Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ5S 6MP Digital Camera with 6x Image Stabilized Zoom

Your son takes his first step, or your daughter takes her encore bow at her first recital. Luckily, you were ready with your digital camera and caught this historic moment. But wait! The photo you took is blurry. In your excitement, you accidentally shook the camera just as you snapped the shutter. If this has ever happened to you--and you are by no means alone!--then you'll want to take a close look at the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ5 6-megapixel digital camera with 6x image-stabilized optical zoom.

The Lumix DMC-LZ5 was designed specifically to address the universal problem of "hand-shake"--the culprit of the majority of blurred digital images. At the heart of the Lumix DMC-LZ5 is Panasonic's Mega Optical Image Stabilizing System, or Mega O.I.S. A built-in gyrosensor detects any hand movement and relays a signal to a tiny microcomputer inside the camera, which instantly calculates the compensation needed. A linear motor then shifts the O.I.S. lens as necessary to guide incoming light from the image straight to the CCD. All this happens seamlessly and behind the scenes. All you'll notice will be the camera's outstanding results.

Mega O.I.S. is effective in most shooting situations, such as dimly lit indoor shots, nighttime shots, or macro shots. However, when taking indoor shots of moving subjects, such as children or pets, the movement of the subject tends also to contribute to the blurring. For this, the Lumix DMC-LZ5 features a high sensitivity mode to prevent hazy motion effects, further expanding your range of crisp, clear photo expression.

Another outstanding feature is the Lumix DMC-LZ5's 6x optical zoom. This powerful zoom--the equivalent to a 37mm to 222mm zoom on a 35mm film camera--lets you easily capture and magnify subjects in distant locations, and also produces impressive photos with soft-focused backgrounds. The zoom lens crystallizes Panasonic's optics technology, using two aspherical lenses to achieve compactness and boost optical performance. Together with the camera's 4x digital zoom, you can enjoy up to 24x zoom power--an amazing 888mm zoom equivalent on a 35mm camera.

With the consecutive shooting feature of Lumix DMC-LZ5, nothing will sneak past your photographic gaze. In one second, you can take up to five consecutive images in standard mode, and three images in fine mode with full resolution. In addition, the Unlimited Consecutive Shooting function lets you continue shooting until the memory card or built-in memory is full. All this is made possible by Panasonic's Venus Engine Plus, which reduces power consumption by about 50 percent compared with earlier Venus Engine-equipped models.

A bright 2.5-inch LCD monitor is easy to see when taking photos. The pixel-mixed readout method is used to automatically increase the brightness level of live images according to the level of ambient darkness. This allows bright, easy framing of scenes that would normally be too dark to see. The large LCD also allows the display of images even in tiny thumbnail size. Playback of 9, 16, and 25 images is possible on a multi-split screen in addition to the normal single frame playback. This helps you to search for the image you want out of a number of images stored on your SD memory card.

With the DMC-LZ5 you can also record beautiful full-sized movie at 30 frames per second. The camera's CCD enhances the picture quality not only in the resolution but also in the brightness level of the image as it gains much luminous signals. On the sound front, a built-in microphone lets you enjoy playing back movies with audio on TV or with PC.

The DMC-LZ5 is PictBridge compatible, which lets you print directly on a compatible digital printer. Print size, layout, date, and other settings can be made with the camera. The camera is powered by either two AA alkaline or two rechargeable nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH) batteries. Alkaline batteries let you take about 175 photos and nickel-metal hydride batteries allow up to 390 photos. When you don't have an SD memory card on hand, the camera's built-in memory holds up to 14 megabytes of image data, which you can later upload to an SD card or PC. You can also download images from a memory card or PC to the built-in memory, and view them on the LCD anytime you like.

What's in the Box
Lumix DMC-LZ5 digital camera, two oxyride AA batteries, and software CD-ROM.

• 6.0-megapixel CCD captures enough detail for photo-quality 14 x 19-inch prints

• 6x image-stabilized optical zoom; 2.5-inch LCD display

• Playback of 9, 16, and 25 images is possible on a multi-split screen

• Consecutive shooting feature lets you take up to five shots per second

• Powered by 2 AA-size batteries; stores images on SD memory cards (includes 14 MB of internal memory)