a good price for this camera..
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Green... AMAZING camera...

Sigh.... Very good price for an amazing camera. I'd been waiting for a deal on it myself, and finally broke down a couple weeks ago and bought it from Amazon for $225 w/ a free SD card, which was the best deal I could find after 2-3 weeks of scouring. I'm not surprised to see it breaking the $200 barrier so quickly after I bought it.

Green from me!

272 generally positive reviews at Amazon: here. And 20 more very positive ratings at Newegg here.

Few considerations. Doesn't use AA batteries, sad for those who happen to have a lot of rechargeables lying around. Panasonic's tiny image sensors are unfortunately famous for producing noisy images, which may not offend everyone but can become an issue with enlargements and any low-light shooting. And there is no viewfinder, just the LCD screen. Still, the relatively small size, great zoom range, decent wide-angle view and image stabilization all are big pluses. Nice deal at this price IMHO.

evilji---care to explain your red?

199.99 is a great deal, however, it is for the black model only at that specific site.

If you want the blue one, which is the one I purchased and has that rubber smooth feel coating (not sure if the silver one and black one has that), the best deal was at Newegg only because they were giving out a free 4gb SDHC card and bag. The only bad thing about Newegg is that shipping was not free. I believe you can also get FW Cash Back at that site. I'm new here so I did not know about FW CB. The final cost was 234.54 without tax and without the FW CB. I ordered it Friday and recieved it on Monday so I did not feel so bad about the shipping since it took one day from me. CA to NV. Also they shipped it the same day I ordered which was around 3pm PT.

http://www.Newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830180148&Tpk=tz5a

This deal will save you time looking for a bag and SDHC card which you will definitely need (only about 57 mb internal memory, and the screen is big and nice you would want to protect that) if you do not have either.

If the color has no weight in your decision, then this is the best deal out there at this moment. I too scoured the web for a good deal and do your research on companies before purchasing from too good to be true websites.

I am not a professional photographer so don't quote me on anything. Someone mentioned the TZ5 replacing HD cameras. Things not to expect and you'll be happy with the TZ5. In my opinion and the reason why I bought it is that is is the best all around camera at a decent size. What people seem to be disappinted with is that the size of the camera will not allow it to fit in their small pockets, the audio will not come close to real digital camcorders, recording in low light conditions will have problems (hard to see things, if you have a back light no problem), the length of time is limited to about 8 min hd quality 30 fps and 16 min hd quality 15 fps then you will have to record again (might not be a problem if you use software to piece the clips together later on) and lastly the sensor is small than other digital cameras.

Great things you've already heard them all.

Best travel camera I've ever had.

smalldeal said:You can get the DMC-FZ28 for not much more. It has both the viewfinder and the LCD screen. It has 10 MP with 18X optical zoom. If you trust this retailer, it's only $185. Has anyone used them?

DMC-FZ28K ($185 only)

Come on, I thought we had pretty much covered this by now, off the wall internet websites that no one has heard off and offer ridiculously low prices are a scam. This one has a 0 zero out of ten rating at resellerratings.com. I think that may be a record actually...

Resellerratings Link

Back up to $249 using the direct link from OP.

1) great price for the camera, recommended for the image quality, zoom during movie mode, and general overall power and zoom length vs. other P&S cameras with a longer zoom. As long as you don't mind the slightly higher weight (vs. 3x P&S cameras), it's quite nice. Even the large, bright screen is nice vs. the tiny ones on cheaper P&S cameras.

2) It's only going cheap because it's almost time for the replacement to arrive. Panasonic is on a 1 year schedule for replacement for these long-zoom models, and their TZ6/7? whatever they will call them will be released in a few months (at least in Japan).

3) HD video. If you haven't seen what the Canon HV10 through HV30 models, and HF10/11 models can do (camcorderinfo.com), then the HD video will be 'nice' vs. 3x P&S cameras on SD (standard definition, old tube TVs) TVs. Audio is always lesser than a dedicated microphone unit (those big ones attached to pro camcorders and such), but overall, you'll be happy with the results.

If you have seen and used the output from the Canon's (the -best- available consumer level HD camcorders overall for video image quality at this time - from the list above), then you'll be like me, carrying both a P&S and a HD Camcorder until Canon manages to release something that does both well.

The ~2MP images from the Canon's are decent for 4x6" prints, but nothing like a true 6+MP P&S for larger prints, which is what I'm still waiting for. (Ignore the in-camera up-rezing of images to 10MP like one Sony camcorder toots - if you blow up an image from low-res data, it's still low-res. There is still no HD camcorder out yet with true 6+ MP images for the regular consumer.)

Now, if you're willing to spend $2000+, live with a sub-20 minute video limit, and so-so audio, there is the Canon 5D MKII 1920x1080 HD video + dSLR in one. This baby rocks, but so does the Red One. Sky's the limit if you have cash, naturally....but back to reality, nothing in the affordable <$1000 range for consumers that does both equally well.

If you want decent photos and decent HD video, but not the best in both, there is the Sony HG1 pocket AVCHD camcorder, the Sanyo Xacti line of camcorders+cameras, and the Casio EXILIM H.264 + 8MP+ cameras to pick from.

4) Speaking of alteratives. Panasonic does not use MPEG-4 compression for videos, thus, you will run out of room on even a 16GB flash card quite quickly.

Sanyo Xacti and Casio EXILIM cameras+camcorder combos are the 'best' of the combo bunch for now if you're willing to sacrifice a little on both ends. They do have MPEG-4 recording, so that's about 1HR per 1GB for SD resolution video, and 20-30 minutes for HD video. They do a decent job, and there's nothing like an EXILIM that's super-shirt pocketable vs. a much heftier TZ5 if you want to take videos for a long time. (keep in mind, the dozen minutes limit per 1GB for the TZ5 might not seem bad... until your wedding, baby, travel video gets cut short because you ran out of space)

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