The Panasonic Lumix is a decent camera for the price. I bought it mostly to take pictures at my kids games. The worst thing about digital cameras is the shutter lag when taking action shots and this one is better than most I've seen in this price range and it also has a burst feature which is nice for taking those shots in a fast moving game. It's not perfect by any means but it is much better than my last camera (Fuji Finepix - older model) The zoom is OK and it has lots of features. It takes decent video,but there is no sound. The battery life isn't too bad as far as cameras go.