Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18K 8.1MP Digital Camera with 18x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black)

We got this camera some weeks ago.
I am reading reviews and now know it's not a point and shoot camera and I understand that.
However, I have been learning how to use it and try the different settings to try to take better pictures. It seems to me it's sort of hard to take good pictures inside (low-light conditions) in the intelligent auto mode. I read reviews saying good things about the IAM mode. But in my case it gives me noisy pictures. We took pictures without flash inside (lights inside were on) and the skin color in people look way red and it's like the same red from skin covered places like shirt sleeves and such.

I have also found out, the zoom is great and it clearly controls the jittering when you are zooming a lot. But other than that, I dont seem to find a setting I can use for when I need to take a good picture (good quality) and I dont have much time to think which setting or scene mode to use. The quality when putting the pictures in my computer doesnt seem to be the best, even the picture size is set to 8M. If you zoom in to the picture in the computer, the pixelation is a lot.

Do you have any comments on this? do you agree? I need some feedback.
I want to know if this are drawbacks of the camera, or if I am just not suitable for a camera this complicated. Thanks!

I have an SLR and love it but like a lot of other folks needed something smaller and less cumbersome that I could carry in my purse. I liked the higher mega pixels and the 18x zoom on this camera.
I loved the idea of such a great zoom but you really HAVE to use a tripod or the pictures are unusable because of the blur. So much for less cumbersome. In fact that is my main disappointment and complaint about this camera is the blurring issue if I am using the zoom at all.
Would'a, Could'a, Should'a opted for something with less zoom and better more reliable picture quality!

I was so in love with my TZ1, when I went up a level I chose this camera. There are some good things: battery life is great, shoots RAW images, huge zoom, and the weight isn't too bad.

But I am disappointed in Panasonic. The shutter repeat is slow so if you don't get the first shot, forget about it with wild life. The image stabilization is lacking, hence a lot of lost shots for blurry images. It often chooses the closest item as the dominant image not using the item I tell it to focus on, and no I am not using the "intelligent focus". The image backgrounds are not as clear as my old TZ1.

But my TZ1 is in warranty hell with Panasonic. I sent my TZ1 in to the warranty service center 4 weeks ago. It was ready last week but the service center is too busy to return it. I was told Friday that they completed repair but were too busy to ship it out, I was told Monday that they were very busy and would call when it was shipped - no call yet. Looks to me like they are intentionally running out my warranty. So this is a warning about Panasonic warranty service.

I have 2 Panasonic cameras now but after this would probably not get another.
Moira

I took it yesterday in my hands(from Amazon and 6ave). I am still learning period, but very satisfied the features; build quality, fast operation, 18x zoom, wild angle and IA mode. Only one critism is noise in the low light pictures.

Excelente camara... estabilizacion casi perfecta, increible zoom (sobretodo mas de 28x con 3MP o menos). Facil de configurar. Todo lo q se pedir de una camara semiprofesional. NO le doy 5 estrellas por 2 motivos: primero, el flash incorporado es muy tenue en situaciones de poca luz, las imagenes salen oscuras a mas d 3 metros de distancia y al aumentarle el ISO produce algo de ruido (como la mayoria de las semiprofesionales de gran zoom), y segundo, mientras se filma no se puede utilizar el zoom, ni optico ni digital (al menos no lo he logrado hacer, aun no he revisado bien esos detalles). Por lo demas, una excelente camara.