Physical Tour

**Front **

The LZ5 and LZ3 are covered in satiny-finished plastic. The telescoping lens assembly is brushed metal, with a rectangular window for the glass, and a lens cover made of swinging leaves of gray plastic. A small autofocus assist light is to the right of the lens, and the flash is a small, narrow rectangle in the upper right corner of the camera. How small? A nickel can cover it. In the lower right, the camera has the familiar script "L" of the Lumix line. The handgrip bulges on the left, with a two-tone metal stripe wrapping from the lens mount around to the side of the camera. The cameras are labeled "Lumix" at the upper left. Their resolution ratings are printed at lower left.

**Back **

The LZ5 has a 2.5-inch LCD display on the left side of the back. The LZ3's display is 2 inches. The cameras do not have optical viewfinders. The camera's 4-way controllers are made up of five separate buttons, which work together for navigation in menu and display modes. In shooting mode, the buttons have separate functions: The top button activates the exposure compensation **

**control, the left button activates the self-timer, the center button brings up the menus, the right button sets the flash mode and the bottom button switches the camera into playback mode. Below the 4-way controller, there is a display button on the left that cycles the information displayed on the LCD in shooting mode, and puts the display into "High Angle" mode. The burst/trash button is at lower right.

There's a small ridge at the upper right to form a thumb grip, with a patch of dimples to add a little traction. The ridge is vertical, and not as comfortable as it would be if it were angled or curved a bit.

**Left Side
**The connectivity jacks are behind a door on the left side of the LZ5 and LZ3. This door closes flush with the surface too. The jacks are a combined USB/analog A/V jack, and a power supply port. There is no strap lug on the left side of the camera.

Right Side 

The strap lug is flush on the top of the right side, so it won't get in the user's way. It's the right size for a wrist strap. The metal decoration on the handgrip wraps about halfway across the right side of the cameras. The door for the SD media slot is also on the right side, and closes flush with the surface, not affecting the comfort of the grip.

**Top
**The shutter release is a small chrome button toward the right of the top. It's surrounded by a ring that activates the zoom in shooting mode and magnification in playback. The power switch is a small slider switch that's easy to use, but unlikely to be accidentally turned on. We prefer power switches like this one, because accidentally turning on a camera is pretty common, and if a camera turns on while it's in a purse or pocket, it can be damaged. At the very least, its batteries will run down.

The optical image stabilization button is small and to the right of the shutter release. It's marked with a picture of a quivering hand. The left side of the top is flat, but embellished with a bit of branding: it says "Panasonic DMC-LZ5" (or "Panasonic DMC-LZ3" depending).

A small hole toward the middle of the top admits sound to the microphone, and the mode dial slightly overhangs the back.

**Bottom
**The battery compartment of the LZ5 and LZ3 is inside the handgrip, and accessible through a door on the right side of the camera's bottom. The door is sturdy, and requires a firm press and slide to open, but it does not have a latch. We have found that latched doors are more secure and long-lasting. The cameras appear to have tripod sockets, but the cameras we inspected had security devices blocking them.

Components

**Viewfinder
**The LZ5 and LZ3 do not have optical or electronic viewfinders; the LCD is the sole means for composing pictures.

**LCD
**LZ5 - The LZ5's 2.5-inch LCD is large enough, but it's not sharp. We couldn't judge focus on it. According to Panasonic press materials, it has only 87,000 pixels, which is not enough to judge sharpness at the 6 megapixel level.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ5

LZ3 - The LZ3 has a 2-inch, 87,000-pixel LCD, according to Panasonic, which is both small and low-resolution by today’s standards. We found it difficult to judge images on it.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ3

Both LCDs are bright, and show dark scenes well. Panasonic press materials say the displays are brighter than their previous LCDs, so they should do well outdoors and in low light conditions. We found the LCDs too contrasty to accurately judge exposure or color on them, although obviously sufficient for composition. They also had fairly narrow angles of view vertically, an issue that Panasonic addresses creatively: the LZ5 and LZ3 offer a "high angle" view mode, which increases the brightness of the displays, allowing the user to make out the screen display even when holding the cameras overhead.

**Flash
**The flashes on the LZ5 and LZ3 are small, narrow, and set to the upper right of the cameras' lenses. Small flashes cast harsh, ugly shadows that many users will object to. The fact that the flashes are set to one side of the lenses compounds the problem, because the shadows will be cast to the side, rather than just behind the subjects. On the other hand, building the flash into the camera body is a much more durable approach than the flashes that flip up from the tops of competing cameras.

