After having a Sony, Nikon low end(digital) cameras, I was searching all the web to find out a new good high end camera(-with a higher pixel and HD capability for video) but a compact type. Based on the good reviews of Panasonic Lumix DMC - ZR3 I decided to go in for that. However, the dealer was having only Lumix DMC - ZR1 and it was on a 25% discount from the tag price. I went back to web reviews and found this is also a good one and having 12Mega pixel, 8x optical zoom, 2.7inch TFT and HD recording and took it. The only difference from ZR3 was the lack of movie light feature. (The quality of camera reviews are excellent in https://photographyblog.com. It has full details on the cameras including the latest ones).
After using it for a couple of weeks, I was not much impressed since it had the following negatives:
Though the quality of video was very good in HD, there was a hissing wind noise if taken on a open area.
Audio was not Stereo when taken indoors.(which you would expect in a high end camera like this)
The zoom had a lot of digital noise!
The image was horrible at the zoom shots and the idea of having a high zoom is really useless.
The positive points are the image clarity at normal picture(NO zoom) and with better lighting. (But the problem is, in real life you do not get better lighting and closeness – we are not taking pictures in a studio).
Another positive point was the image editing software(photo fun studio & arcsoft) that came free with the camera which are good. There are movies that can be created with the photo images – but the draw- back is that they can be viewed only in the computer which has this software.( I am still to explore the further possibilities in this software).
Yet another positive point is the document snap facility. Takes a good snap of documents and can be used as a option against scanning.
There are also other manual settings available but one may not find time and energy to experiment all of them and arrive at a better setting?(Though I tried some of them suggested in other websites and found no much improvement)
The conclusion is that though the camera looks and feel good at normal shots, it is not good on zooms for both still as well as(HD) movies . However, the clarity of the movie when taken without zoom is very nice on the PC screen.(But that is even good in my earlier compact cameras though not HD). Not to spend that much money for a small improvement in clarity. May be I may need a DSLR to improve the picture quality - my new search for a DSLR is ON now.