The one bad item negates all the good.

I regrettably sold my Konica-Minolta Z3 before I bought this camera; it did everything I wanted it to, but I wanted more zoom. Actually my only problem with this Panasonic DMC-FZ18 camera is that there is NO ZOOM IN MOVIE MODE!!!! That is unheard of in today's high tech cameras. I had read on a forum that the zoom could actually be activated in the movie mode by changing some settings, so I bought the camera. That turned out to be false information; there's nothing you can do to get it to zoom while recording. It's fine for still pictures, and you can take still pictures with audio, but if you want a useful video/movie feature, get a different camera.

Recommended options: 4GB SDHC High Speed Memory Card for movies (about $80). Extra battery.