The flash is close to the lens, making it likely that subjects will show "red-eye." The LZ5 and LZ3 use a pre-flash to limit red-eye, which is usually effective, but adds a significant delay between pressing the shutter release and actually taking the picture.

We found that the flashes produced usable results out to about 15 feet in wide angle and 12 feet in telephoto. Those results are better than average for compact cameras. The flash light covered the wide angle view evenly.

The flash on the LZ5 and LZ3 can be set to automatic, forced on, forced off, automatic with red-eye reduction, on with long exposure, and on with long exposure and red-eye reduction. Fortunately, these options cover all the options needed for snapshots, as the cameras do not support external flashes.

Lens
**

**The LZ5 and LZ3 have the Lumix DC Vario 6.1 – 36.6mm zoom, which equates to a 37 – 222mm lens on a 35mm camera, for a slight wide angle to a pretty strong telephoto. It might be tough to squeeze everyone in to a group picture in a small room with the 37mm equivalent, but the 222mm-like end is good enough for recording a Little League game from the sideline. Mechanically, the zoom control was pretty accurate – it didn't zoom further than we wanted.

Panasonic's MEGA O.I.S. image stabilization system works effectively, settling camera shake even in low light. O.I.S. has two modes – a continuous mode stabilizes constantly, to help the user compose the image, and a shot-only mode that works only when the picture is taken. The shot-only mode works better, but sometimes the continuous mode is necessary to frame the picture accurately.

The 6.1—36.6mm zoom on the LZ5 and LZ3 provide consistent sharpness over its zoom range, but we noticed color fringing – a defect which causes discoloration along the edges of objects in the cameras' images. Wide angle shots showed barrel distortion – straight lines bulge out along the edges of the frame – but not enough to be distracting in snapshots.

Design / Layout

**Model Design / Appearance
**The LZ5 and LZ3 look like typical compact cameras. In part, this is because they are relatively plain – aside from the script "L" on the front, there is very little decoration on these cameras. That's good: many of the goofy decorations on consumer cameras look ridiculous, get in the way, or both.

The clean design of the LZ5 and LZ3 won't draw attention or make a statement about the user's style, unless the statement is generally utilitarian.

**Size / Portability
**The LZ5 and LZ3 measure 3.94 x 2.44 x 1.77 inches, according to Panasonic, and they both weigh about 8 ounces, ready for shooting. The size and weight make them convenient to carry and pack. 8 ounces isn't much to carry with a wrist strap.

The LZ5 and LZ3 are not well sealed against dust or moisture, so it would be wise to carry them in their own protective cases. The battery compartment, the external connection jacks, and the media slot are not sturdily sealed with rubber or some sort of lip – their doors could admit all sorts of contaminants into the cameras. The telescoping lens mount is another significant vector by which dust and gunk could enter the cameras.

**Handling Ability
**The LZ5 and LZ3 are pretty comfortable to hold, though the thumb rest could have been angled better. That comfortable grip many not be secure enough, though – we found the surface of the cameras a little slippery, and would have appreciated the rubber surface many cameras add to their grips. The wrist strap is a necessary safety device on these cameras, and the flush-mounted strap holder means that the user can add the strap without making the camera awkward to hold.

The plain design of the LZ5 and LZ3 makes it easy to find a spot for the left hand to help hold them – the tops, bottoms and fronts of the cameras have space. There's a slight risk that an errant finger could cover up the flash, though.

The LZ5 and LZ3's traditional layout will make many operations quite familiar for users with much experience with older digital cameras.

**Control Button / Dial Positioning /Size
**Though the buttons on the LZ5 and LZ3 are smaller than the ones on many other compact cameras, they are placed well and spread far enough apart. We expect that users with large fingers or with poor hand mobility will find the LZ5 and LZ3 as easy to use as other popular compact cameras.

The shutter release’s actuation on the two cameras is, for lack of a better word, mushy – it was hard to tell the difference between pressing enough to activate the display, and actually taking a picture. On the other hand, the 4-way controller and the zoom control are easy to use, compared to other cameras. There was a little sideways wobble in the zoom ring and the shutter release, but only time will tell if it was just the result of handling a pre-production model. However, we would rather see larger, more solid controls, which should survive longer use.

The layout of the camera makes it easy to stay in shooting position, since all the feedback for adjustments come on the LCD, and the controls are pretty natural to hit with the right thumb.

