New Panasonic Water/shockproof cam w/ HD video

Rick,

Thanks for the head up; I've owned 3 Panasonic cameras now and have loved them all. Great to see them enter the waterproof market. I'm now torn between this camera and their other big announcement today: the ZS3 (TZ7), with a 25-300mm lens, HD video, and stereo audio recording, billing itself as the first 'true hybrid' camera/camcorder.

At least I had hope for a few seconds that there might be a good waterproof camera that used AA batteries. Doesn't say anything about USB charging either. All I want is a standard of some nature so I don't have to carry around a bunch of charging crap.

Hi Rick

Interesting.
No manual mode as far as I could see?

Cheers

Hi Roger,

As far as I can glean from the specs, there's no manual focus, no A mode, no S mode and no M mode. There is exposure compensation and autobracketing (buried how far within the menu?), manual ISO, manual color balance adjustment and a raft of focus modes.

Definitely not a photographic surgical kit, but depending on how Panny's done with image quality and responsiveness it might be worth a look among the camera-bashing set. IMHO Panny has done more things right with their compact cameras recently than any other large company.