, and no doubt this will be why. As a side note, the camera includes a tripod socket, so it’s possible to get perfect pictures in low light, even at the 300mm end of the range - but I rarely see people carrying around a five pound tripod for their six ounce camera.

The camera goes out to ISO 3200, but in my use so far, I’d only recommend up to ISO 400 for images you intend to print, maybe 800 for email/web images. Higher ISO than 800 get to look pretty poor, in my opinion. Of course, this is the nature of the beast - these compact cameras have compact image sensors, and that means you just can’t boost the sensitivity without introducing lots of noise.

The built-in flash is okay, but not super powerful. It does offer uniform lighting over the frame, even when using wide angle views - a pet peeve of mine on other cameras. The S8000 also has automatic red-eye reduction built in, so you rarely see people pictures having lots of red-eye. Of course, I’d rather have great noise-free performance out to ISO 3200 so I don’t need the flash in the first place, but absent that, the flash is a reasonable compromise.

Nikon includes their venerable D-lighting system, which is essentially a way to bring detail back into the picture when there’s a huge contrast variation. It works well, for instance, with many flash shots, or when you have a person standing in the shade against a sunny background. Since you can also add these effects post-processing, I tend to turn the feature off in my cameras, but it does work well overall.

There are a few other included features I don’t get much use out of. One is the video mode. I suppose if I want to take videos, I’d use a video camera, not a tiny point-and-shoot. Nikon doesn’t seem to have put a lot of thought into the video mode anyway…it’s “only” 720p, and in what seems like a poor design choice, you can’t zoom the lens while filming. Another included feature I just don’t find myself using is the burst mode that lets you take up to 16 lower quality (3MP) images in a very rapid sequence…generally, if I’m doing high-speed action photography, I’m doing it with my DSLR, not the point-and-shoot. Compared to the Sony I recently owned, there are also no panorama or HDR modes, but honestly, I don’t miss either of these.

Overall, I think Nikon has a winner here and I absolutely recommend it for anyone wanting a compact but capable point-and-shoot.

Overall, I give 4 stars to this package deal. I received this product earlier than I expected! Keep it up BeachCamera!

And now, here’s my review of what’s in the package:

1. PowerShot SX210 IS 14MP 14x Zoom Camera (Black)

2. 16 GB Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) Memory Card

This is a Class 2 memory card. As of the moment, I see no issues with lags when taking photos or videos the usual way, because the camera itself has a cooldown between shots, even in Continuous Mode w/ Flash.

So I might go back to edit this review if there are issues in Write Lags especially when taking photos in Continuous Mode w/o Flash or hi-res HD Videos.

3. Hi-Speed SD USB 2.0 Card Reader

This is a good-enough SD Card Reader. It has a snap-lock at the end to prevent the SD Card from slipping easily.

4. BP-5LCL 1150mah Battery Pack F/ Powershot

Pending review, I want to give feedback after using this for 2 months. That’s when we’ll see if the battery life is still long even after prolonged use.

It’s been a couple of weeks of using my camera ang the spare battery, and so far, I see no difference in performance between the extra battery, and Canon’s supplied battery. Good!

5. Flexible Mini Table-top Tripod

This is a very basic mini-tripod with bendable legs. Lots of work will go into balancing the camera against this mini tripod, for sure. It’s great for taking product photos though.

6. Ultra-Compact Digital Camera Deluxe Carrying Case

Comparing this with a Canon Leather Case (which I got for my SD800 IS):

I like the neck-strap and you can also attach it to your belt . However, the case is only padded at the bottom edge. I am not confident this will protect my camera from accidental drops; thus I think I have to always use the neck strap to prevent drops from happening.

The material is a bit water-proof, it is similar to sports bags. There is a velcro seal that covers the main case, and a mini-pocket for the extra battery.

7. 3pc. Lens Cleaning Kit

Has a lint-free cloth for wiping your camera screen, and 3 cotton buds and spray-alcohol for cleaning the lens. Good enough for me.

8. Digital Camera Screen Protectors for LCD’s (pack of 3)

These are screen protectors with a generic size so that you can cut the size you want. What I like is that the shortest side is as wide as my camera screen’s longer side. This means the pack of 3 is actually a pack of 6 for my camera!

It comes with a flat plastic that will help push bubbles out when you put it on your camera screen. It’s padded with felt paper to avoid scratching.

The material, however, is prone to scratches and is too shiny. Because it’s Not matted, there will be cases during outdoor photography where the screen protector will reflect light to your eyes.

