Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A couple of things about me, and what I needed in a camera. First of all, while I have some basic understandings of how these kinds of cameras work, I am not a professional techie guy, and I usually have to look up every spec I read and usually end up not getting it entirely. I did do a lot of research, but the Camera Spec Snobs in some of the review sites just go to an extreme that will never, ever matter to me. Second, this camera was a replacement for my old bridge camera, a Sony DSC H-5 (12X optical, 7.2 megapixel). That camera served me well over the past 6 years, after thousands upon thousands of images. I bring this up because there have been a mountain of improvements on all technological fronts since then, which has resulted in an entirely and spectacularly different photographic experience I am having with this new camera after only a few days, and may explain my giddy five star love-fest I am having with this thing! I use my camera for everything from artistic photos to nature photography to family events, so I want a camera that shoots great, better than average pictures in a variety of circumstances over a specialized camera that takes outstanding pictures in limited circumstances. Unlike many other reviewers (but most probably like the majority of shoppers), I do not own several high end cameras and am therefore not going to be comparing this one to my other high end camera that I bought last year. So, in my comparison, all I can say is if you have an older bridge camera that seems to be losing a bit of steam and you are looking to replace it, look no further. You don't have to spend hours fretting over this spec and that, when you get this camera and take a few pictures you will feel like you did as a kid when you replaced that brownie camera with your first 35mm! The improvements made over that past half decade make the experience like night and day! Every problem that I had with my old one is gone (or at least vastly improved) with this new one. That purply fringe line you sometimes got on the edges of your subject, or that white glare that seemed almost neon in brightness on a sunny day? Gone. That problem with focusing on a fast moving object? Gone. The blurry images from moving objects in anything but bright sunlight? Vastly improved. The issue of losing all definition of dark areas if anything was remotely back-lit? There is a setting called HDR on this camera that makes it possible to take those pictures you just didn't even bother trying before. That problem with taking indoor shots without flash where the quality was so low you never shared the pictures with anyone? Oh my God, what a difference. Like my old camera, this one has a fully automatic setting, settings that allow you to over-ride some of the auto settings and others to completely over-ride the auto settings. It also has a large variety of other specialized settings, like "pet" or "portrait" that adjusts things for certain scenarios. In the cases of "landscape", "hdr", and "background de-focus", the camera's auto setting seems to do this for you. The macro setting is also automatic, coming on when your lens gets close enough. Over time, I will learn all these new settings, because I know that sometimes, the auto setting will misread the situation and I will want to be able to adjust. However, I am really impressed with this cameras ability to auto adjust well. The quality of my pictures are stunning. If I crop in to a ridiculous, unreal point and compare it to a picture taken by a $2000.00 DSLR, would I notice a difference in crispness? Probably, but I will leave that debate to the spec snobs. While they are busy fretting over such things, I will be in the mountains taking awesome pictures of my grandkids in the snow, and enjoying my camera. Color, composition, saturation, detail, contrast, etc. are all outstanding with this camera. Details that my older camera could not pick up just stand out like crazy with this one. The camera is not magic, my black lab running in the white snow on a back-lit landscape still comes out as just a pure black shadow, but in less extreme situations, this camera is doing an awesome job. And that crazy, insane 50X lens! First off, on the wide end, 24mm is much wider than my old 36mm and the difference is phenomenal. But when you go off the other end, I just cannot describe what happens. I have pictures of a building on a hill where you can see people on a deck, then you zoom out and that building is just the tiniest spec on your picture. I love birds, and am really looking forward to taking this out and getting details I never could before. Played a bit with the video, and frankly I have a lot of homework to do on it. One thing I did notice though, is that the anti-shake technology on this camera made some of my video shots look like a pro took them with a tripod. Bottom line, this camera is awesome. I have three situations where I took a picture and was stunned by the results. 1. A pigeon flew quickly over my head in a blue sky. The camera was on auto. I whipped around, got the bird in the frame, zoomed in a bit, and held the button half-way down to focus. The auto focus caught the bird quickly, and then the bird was instantly tracked by the auto focus. I took the picture, and the bird had no movement or blur in the photo. This was all done in under a couple seconds. 2. At around 5 pm, with the sun setting behind it, I took a picture of a mountain during a trip in the Cascades. The mountain had some snow, and some dark patches where there were trees and/or rocks. This photo would have been impossible in the past. Camera was on auto, and it immediately went into the "HDR" setting. (Read about this if you do not know what it is, I recommend making it a "need" spec to shop for.) The photo showed all the detail of the mountain instead of my usual too dark mountain that I would have got in the past. 3. I tested the camera in low light indoor settings, against my old camera. WOW! Where my old camera could only take an almost black dark shadow picture, this one picked everything up. I am talking at a light level far below what you would see in a family gathering, and I can hardly WAIT for the next time our family gets together! Did I mention that awesome, sick, crazy zoom? I love this camera!