Menus

The LZ5 and LZ3 subdivide menus into three sections: shooting, set-up, and playback. Each section has three screens worth of settings, and the user must scroll through the list to get to setting. We didn't find a way to "jump" to the middle of a section. The shooting and playback menus only appear when the LZ5 and LZ3 are in the respective mode, but set-up is available all the time. There is a tabbed interface to switch quickly between set-up and the other sections.

The menus appear in a large, plain sanserif font which was readable on both cameras. Panasonic does a little color coding: the shooting menu has a red heading, playback has a green one, and set-up is gray.

The shooting menu has standard controls for a compact: White balance, ISO, Aspect ratio, Picture size, Quality, Audio recording, Autofocus mode, Autofocus assist lamp, Slow shutter speed limit, Digital Zoom, Color effects and Picture Adjustment. Slow shutter speed limit is a useful feature. It prevents the LZ5 or LZ3 from automatically setting a shutter speed below a given speed. 1/8 of a second is the default, but it can be set for exposures as long as 1 second. Color effects include black-and-white and sepia, as well as warm-tone and cool-tone. Picture adjustment seems to alter saturation.

The menus mainly appear on a white background, except for White balance, Color effects, and Picture adjustment, which are superimposed over the live view, so the user can see the effect of the adjustment prior to rendering the selection.

Set-up covers typical stuff: battery type, the date and time, LCD brightness, last shot review, beeps, power savings, frame numbering, a reset control, USB mode, video mode, the way scene modes show up (whether the camera defaults to the last scene mode used or displays a menu of all of them), and the language used on the display.

The Playback menu covers Slide show options, choosing Favorite images, image Rotation, direct printing through the DPOF standard, image Protect, Audio Dubbing, Resizing images (to smaller sizes), Trimming (cropping), Copying images to internal memory, and Formatting memory cards.

The menu options on the LZ5 and LZ3 are standard for compact digital cameras – there's nothing tricky for experienced users. The shooting mode menu shows the most important stuff first – white balance, ISO, and image size/quality.

**Ease of Use
**The LZ5 and LZ3 have a simple and straightforward interface. The controls are well placed and easy to find. Other entry level cameras, notably the Kodak EasyShare line, offer more help options, but for users who have a basic understanding of the settings, the interface is fine. There is even a simple mode, which sets everything for the user and even hides all the options.

On the other hand, the LZ5 and LZ3 do not allow much manual control. Users who want to set a particular shutter speed or aperture are out of luck. There is an exposure compensation control which allows 2 stops of adjustment above and below the meter reading. The LZ5 and LZ3 can set custom white balances as well.

The LZ5 and LZ3 can show live histograms while shooting, helping users to attain a proper exposure; however, the histogram is small, and taller than it is wide, making it tough to use. Part of the problem is the low resolution of the LCD displays.

The ergonomics of simple tasks like changing batteries, swapping memory cards, and plugging in cables are all good – there aren't any awkward placements that make it hard to do those quickly.

Modes

**Auto Mode
**The LZ5 and LZ3 offer two auto modes: the Simple mode, which controls everything except the zoom and the shutter release, and the standard shooting mode, which allows setting white balance, ISO, and exposure compensation. The standard mode is basically a Program mode.

The LZ5 and LZ3 choose the best options for ISO and white balance in Simple mode (and when those controls were set to Auto in normal mode). The cameras didn't jump to ISO 400 before it was absolutely required, which is a good thing, considering how image quality dives at that setting due to an abundance of noise. Auto white balance is more problematic. In mixed lighting, white balance did not hit neutral tones, but when it erred, it tended toward a warm balance, which ought to be more flattering for snapshots.

**Movie Mode
**The LZ5 and LZ3 offer identical movie modes. They can both shoot at either 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 resolution, and at 30 frames per second or 10 frames per second. 640 x 480 at 30 fps is comparable to television specs, and should offer smooth motion and good detail. The smaller resolution and slower frame rate options will make for much smaller video clips, and for an enormous loss of quality. The LZ5 and LZ3 can not zoom while shooting video.

The LZ5 and LZ3 can shoot movies with all the color effects available for still shooting. They appear to record sound in mono mode. Our tests in a noisy environment didn't show much about sound quality – the sound was bad, but anything would have sounded that way on a crowded showroom floor.