I’ve used a Canon for many years, recently bought the ultra compact Canon SP790IS. My original Canon was slowly giving out. Did research and checked out the FH1,FH3, FP8 and the FH20 along with the Canon 790. Received this camera several days ago, this FH20 rocks. Pictures are really very, very good. I couldn’t believe it. The size is great, ease of use is beyond belief. I’m an artist and use my camera to take pictures of lighthouses, old barns and interesting buildings. This camera gives me what I’m looking for and more. So glad I took the plunge. As the first reviewer said she read a test of the FH20 by a pro photograher, I read the same article and it’s all GOOD. I’d receommend this camera above all others. Thanks Amazon, once again you came through for me as did Panasonic.

Purchased camera for an upcoming trip. Wanted a point and shoot that was pocket sized and took good pictures. I was going to get a Canon Powershot but then started looking at Panasonic. I feel like I got more for my money. Maybe because Panasonic is not yet a household name in cameras. A few clicks online will reveal they are “joined at the hips” with Leica.

Using the iA mode delivered great pictures everytime. Did not take a bad picture yet, the smarts built-in really work! Focusing time is short, but you have to let the camera focus before pressing all the way. Zoom is great for such a small package, but image stabilization is a must without tripod. Also has wide angle lens which is a plus, not readily available in competing models. Have not played with any of the scene modes, I let iA handle that. And when I’ll need the manual modes, I’ll be reaching for the dSLR where I can play with buttons.

Played briefly with the video mode and was happily surprised. It is not a camcorder replacement, but it is better than expected. Sreen is large and bright under all experienced conditions so far. It does have a mode that adjusts LCD brightness to ambient light automatically. I do miss the viewfinder but I would trade a bigger LCD for a poor viewfinder anytime. Great point and shoot camera so far, good optics, it does what it should. Will probably look for a second battery soon, but I am a little confused at moment on which one to buy.

I just replaced my trusty ZS3 with the new ZS7 and, so far, I am very pleased with this camera. The output is much cleaner and smoother than the ZS3’s, much more refined. Compared to the ZS7, the ZS3 produced images that look brittle and over-processed. As with virtually all small-sensor cameras, the ZS7’s images are a little noisy (even at base ISO) if you look close enough. But noise is far less objectionable than ragged edges and smeared details, which is what I usually got from the ZS3. The images I’m getting from the ZS7 look surprisingly good even at 100% on-screen enlargement; whereas the ZS3’s output was virtually unusable at this magnification. The improvement is dramatic. Considering that the ZS7’s resolution has also increased from 10 to 12 MP (it’s actually a 14 MP sensor that is masked to create different aspect ratios), I’d say that Panasonic has done a really good job here.

The ZS7 improves on the ZS3 in several ways; but for me the most important new feature is Picture Adjustments, which let you turn down the amount of sharpening and noise reduction that are automatically applied to every image. Photographers who do their own post-processing will appreciate the ability to apply their own preferred methods of sharpening and noise reduction.

The next most important new feature (imho) is the addition of aperture/shutter-priority shooting modes. There isn’t much latitude for adjusting the f-stop in most small-sensor cameras because of defraction effects; but it’s great to be able to control the shutter speed manually.

The ZS7 also adds GPS, which can (thankfully) be turned off. Leaving it on shortens battery life.

Other improvements that I appreciate include (1) improved image stabilization, (2) new Venus processing engine, (3) High Dynamic mode, and (4) the LCD now has a good anti-glare coating.

All things considered, the ZS7 is an impressive upgrade that is easily worth the price.

I’ve got my ZS7 today - the camera is just great! A superior Leica lens with a high-resolution sensor, advanced image processing, and plenty of sophisticated features in a small but very solid and stylish body.

PROS:

- Solid metal body, stylish design, nice dark-blue color
- Very convenient one-hand grip, unusual for such a small pocket-size body
- Short startup time (1-1.5 sec), no shutter lag, fast auto focus
- A dedicated Movie-button for instant recording
- Big 3″ colorful “juicy” display visible even in direct sunlight
- Intuitive menu plus very convenient Quick-menu with a dedicated button
- Excellent quality Leica lens: sharp and contrast in the entire zoom range
- Wide 25mm (35mm equiv.) is very convenient for indoors
- Huge 12x optical zoom (up to 300mm equiv.) in such a compact design
- Two-speed of zooming - fast/slow controlled by the lever
- Smooth and silent auto focus and optical image stabilization
- Best in the industry “iAuto” mode - you can really trust it!
- New “Intelligent Resolution” feature greatly improves the image quality
- Creative Aperture- and Shutter-priority and full Manual modes
- Three independent scenery modes including “High Dynamic” range scene
- New GPS feature for those who travel a lot
- Very good movie quality in 720p AVCHD mode looks like a full 1080 HD one
- High-quality stereo microphones
- Accepts SD/SDHC and new SDXC huge capacity memory cards

