I picked up a backup camera not too long ago. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20 was my choice for for a couple reasons. Long lens (35-432mm), fast lens (f2.8 all the way through), with a nice sized sensor (5mp) at a very nice price ($600). Another one of the reasons that I picked it up was that to rent a 400mm f2.8 VR lens along with a smaller lens for a planned trip to Iceland I was close in price to just buying this camera. I know the lens quality will not be the same but now I have a back up if need be AND I have a zoom f2.8 with VR!

The camera feels like it is made of plastic. It is sort of light and the hand grip is just not quite big enough. It boots up quickly, but does have a little bit of a shutter lag. Overall it has been easy to operate.

The focus ring has a very nice feel to it, but what I really like is when you are manually focusing it brings the center of the screen to full resolution so you can see if the image is actually focused or not. The AF system is not as nice as the D70s (gee who would have guessed) and I have several times found myself flipping it to MF. Not as bad as it could but because of the nice MF system, but still an annoyance.

The ability to create movies is great! The camera can use its image stabilization while shooting and it even records sound. Alas there is not an ability to zoom while taking movies, this would be very nice.

The flash is awesome. I have been shooting from across a large room in my house and have been able to light things up as bright as day. I am not sure about the red eye properties.

The USB transfer cord is non-standard. Why did they do this? I am not sure but is sure is a shitty thing to do to such a nice camera.

It uses SD memory cards, which is fine I guess, but I already have a nice investment in CF cards which I can get microdrives for. Boo. Oh ya and the 16MB card that comes with it is a waste. Go out and get a 512MB, or a 1GB if you are not going to have a laptop along.

When deleting images one can erase all images which is nice, but also dangerous.

The view finder is… odd. It appears to actually be a mini LCD screen in there. Odd, but works OK. I find myself putting the camera up to my eye every once in a while and it works out fine.

Live histogram. Oh baby what a great feature. I wish the D70 had this feature. Digital is great for a lot of reasons, but the ability to immediately see how the image was exposed it one of the greatest. Being able to do it in real-time is even better.

On to that huge piece of Leica glass. 35-432mm f2.8 with Image Stabilization. Oh yes this is what I have wanted for my DSLR for a long time now and have never seen. The zoom is quick from end to end and it can focus very close at wide angle (see pictures above). There is one complaint about the lens. Chromatic aberration. Yes I have not had the camera long and have seen it. It is not as bad as my 600-1300mm Phoenix but it is still there and noticeable. This can be fixed with in photoshop with not much effort, but it is another step that needs to be taken.

Overall I am very happy with the camera. It is a good piece of equipment at a fair price.