Panasonic Lumix DMC-F7

Opinion: I bought this camera in July 2004. My idea was to get a camera that gave good quality pictures and was small enough to carry in my pocket without being seen, as cost-effective as possible. As far as one can tell for his first digital camera, I think it takes good quality pictures. I found this camera for about 130 Euros (about the same in US dollars - because it was discontinued, I suppose), and I think it is a very good deal at that price.

Opinion: I bought this excellent camera at a very low discounted (and discontinued) price, as a "happy snapper" for my children.

I had read reviews about the other range of Panasonic cameras and was considering by a high-end model, particularly because of their great Leica optics. But i cound not find any reviews about this camera

For the low price, i thought it would be ideal for the children and their school trips, scouting weekends, parties, etc...but first i tried a few shots myself and was really amazed at the quality for what is now camera technology over 2 years old.

One thing this camera has done is to shatter the misconception which most people have is that more pixels means more quality. At the highest quality setting on images of Venice taken by my teenage daughter and filling the whole screen of my 17" LCD monitor were simply breath-taking.

Opinion: The F7 is a relativly good camera. For 350$ I wouldn't expect anything better.
The image quality is excellent for 2 megapixel, it's sharp and clear.
Macro focus is also very clean, which I really love in this camera.
My problems with it, are the lack of manual features: The focus- it's so hard focusing on a flower, when the camera keep trying to focus on the background, and aperture- I had to come up with some tricks to override it.

Overall it's a really nice camera, good worth for the money, and if you are not a professional, you wouldn't need any more than that.

Opinion: I purchased my F7 as my first DC. I have been impressed with the picture quality both on monitor and printout. The camera captured high speed action images extremely well for a camera in the price range and available features. My only complaint (very slight) is the access to required functions through the LCD and the low battery life. Apart from these minor pains the camera is an excellent point and shoot and can surprise with the quality of images produced. I replaced my ageing SLR with the above and do not regret it so far.
Whe all sead and done you get what you pay for and you cant expect this camera to capture images as good as an upper level SLR but overall I think it is good value for money and if you are considering buying one you can e-mail me and I will forward and image ( high speed action) that may help you in your decision.

Opinion: Well this is my first digital camera so its hard to tell if its generally a good or bad camera. I have found that in a brightly lit room, or outside on a sunny day, this camera works very well producing good image quality. I've only ever had one lot of images printed out. They were from a formal and they turned out quite well. These photos were taken at night and i was happy with how they turned out. In the first few days i took lots of photos of flowers and trees etc. This camera seems to do a very nice close up. It runs into trouble when u take a picture of a view or a bunch of people in a room. I bought this camera mainly for the size, it just slips into my pocket and i can take it out and snap a photo.

Opinion: I've had the F7 for several months now. It can be picked up for fairly low prices as it is being replaced by the 3 mp F1.

There aren't a lot of nice features to the F7 to speak of. The zoom, UI, and operation are sub-par. Most notably the UI requires a considerable amount of digging through menus to alter settings. But this does make it a good camera for beginners as there isn't a whole lot to play around with on the outside. It is a well designed camera from an aesthetics standpoint. Battery is weak.

Image quality can be quite nice at low ISO settings, but at higher settings, the CCD is far too noisy. Camera uses 1/15 shutter speed as minimum in low-light, but it would have been smarter for >1/30, so expect blurry pictures in low light usage without LCD. The color rendition can be quite pleasant, but takes a bit of fiddling to perfect.

In short, if you want a small pocketable camera, you might be better off getting a Sony U20. If you want something more advanced, a Canon Elph will probably be a better buy. But if you see this camera for cheap, it's not a bad P+S to play around with.

Opinion: There seems to be little substance to the above reviews. I bought this camera after not doing a great deal of research and regret it. It's a nice small build with convenient size and excellent looks, but I have two main problems; 1) image quality, and 2) clanky menu system.

i'm going to take mine back - i'm a 35mm slr photographer that thought i'd at least get moderate quality for holiday snaps from a compacy digital, but was left quite disappointed by the less than ordinary image quality.

Opinion: I just bought this camera a week ago after loosing my Canon IXUS 330 (Powershot S330) at my work Christmas party (very drunk). I work at Officeworks as a Business Machines Specialist and have had a Panasonic Rep. come to our store when they introduced there Lumix range. We were all happy with what we saw and with using the Leica lens and with Panasonics reliability and quality with any electrical products, well we were excited. So i went out and bought the F7 as a cheap ($580AU) compensation to my IXUS 330 ($1,000). As soon as i pulled it out the box on the way home from buying it, i was happy with the appearance and size. After inserting the battery hopping it was charged from the factory (it was) i noticed a thin, long metal flap to keep the battery in place, it is a bad design and seems to have a very week hinge. At first it seemed to be difficult to use but after a few hours it is actualy very easy to with every thing at your finger tips. The front of the camera and half the sides is brushed steel and seems to be well built. The menu system is not very well designed but seems to flow when using the camera (strange). On the front of the camera to the left is a sliding switch which has a two stage action the first, slides over the lens cover to reveal the lovely Lieca 2x zoom lens, the next action locks the switch in to place and acts as a power on switch. Even though it has been awkwardly placed (not in reach). It has a good selection of manual modes, you can change the ISO speeds for 100, 200 or 400 which is not bad for the price and ultra compact design. It has movie mode and lot of other features expected, it also has video out and DC in. The quality of the image is unknown as i have not transfered any pics to my computer yet, but from what i've heard it is not to bad. If you can find this camera for $499 with 8Mb SD card standard + a bonus 16Mb SD card, you've got a great buy (Teds Cameras has the black version for $499). I may not speak very highly of this camera in my review but it all comes down to price, for $499 you will not find a better camera with optical zoom and the ultra compact size.

Opinion: Have been using this camera for about 6 months. I like the
compact size, go anywhere, easy to carry profile. Menu
structure is straight forward and easy to use.

Things I wish it had, are a faster response when taking
photos and a bigger memory (I had upgraded mine to 64M)

I shoot most of my snaps using the mid-resolution setting
and am happy with the quality once downloaded onto a
computer. I find a 2 Megapixel camera is fine for what I do.

This is a great little camera for everyday use and am very
happy with it.