CONS:

- A mechanical lever for switching between shooting and playback modes
- Some soft “sh-sh-sh” noise while zooming in and out (but no “clicks”)
- I wish more sensitivity for low-light shooting

BUILD: The ZS7 camera looks and feels as good as it’s predecessor DMC-ZS3. The design is almost as the same, just the power switch and the mode dial exchanged their places. One significant addition - a GPS mark on the top, right above the lens. The blue color is not that dark as on TZ5 and not so striking bright as on ZR1. A slight dent on the back with some prominence on the right side makes a very convenient grip to operate with one hand. A metal body looks pretty solid, however it is not that heavy.

PERFORMANCE: The new camera has a pretty good performance: the startup time is a little bit more than 1 sec and with almost zero shutter lag. Taking into account a new very quick “Sonic Speed” auto focus, which takes about 0.35-0.4 sec, you will be able to catch virtually every spur-of-the-moment photo. And a dedicated movie button allows starting video recording at any time without any preparation.

LENS: Leica lens is just excellent: unusually big for a so small body 12x zoom starting with the very convenient for indoors shooting 25mm up to telephoto 300mm (equiv.) plus a quick and precise auto focus (however might be somewhat slower in low-light), and good optical image stabilization in conjunction with the digital one which allows you to take sharp pictures in the entire zoom range and at the very low shutter speed around 1/8 and even 1/4. The auto-focusing and optical image stabilization work in absolute silence, and the only zooming produces some soft “sh-sh-sh” noise. Good news - without any start/stop clicks on the footage :).

DISPLAY: A large 3-inch high-resolution LCD monitor with 460K pixels has a very good contrast and saturation - the pictures look very “juicy”. The brightness also is high enough to be seen even in a direct sun-light (just a bit darker) and in a wide angle of view. All that allows to share photos and videos immediately with other people.

MENU: For those who used the Panasonic P&S cameras before the ZS7 menu looks very familiar, just some new items added. Also there is a Quick-Menu button which is very helpful for a quick access to the most frequently used settings. The new camera has such a luxury as the Aperture, Shutter speed, and Manual modes and there is a new Exposure button (next to the video one) which allows to set manually the aperture using the Left-Right buttons and the shutter speed with Up-Down buttons.

AUTO SETTINGS: The best in the industry Panasonic’s Intelligent Auto mode is getting better with each new model. Actually it’s a whole bunch of sophisticated algorithms which help to take really nice pictures with minimum efforts. They are worth to be aware about so here is a brief list of most effective of them.

“Intelligent Scene Selector” - It quickly analyzes the light conditions as well as focusing results and selects either portrait, scenery, macro, night portrait or night scenery. It also displays a small icon of the chosen scene in the top left corner. The feature is extremely helpful when you need to shoot very fast on spur-of-the-moment.

“Intelligent ISO” - If camera detects that your subject is moving, it raises ISO and shutter speed to take shots without motion blur, otherwise it will try to keep the lowest possible ISO to reduce noise and to get nice clear pictures.

“Intelligent Exposure” - it’s a kind of a small brother of the High Dynamic Range feature. If the camera sets the correct overall exposure but some areas happen to be too dark, this feature automatically increases the brightness of the dark areas to make the entire picture to look more balanced. It also pretty effective for the backlight conditions - instead of getting just a silhouette of your subject against the bright sky it makes the subject normally exposed but without washing out the nice blue sky.

“Face Detection” - is another great thing for taking good-quality pictures of people. It happened to me a number of times in the past that a presence in the frame of a more contrast element somewhere behind the person I’m taking picture of was making the camera to adjust focus at that unimportant distant object and therefore made the major person out-of-focus. The same way if there is a bright background behind the person then the camera will measure the luminance of that background while the person’s image will be pretty much underexposed (dark). The Face Detection feature identifies the human faces and tells the camera to adjust focus and exposure for the faces first so the people on the picture will be looking well exposed, clear and sharp.

