The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 is a very good ultra zoom camera, just like its predecessor. Some of the changes were welcome: a higher resolution CCD, larger LCD, and much faster focusing. Some things got a bit worse: the lens is now slower. And some things didn’t change: composing photos in low light is frustrating. But if you don’t want to carry around the monster that is the DMC-FZ20, this is a great choice. The FZ5 takes very sharp (maybe too much so) 5 Megapixel photos with nice color and no purple fringing. The lens on this camera, while not as nice as the one on the FZ20, is still way better than average: F2.8-3.3, 12X zoom.