**Drive / Burst Mode **

The LZ5 and LZ3 offer three burst modes: High, Low and "infinite." High mode shoots quickly, but for a short burst, Low shoots a bit slower, but takes more images, and "infinite" shoots very slowly, but for an indefinite number of frames. As we handled the cameras, the LZ5 gave us 5 high-resolution shots in 4 seconds in High, 8 frames in 8 seconds in Low, and about 10 frames in 14 seconds in "infinite." These figures include delays between pressing the shutter release and the first shots. The LZ3 did a little worse, all told, shooting 3 frames in 3 seconds in High, 5 frames in 5 seconds in Low, and 10 frames in 14 seconds in "infinite." Apparently, the LZ5 has a bigger buffer to handle its larger file size. We used a 128MB SanDisk SD card during our evaluation.

The LZ5 and LZ3 also both have self-timers with delays of 2 and 10 seconds.

**Playback Mode **

The playback mode on the LZ5 and LZ3 offers standard features like thumbnail modes showing 9 or 16 images at a time, and shooting information including exposure, ISO, frame number, and histogram. We didn't see a highlight warning feature.

The slide show option on the LZ5 and LZ3 is bare-bones. It doesn’t offer transitions, for instance. The show will display either all the images in memory, or selected ones, but the selections must be made manually. The playback mode does not sort by date or other criteria. The interval can be set for 1, 2, 3 or 5 seconds, and the show can be looped. There is no option to show movies in the slide show, but the first frame of each movie is shown as a still.

Images can be reduced to any of the cameras' smaller resolutions, and can be cropped to smaller sizes as well. Audio notes can be recorded with images. Images can be deleted one at a time, as a selected group, or all images can be deleted at once. Images can also be copied to the camera's internal memory.

The functions of the playback mode are all compromised by the poor resolution of the LZ5 and LZ3's LCDs. It's hard to judge images on them, and therefore hard to make choices about what to do with them.

**Custom Image Presets **

The LZ5 and LZ3 have 14 custom presets, and nearly all of them are straightforward. The list includes: Portrait, Soft skin, Scenery, Sports, Night Portrait, Night Scenery, Food, Party, Candle, Fireworks, Starry Sky, Snow, Baby 1, Baby 2 and High Sensitivity. Baby 1 and Baby 2 set the camera identically, but they include the option of showing a baby's age or birthdate. With two baby settings, proud parents can save the birthdays of two children. Larger families will need more cameras. Starry night allows exposures of up to 1 minute, while Fireworks sets exposure time at a few seconds. High Sensitivity boosts ISO to 800 or 1600, with a huge image quality hit.

The custom presets offer a help system – the cameras provide text descriptions of each preset. The cameras can be set to revert to the last preset selected when the mode dial is switched to Scene 1 or Scene 2, or to bring up the preset selection menu every time.

Control Options

**Manual Control Options
**The LZ5 and LZ3 do not offer direct manual control of exposure. There is an exposure compensation control, but it's not possible to bias for higher or lower shutter speed, or larger or smaller aperture. The user can set ISO throughout the normal range of 80, 100, 200, and 400. Though there are only a few white balance presets, the LZ5 and LZ3 offer custom white balance, which is the most useful option in difficult lighting.

**Focus
***Auto*

The autofocus system on the LZ5 and LZ3 operates continuously. It's quick, and it finds focus pretty easily in low light and low contrast settings. The cameras are less able to track focus, particularly in low light. They offer several focusing area patterns. There is a 5-point mode that looks for focus in the central half of the view, checking in 5 areas. There is also a 3-point mode, a high-speed 1-point mode, a regular 1-point mode, and a spot mode, which measures a narrow area at the center of the frame. We don't have good information from Panasonic about exactly what the patterns are supposed to do. We also didn't notice much faster performance with the high speed mode. Further testing in a variety of settings might show more differences between the modes. Be sure to check back when we publish our full review for a more elaborate evaluation.

*Manual Focus *

The LZ5 and LZ3 do not appear to offer manual focus.

**Metering
**Panasonic calls the LZ5 and LZ3's metering "Intelligent Multiple," which seems to mean that it's an evaluative system that takes several separate readings across the field of view, and compares them to establish the optimum overall exposure. Such systems are the best option for highly automated cameras like the LZ5 and LZ3. We found that the system got fooled in difficult situations, like backlighting, very dark, and very bright backgrounds. Its performance in backlighting yielded usable results, though not ideal ones.

**Exposure **

The LZ5 and LZ3 offer exposure compensation in 1/3-EV steps from 2 EV below the metered exposure to 2 EV above. The cameras do not offer manual exposure, aperture priority, or shutter priority. They do offer exposure bracketing, with the same range of adjustment as the exposure compensation control.

