Needs Improvement!

Author's Rating:

Pros: weight, battery life, super long zoom, SD cards, ease of use.

Cons: No zoom in movie mode, no tilt LCD, screen going blank in super zoom focus

The Bottom Line: 
A good camera with amazing 28-504 range, but wait til they perfect some features.

Author's Review
I own a Canon S2IS 5mp 12x zoom camera. We were heading for a 2 week trip to Alaska, so I looked into getting something with a longer zoom.

Purchasing the Panasonic FZ18 directly from the Panasonic sales dept. gave me 30 days to try it. I was hoping it would make me want to keep it, but after using it in Alaska, I found some very frustrating features and decided to return it.

Kudos: Lightweight, battery life, super long zoom, SD memory cards, ease of use.

Dislikes: No zoom in movie mode, no tilt LCD screen, diopter adjustment wouldn't stay in place, and the final, most annoying feature: when I would be in extended zoom mode focused on a bear or wolf, etc. the screen would go blank for 2 to 3 seconds while focusing. You know how hard it is to keep an object in your viewfinder at super zoom....this blank screen made me lose my subject time after time, ending in missed shots. Those animals aren't going to sit still and wait while this thing tries to focus!

I sincerely hope Panasonic takes these problems under consideration in their next generation of the FZ camera line. I'd buy one in a heartbeat if they did!