Excellent all-purpose camera!

The Panasonic DMC-FZ18k is an excellent camera. It's the first digital camera I've purchased that does nearly everything I want a camera to do. I love the 18x optical zoom, since I do a lot of sport photos for our school. That telephoto and the anti-shake mechanism combine for some of the best football photos I've ever taken. The camera is fairly easy to use with its standard settings, If you lower your magapixels from 8 to 3, your zoom goes up to 28x optical, which really brings in the action from across the football field, In a gymnasium situation, where the lighting is problematical, boosting the ISO to 1600 gives excellent basketball photos with nice "stop action". The camera has all the controls that a professional would want, making it a great backup camera for a pro. The only thing it lacks is a flash "hot shoe" attachment. The internal flash is adequate for most situations, but in situations like photographing in a dark room tends to overexpose the subject, if one is too close, say within 6 feet or so. I have used the camera extensively for scenic shots, sports activities, school activities and grand kids portraits and have been very pleased with the results. Color balance is good, I notice very little noise even at ISO 1600 (the camera can go up to ISO 6400, though I haven't tried that yet) and the camera is quick, with very little shutter lag. This is an all together outstanding camera.