**White Balance
**The LZ5 and LZ3 have only three white balance presets: Daylight, Cloudy, and Halogen. Many compact cameras offer as many as seven presets. Most users will rely on the auto setting, which we found did better than the presets. The best results require creating a custom white balance, which is a simple thing to do, though the user will have to readjust with changes in lighting.

**ISO **

The LZ5 and LZ3 offer manual ISO settings of 80, 100, 200, and 400. In the high-sensitivity scene mode the camera turns ISO up to 800 and 1600, but the user can't directly set those. Most users will probably leave the ISO setting in Automatic. The auto mode keeps the ISO as low as possible, which is the best option for the seemingly noise-plagued LZ5 and LZ3.

ISO is set through the shooting menu, and the ISO is shown on the LCD in shooting mode.

**Shutter Speed
**The LZ5 and LZ3 set shutter speeds from 1 second through 1/2000 in regular modes. Fireworks scene mode sets a fixed exposure that seems to be about 3 seconds, and Starry Sky scene mode offers 15-, 30- and 60-second exposures. The cameras can also be set to lock out speeds under 1/8 second, 1/4, or 1/2 second. It looks as though the LZ5 and LZ3 set shutter speeds in 1/3 stop increments.

**Aperture
**The lens on the LZ5 and LZ3 has a maximum aperture of f/2.8 at wide angle, shrinking to f/4.5 at telephoto. The minimum aperture seems to run proportionally, at two stops smaller than the maximum, so at the wide setting, the lens can shut down to f/5.6, and at telephoto the smallest setting is f/9. Since there is no option to set the aperture, it's not clear what increments the LZ5 and LZ3 use, but it looks to be about 1/3 of a stop.

Image Parameters

**Picture Quality / Size options
**The LZ3 offers the following image sizes: 2560 x 1920, 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, and 640 x 480. It can also shoot in different formats: 3:2 ratio – 2560 x 1712 and 2048 x 1360 – and 16:9 – 2560 x 1440 and 1920 x 1080.

The LZ5 offers the following image sizes: 2816 x 2112, 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960 and 640 x 480. It also offers different formats: 3:2 – 2816 x 1880 and 2048 x 1360 – and 16:9 – 2816 x 1584 and 1920 x 1080.

Both the LZ5 and LZ3 offer Fine and Standard quality JPEGs. We notice a significant quality improvement at Fine.

**Picture Effects Mode **

The LZ5 and LZ3 offer two sets of options for color adjustment. The subtle ones are under the "Picture Adjust" menu item, where the user can choose from Natural, Standard, and Vivid, which progressively increase saturation. The bolder ones are called "Color Effects" in the menu, and they include black-and-white, sepia, cool tone, and warm tone. All these effects work in movie mode as well as on stills.

Connectivity / Extras

**Connectivity / Extras **
*Software
*The LZ5 and LZ3 ship with Arcsoft PhotoBase and PhotoImpression, software which allow the user to download images to a computer, sort, and print them. We did not have the opportunity to test out the software but will offer a more complete look when we conduct our full review.

*Jacks, Ports, Plugs *

The LZ5 and LZ3 feature USB 2.0 connectivity for connecting to either computers or compatible printers. The same jack also functions as an analog A/V port, for showing images and movies on a television. The cameras also accept an optional external power supply, which would save batteries during printing, downloading, and showing images on TV.

*Direct Print Options
*The LZ5 and LZ3 offer PictBridge and DPOF direct printing, implementing the basic options of choosing images to print and the number of copies of each to make. Making a print order is easy and straightforward.
*

• *Batteries
  *The LZ5 and LZ3 each take 2 AA batteries. Panasonic predicts a life of 235 shots for the LZ5 and 250 shots for the LZ3, with the company's own Oxyride batteries. There's a set up option to indicate to the camera whether the camera has Panasonic's batteries installed (hmm…makes you wonder..).
  

*Memory
*Both the LZ5 and LZ3 accept SD cards, the standard format for compact cameras. SD cards are widely available, cheaper than other formats, and pretty durable. The cameras also have built-in memory. The specs we've seen say they both have 14MB of internal storage.

**Other Features
***Economy Mode - *The LZ5 and LZ3 feature an Economy Mode, apparently to extend battery life. Panasonic was not able to provide information on how this worked, and we’re afraid to speculate on this one.

High Angle - The High Angle view mode for the LCDs on the LZ5 and LZ3 improves the LCD image when viewed from a low angle. It makes it easier to shoot overhead shots.

