Review on Panasonic DMC FZ70 Digital Optical Stabilized by Adam Nelson

I was very skeptical about buying this camera for my sister. She had a cheap Nikon Coolpix camera and took fantastic shots with it that really impressed me, especially when using the zoom. It broke the other day after three or four years and I've decided it's time to update it. Not wanting a DSLR as she wanted to keep things simple, I researched many bridge cameras but their image quality left a lot to be desired. She liked the zoom of the Nikon Coolpix P900, but I hated the image quality on this camera, especially at $500. Not this one. CLEARLY not DSLR image quality, which is fantastic for such a small sensor. Not only that, the colors from this sensor are true and have lots of spikes, which reminds me of my Canon EOS-7D. To be honest, my Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH3 doesn't have those beautiful colors in the default settings. What else is there to say about the FZ70? Its sensor has a surprisingly good dynamic range. Oh, the shutter lag is minimal. There is none of those cheap "point and shoot" residues. You don't have to wait for the picture to be taken. After fixing the focus by pressing the button halfway, the picture will be taken once you press the button fully. I smiled so broadly from the very first shot because I wasn't expecting such DSLR-like behavior. Click. Clear image. Click. Another poignant image. And that in low light. SO SATISFYING. I'm telling you it's a FUN camera and I've NEVER felt the urge or even thought "I wish I had my DSLR with me". I would be happy with just this camera during the day, without anything else. The zoom isn't super fast as far as speed goes, but for less than $300 that would be overpriced. The lens is SUPER WIDE and pretty sharp even at full zoom and I didn't see any chromatic aberration when photographing the sunset. Ah, funny: The video quality is also impressive in VGA mode. The camera has around 200MB of built-in memory, so it can only record VGA. But it looks so good on camera that my sister and I started laughing. It comes from me, a guy used to fast DSLRs and wouldn't be surprised by a well-aimed shot. But no more, because this FZ70 is AMAZING. It even writes RAW files if you are allergic to JPEGs. How cool is that? Attached are color test images and handheld images, one at maximum magnification and one at lower magnification. Everything at sunset. Thank you for reading. May God bless you greatly!