This weekend my husband and I bit the bullet and purchased a new P&S camera after my old faithful Nikon Coolpix, purchased several years ago, had a poor showing (bad pics) on Friday. I LOVE my Nikon Coolpix and it will continue to be my every day camera however where it doesn’t hold up is as a good concert camera because it only has a 3X optical zoom.

With some great upcoming concerts I wanted the best camera I could get (in my opinion) that doesn’t have a removeable lens. A few months ago I saw some great photos from a U2 concert posted by U2Gigs so I emailed them and got back a message that the photos were taken with a Panasonic. So the research began and I purchased the same camera:

PANASONIC DMC-ZS3

Feature Highlights

• 10.1 megapixel
• 12x optical zoom
• 25 mm wide-angle Leica DC VARIO-ELMAR lens
• 3.0″ Intelligent LCD (460K pixels)
• Wide viewing angle
• Intelligent auto mode
  - MEGA O.I.S. (Optical image stabilizer)
  - Intelligent ISO control
  - Face detection
  - Face recognition
  - AF tracking
  - Intelligent scene selector
  - Intelligent exposure control
  - Digital red-eye correction
• Venus engine HD image processor
• AVCHD Lite movie mode with stereo mic and zoom
• Dolby® Digital Stereo Creator
• Mini HDMI output
• Li-ion rechargeable battery powered
• DMC-ZS3K (black)

I took my new camera with me to the farm to test out some different features and work on getting to know it.

This is using the 12X zoom – it wasn’t at the full zoom length but I was very impressed with the quality of the photo when using the zoom.

Another zoomed in image – obviously since I size these for web some of the sharpness from the photos has been lost but I think they were excellent and I was impressed with the color quality and accuracy.

This is Charlie – he’s too cute – and the newest addition to the farm.

This was using the macro zoom option – I was impressed with how close I was able to get and how sharp the image was.

Again, great and accurate color and the wide angle made for a nice touch!

This was using the “candle light” preset – the result was interesting.

So far, I’ve been very happy with the camera – I think I need to invest in more SD HC cards and probably some larger sizes so I will be keeping my eyes open for some good deals on the Scan Disk Extreme III and maybe the panasonic versions (which I’ve never tried). I’m interested to try some of the newer features to me like face detection and food setting.

Hopefully this camera will give me the kind of concert photos I want and also act as a great travel point and shoot camera…along with my trusty Nikon Coolpix.

Tags: 10.1 megapixel, 12x optical zoom, AVCHD Lite movie mode, camera, Charlie Chow, ducklings, ducks, Face recognition, farm, HD image processor, Leica lens, Panasonic DMC-ZS3, photography, wide-angle Leica lens

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 8:50 am and is filed under photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.