Overall Impressions

**Initial Performance Observations
***Speed/Timing
*The LZ5 and LZ3 take a couple of seconds to start up. That's not very long, but enough to miss good candids. Users should turn these new Panasonics on before they have the impulse to shoot. Burst modes were better than we were led to expect by Panasonic's press materials – on the LZ5, we got a 5-frame burst over 4 seconds in High burst mode, and an 8-frame burst in 8 seconds in Low burst mode. Both figures include an initial delay in which the camera focused. The LZ3 got off 5 shots in 3 seconds in High, and 5 frames in 5 seconds in Low. Both shot at something around 1 frame per second in "infinite" mode, which allows very long, slow bursts.

Shutter delay varied with subjects, the amount of light, and the amount of movement in the frame – focus increased the delay. We did not notice a difference between the LZ5 and LZ3. Their shutter delay is typical of compact cameras, and the LZ5 and LZ3 have enough such that users will need to anticipate the action a little, and press the shutter before the moment they're trying to catch.

*Noise *

Any digital camera shows increasing noise as its ISO increases. We found the LZ5 and LZ3's noise levels at 400 very high, at a level that many users would find distracting even in casual snapshots. The cameras fare much better at ISO 80 and 100. Even at 80, neither camera produces pristine images and they are worse than average across their range. Still, we expect that many casual users will be satisfied with the results at 80, 100 and 200 ISO.

The LZ5 and LZ3 offer a low-light scene mode which boosts ISO to 800 or 1600. The noise levels at 1600 are significantly worse than at 400, yielding blotches of color in both highlights and shadows. The low light mode is unfortunately useful only as a special effect.

Both the LZ5 and LZ3 are tuned to produce punchy, rather than accurate color. Reds look unnaturally bright and saturated – so bright that some red subjects lose detail, by becoming pure red blobs. Green looks much less saturated, going dark. In general, the LZ5 and LZ3 are tuned to give people a rosy glow. The colors that people don't want in skin, greens and blues, tend to suffer.

The heavy noise reduction on both cameras really cuts into image sharpness at ISO 200 and 400, and of course in the low light mode. Even at ISO 80 and 100, it appeared as though the limiting factor on sharpness is noise reduction. In fact, all the images from the LZ5 and LZ3 show odd, pebble-textured effects of noise suppression, and the look is increasingly pronounced as the ISO rating increases. It sort of defeats the purpose. Many 5 and 6 megapixel compact cameras are much sharper than the LZ5 and LZ3, and the shortcomings of these two cameras should be apparent in 5 x 7-inch prints.

**Value **

Getting an image-stabilized 6x zoom in a 6 megapixel compact camera for under $280 seems like quite a coup – or getting that for under $230 in a 5 megapixel camera. We like the LZ5 and LZ3's simple interface, the solid construction and the plain styling. Panasonic's image stabilization is great – it's effective and simple to use. We give the company credit for putting it on low-priced cameras, too.

Unfortunately, image quality doesn't keep up with the cameras' other attributes. Both noise and noise suppression take a toll on image quality. The cameras bump up warm colors, which will probably please snapshooters, but the results look inaccurate to us.

**Who It’s For **
Point-and-Shooters - The LZ5 and LZ3 should appeal to casual users – the interface is simple and easy to use, and people will look rosy-cheeked and healthy in their pictures.

Budget Consumers - The LZ5 and LZ3 are both pretty cheap for optically-stabilized cameras with 6x zooms. Budget buyers who are happy with the image quality might enjoy the LZ3.

*Gadget Freaks - *The LZ5 and LZ3 are not very close to the cutting edge. Gadget lovers might want to look at the higher-end Panasonics, if image stabilization is high on their list.

*Manual Control Freaks - *The LZ5 and LZ3 lack basic manual controls.

*Pros/Serious Hobbyists - *The LZ5 and LZ3 lack both the controls and image quality this segment is after.

Conclusion

**Conclusion
**While we were evaluating preproduction models, initial impressions on image quality drag down the LZ5 and LZ3. We know there are users who aren't very sensitive to image quality, who won't mind the noise and boosted colors, and we expect they'll like the LZ5 and LZ3's interface, size, price, and image stabilization. For snapshooters primarily in search of additional insurance against blurred images, most of Panasonic’s optically stabilized cameras will suffice; however, those users printing their images at 8 x 10 or even 5 x 7, we recommend looking for cameras with cleaner images.