The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 ($499.99 direct) is a superzoom camera with an SLR-inspired design. Its large 24x Leica lens covers a 25-600mm (35mm equivalent) field of view and the characteristic hump that holds its viewfinder and pop-up flash is straight out of the SLR design handbook. The 12-megapixel camera is capable of grabbing full-resolution images at 12 frames per second and recording HD video in 1080p60 format, setting it apart from other superzooms that have less ambitious video aspirations. It is priced higher than the 36x zoom Canon PowerShot SX40 HS ($429.99, 4 stars), and it can't fit into your pocket like our Editors' Choice 18x Nikon Coolpix S9100 ($329.95, 4 stars). But if fast continuous shooting and HD video are major concerns, and you need a long zoom lens, the FZ150 may be the camera for you.

Design and Features
The 3.2-by-4.9-by-3.7-inch, 1 pound, 2.6-ounce FZ150 is similar in size and design to the Canon PowerShot SX40 HS, which measures 3.6 by 4.8 by 4.2 inches and tips the scales at 1 pound, 5.2 ounces. It dwarfs superzooms with more modest focal length ranges, like the 12x Canon PowerShot Elph 510 HS ($349.99, 3.5 stars), which is small enough to slide into your pocket. Its 24x lens can be zoomed in and out using the rocker control that is built into the shutter or via a dedicated control on the left of the lens barrel.

Physical controls are plentiful. The left of the lens also houses a dedicated switch to toggle between focus modes, and a Focus button that makes it possible to set the size and location of the FZ150's autofocus area. Top controls include the aforementioned shutter release, a mode dial, a Movie Record button, a drive mode button, and the on/off switch. You'll find a control wheel, EVF/LCD toggle, AF/AE lock, and a four-way control on the rear of the camera. The pop-up flash will not fire unless it is raised, which is done by pressing a single button to the left of the EVF.

The FZ150's 3-inch LCD is hinged so that you can view it from any angle. It can fold flat against the back of the camera with the LCD hidden, which automatically activates the FZ150's eye-level EVF. It isn't the sharpest viewfinder in the world, packing only 201,600 pixels, roughly half that of the 460k-dot rear LCD. Even though the frame rate of both viewing options becomes sluggish in lower light, the effect is more noticeable with the camera directly to your eye. When shooting at telephoto extremes it will be beneficial to use the EVF, as it is easier to steady the camera with it up to your eye rather than at arm's length.

The menu system is familiar if you've picked up a Panasonic camera before. There are no frills or fancy images—just clean, clear text to control the functions of the camera. The full menu occupies the entire LCD, letting you adjust every imaginable setting. Also, a Quick Menu button launches a top-positioned drop-down style overlay menu. From here you can adjust common settings for which there are no dedicated physical controls, such as the metering mode, flash settings, aspect ratio, and white balance. Overall, the UI is fast and responsive.

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Performance and Conclusions

Although the FZ150 isn't the fastest camera to start up and take a shot—its large lens has to extend a bit, which slows this process—it is able to rattle off shots with ease once it gets going. The camera takes a full two seconds to start up, beating the Canon SX40 HS by a half-second, but lagging behind our Editors' Choice Nikon S9100 by 0.4 second. The FZ150's shutter lag is just 0.1 second, and it can capture an image every 0.2 second in continuous drive mode. Again it betters the SX40 HS, which records a 0.5-second shutter lag and takes 0.4 second between shots. The FZ150 is able to keep up with its continuous shooting pace for roughly 22 shots before slowing to about 0.5 second between shots as the buffer fills. If you need even faster shooting, the camera has a 12-shot burst mode which captures full-resolution images 0.1 second apart. The FZ150 also supports 40 and 60 frame per second capture at 5 megapixels and 2.5 megapixels, respectively.

I use the Imatest software suite to measure image sharpness and noise. Sharpness is measured in lines per picture height using a center-weighted algorithm. A score of 1,800 lines is considered to be acceptably sharp, and the FZ150 fell slightly short of that metric, recording 1,700 lines. This puts it in the same ballpark as the Nikon S9100, which captured 1,767 lines, but you'll get sharper photos with more fine detail from the Canon SX40 HS or PowerShot SX150 IS ($249.99, 2.5 stars), which scored 1,836 and 2,213 lines respectively.

Image noise is also an important consideration, as cameras that produce noisy images at higher ISO settings will be hamstrung when used in low light. When light gets low, a camera's sensitivity to light, measured in ISO, must increase to capture a properly exposed photo. Once an image is composed of more than 1.5 percent noise it becomes unacceptably grainy. The FZ150 produces clean images through ISO 400, crossing the 1.5 percent line at ISO 800. This isn't a terrible result, but it's not a great one either. The Nikon Coolpix P500 ($399.95, 4 stars) can capture clean photos through ISO 3200, which is eight times more sensitive to light. The Nikon S9100 is clean through ISO 1600 and the Canon SX40 through ISO 800.

Video is one of the FZ150's strong selling points. The camera can record 1080p60 footage in AVCHD Progressive format. It can also be set to grab smaller files, supporting both 1080i60 and 720p60 AVCHD capture. If you know that your video is destined for quick upload to the Web rather than display on a large HDTV, the camera can be set to record in the standard MP4 format at 1080p30, 720p30, or 480p30 resolution. Video quality is excellent, as the camera preserves fine details and captures very nice color. One downside is the audio quality. Even though the camera has a stereo microphone, the sound of the lens zooming in and out and the autofocus motor whirring is audible on the soundtrack. There is a standard minijack, so you can connect an external microphone to help alleviate this.

If a superzoom with video and fast continuous shooting is what you're after, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 may be the perfect camera for you—as long as you're not hung up on pocketability. With its long 25-600mm zoom range, this camera is able to handle almost any shooting situation, assuming that the lighting is decent. And it can rattle off shots faster than some D-SLRs, but that performance comes at a price. At $500, the camera is more expensive than any of its competitors, making it a bit of a tough sell. If low-light shooting is more important, the $400 Nikon Coolpix P500 is worth a close look, as it can capture clean images in much less light than the FZ150. The Canon SX40 HS, priced $70 less than the FZ150, captures sharper photos and has good low-light performance, making it one of the more balanced cameras in this class. None of these cameras have been able to oust the $330 Nikon Coolpix S9100 as our Editors' Choice superzoom with 18x zoom in a camera you can easily slip into a pocket. But for the armchair videographers, sports shooters, and nature aficionados, it is difficult to overlook the impressive telephoto reach and fast frame per second capture delivered by the FZ150.

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