ADVANCED FEATURES: I guess the most interesting and advanced is a new “Intelligent Resolution” feature. Actually it combines a sophisticated noise reduction with a new picture enhancement algorithm. This feature automatically identifies the 3 type of the picture areas: outlines, detailed textures, and smooth gradation panes and provides an optimized handling for each of them separately. As a result the photo looks sharper at the edges and more clean in between. Many old P&S cameras had pretty fast picture quality degradation at the ISO around 300-400 and higher. The shots taken by ZS7 even at ISO 400 look pretty good on the small and even medium-size prints.

IMAGE QUALITY: Imagine on a sunny day you take an outdoors picture of a wall made of the new brown bricks with a $3000 DSLR and a small P&S camera from the distance about 6-8 feet. How could you recognize by which camera was taken a certain shot? The subject is plain so no Depth-of-Field is involved into comparison. However in this example the two characteristics will help to distinct the cameras: 1) The edges of bricks will be well outlined on DSLR shots and a kind of fuzzy on the P&S ones; 2) The new bricks do not have any structure on their sides, they are just plane and so exactly that way they will look on the DSLR shots, while on the P&S ones their sides will show more or less amount of noise. If you perform the same test for an evenly cut line of bushes (again DOF is not involved) you will see the same result plus the internal structure of each leaf will be more clear on the DSLR photos. So to make pictures taken with your P&S camera looking like the DSLR ones the P&S camera should make the outlines sharper, clean the noise on the plane or soft gradation areas, and slightly emphasize the internal structures, if any. That is exactly what the new “Intelligent Resolution” (IR) feature tries to do.

The “iAuto” mode in ZS7 is organized the way that you will have decent, good photos in virtually any situation right out-of-the-box. The several hundreds shots I took by now look good on my 24″ display and so they will on the similar size prints. But if you look at them at 100% crop (magnification) then on many of them you might find some areas which do not look natural. If the IR-algorithm decides about a certain low-contrast part on your picture that it’s a plane area then it will remove all the noise altogether with all the subtle details from that part of the picture. If you take a picture of a big tree with hundreds of branches (but without leaves) against a bright sky the IR-feature will treat it as a structured area and will slightly sharpen it to look clearer. But when you take a landscape picture with many distant trees in front and behind, those hundreds of crossing branches will create a low-contrast pattern which together with internal sensor’s noise might look for IR-algorithm as just a noisy plain area and so it will obliterate all the details leaving only some average color in that part of the picture and so making it looking very unnatural. The thing is that unlike the previous models the noise reduction in ZS7 is pretty strong. I would not call it “aggressive” but it’s really strong.

QUALITY IMPROVEMENTS: There is a way how to get the best out of this camera while shooting landscapes on sunny days. Here is a recipe for experienced amateurs:
- Switch the mode dial to the program “P” mode.
- Press the Menu button and select the lowest…

Read more ›

I just replaced my trusty ZS3 with the new ZS7 and, so far, I am very pleased with this camera. The output is much cleaner and smoother than the ZS3’s, much more refined. Compared to the ZS7, the ZS3 produced images that look brittle and over-processed. As with virtually all small-sensor cameras, the ZS7’s images are a little noisy (even at base ISO) if you look close enough. But noise is far less objectionable than ragged edges and smeared details, which is what I usually got from the ZS3. The images I’m getting from the ZS7 look surprisingly good even at 100% on-screen enlargement; whereas the ZS3’s output was virtually unusable at this magnification. The improvement is dramatic. Considering that the ZS7’s resolution has also increased from 10 to 12 MP (it’s actually a 14 MP sensor that is masked to create different aspect ratios), I’d say that Panasonic has done a really good job here.

The ZS7 improves on the ZS3 in several ways; but for me the most important new feature is Picture Adjustments, which let you turn down the amount of sharpening and noise reduction that are automatically applied to every image. Photographers who do their own post-processing will appreciate the ability to apply their own preferred methods of sharpening and noise reduction.

The next most important new feature (imho) is the addition of aperture/shutter-priority shooting modes. There isn’t much latitude for adjusting the f-stop in most small-sensor cameras because of defraction effects; but it’s great to be able to control the shutter speed manually.

The ZS7 also adds GPS, which can (thankfully) be turned off. Leaving it on shortens battery life.

Other improvements that I appreciate include (1) improved image stabilization, (2) new Venus processing engine, (3) High Dynamic mode, and (4) the LCD now has a good anti-glare coating.

All things considered, the ZS7 is an impressive upgrade that is easily worth the price.