Panasonic DCM-ZS3 Digital Camera

[JohnnyO]

I gave my wife my digital camera to hold when I went on the rides at Six Flags Great Adventure several weeks ago. She droppd it somewhere in the park. It is gone forever. It's a good thing she lost it and not me. I would never hear the end of it.

So I needed to get a new digital camera. I decided on the Panasonic DMC-ZS3. This baby can do it all.

Not only it it compact, measurig 4"x2.35"x1.29", and weighing in at 8.1 oz with the battery and memory card, it boasts a 12x optical zoom with image stabilization (leica lens), gace detection, face recognition, auto focus tracking, bunch of usable modes, and intelligent scene detection. It does it all very well. This is a 10 MP camera.

It also takes video, VGA at 30 fps, as well as HD using AVCHD Lite, all in stereo sound. I have a slop computer, but MAGIX MEP 15 Plus seems to have no problem with AVCHD Lite.

I am extremely impressed with this camera. It is not cheap, ~$400 plus mem card_spare battery+case - to total around $500.

If you are in the market for a camera that takes very good photos and want to also take good video with the same camera, check this camera out.

[Steve Grisetti]

AVCHD Lite can be a challenge for some software to edit. (Premiere Elements has some real problems with it!)

But, if you've found an editing workflow that works, that's a great recommendation, Johnny! Thanks for it.

Though I still warn others that, outside of Magix MEP 15, you may have some trouble working with that video.

[tiny]

I highly recommend the Panasonic. I bought a Panasonic DMC-FX12 nearly two years ago for $97. It does excellent 720x480 video. Here is video I shot with it: http://campyfilms.com/film/milkthief.shtml

I've found that Panasonic's generally offer a great value, and the fact that these have leica lens's is pretty nice.

[JohnnyO]

AVCHD Lite can be a challenge for some software to edit. (Premiere Elements has some real problems with it!)

I have found some issues with AVCHD Lite even in MAgix MEP 15 Plus.

I cam across this free AVCHD converter, from Koyote software. You can batcj convert AVCHD to AVCHD Lite to more compatable files, such as MPEG2 and AVI.

Now I can use these videos in not only MAGIX MEPm but also PRE7.

Here's the link (I think it was Paul LS that originally pointed to this converter somewhere)

http://www.koyotesoft.com/indexEn.html