Labs

Manual focusing is far easier on the FZ30 than on any other non-SLR camera we've seen. The dedicated lens ring is responsive and precise, while the high-resolution LCD and viewfinder screens display a zoomed central area of the image while focusing. A second lens ring makes zooming equally satisfying. There are two command dials for aperture and shutter speed.

The camera is reasonably quick, capturing pictures every

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two seconds. Auto-focus accounts for around half of this time, so switching to manual focus reduces the gap to one second. Continuous mode focuses just once before capturing indefinitely at 1.67fps.

Our image tests revealed flattering yet natural colours in all lights, while the level of detail captured could be matched only by Canon's EOS 350D DSLR. The crisp focus and optical image stabilisation produced images leagues ahead of the competition at telephoto zoom settings and when using long shutter times. Unfortunately, while shots taken at ISO 200 and 400 weren't that noisy, they had a slightly smudged, painted appearance. This is usually a side effect of noise reduction processing, but the problem wasn't as noticeable as on other Panasonic cameras we've seen.

The DMC-FZ30 is almost as pleasant to use as a DSLR and this is quite an achievement. The only downside we discovered is that its best performance is limited to slow ISO speeds, making it less suited to low-light and action photography.