The Panasonic FZ7 succeeds it lower-resolution sibling, the FZ5, with improvements in most aspects but diminished image quality. Indeed, the FZ7 shows higher levels of noise at all ISO settings. This high noise is easily noticeable in large print sizes as smeared detail. At ISO 800 and 1600, images come out so soft and devoid of details that they would be useless for any print sizes. Of course, most such cameras don't have high-ISO settings at all, so these settings should simply be ignored [Note that we did not attribute this camera with our High-ISO icon.]. Otherwise, the FZ7 performs well with its stabilized 12X optical zoom lens and good speed of operation. Had Panasonic put a better sensor in it, the FZ7 would have been a superb camera.

For print sizes up to 5"x7", where noise levels would not be very noticeable, the Panasonic FZ7 is actually a fairly good camera. For larger prints, a mid-level ultra-zoom camera to consider instead of this one would be the Fuji Finepix S5200 which unfortunately lacks stabilization. The Canon Powershot S2 IS is also a good alternative to the FZ7.