Bought a Pana..

Recently I added another gadget to my arsenal - A Panasonic P&S - Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ8 - I was looking for a Budget P&S preferably under a $100. Eventhough I was leaning towards a Canon product which are supposed to be having a niche in P&S arena, most canons were in the $150 range. Then I was surprised to find dpreview conducting a comparison of budget P&S involving 2 Canons, a Nikon, a samsung, a sony and this Lz8 for panasonic. And to my surprise, LZ8 aced the list. A quick browse of its price presented another surprise. BeachCamera was carrying it for $99 no tax and free shipping. Bingo ! We have a winner.

I have been using the LZ8 for family outings in the past 3 or so weeks and it has amazing features and capabilities for $99. How much technology has changed since the $200 Powershot A70 I bought 6yrs ago. Now, the price of LZ8 has shot back to $149 if you are able to find one. Obviously a good thing with small price tags is not a seller's favorite !!

The LZ8 uses standard AA batteries - nice thing. Its only 8MP which is what I wanted for a P&S. I have actually set it to use only 7MP so that it spits out 4x6 directly so that I dont have to crop it for print. 5x optical zoom compared to 3x in most top end budget P&S. A display mode that lets you see the LCD even when you are holding the camera high above your head to shoot in front of a crowd or so. etc etc. Now Lo and behold !! it does AEB which my Nikon D40 SLR doesnt do. Of course, it has most bells and whistles of any typical P&S as well. I will upload some pics from that later. One good purchase, and I have even recommended that to one other person already!!

Today's pic was from a mail-list at work. Showed some creative ad photographs. Interestingly the ones I liked were Panasonic Lumix ads. Of course (c) Panasonic implied. The top one was intended to capture your imagination on wide angle P&S (one current Lumix has a 28mm wide end). The second one is supposed to capture your imagination for Panasonic's face recognition technology. I couldnt get the impact of this initially as I looked at the dotted square on the women's face. Then I noticed the little square box on the women's belly. Creativity deserving praise !!