Good to slightly slow speed for a consumer camera.

The Panasonic LZ5's performance ranges from good to the slow side of average, depending on what you're trying to do. It starts up a little slowly, and has a shutter response on the slow side of average at both wide angle and telephoto. On the other hand though, if you "prefocus" the camera by half-pressing and holding down the shutter button before the final exposure, it's blazingly fast, with a shutter delay of only 0.012 second, among the fastest on the market. Shot to shot cycle times are average, at about 1.98 seconds for large/fine JPEGs, regardless of how many shots you take. (That is, there's no slow-down after a few shots, once the buffer memory fills.) The LZ5 does have an annoying characteristic shared with a number of other cameras on the market, namely that it "penalizes" you for pressing the shutter button too quickly after having just snapped a shot. If you press the shutter button again while the camera is still processing the previous image, it will just sit there until you release and re-press the shutter again. The (much) preferred response would be for the camera to simply snap another shot as soon as it's able, rather than making the operator release and try again.

Continuous-mode speed is good in High mode, at about 2.85 frames/second, for up to six shots in succession. The flash takes about 7.1 seconds to recharge after a full-power shot, slightly slower than average. Connected to a computer, download speeds are fast enough that you probably won't feel a need for a separate card reader, but nonetheless are slower than the fastest cameras currently on the market. Bottom line, while not a first choice for sports or other fast-paced action, the DMC-LZ5 is responsive enough to handle most other amateur shooting situations.

Battery
Very good battery life.

The Panasonic DMC-LZ5 uses two AA batteries for power, and disposable Oxyride batteries are included with the camera. The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on either a fresh set of disposable batteries or a fully-charged rechargeable battery as appropriate), based on CIPA standard battery-life test conditions.

The battery-life rating with rechargeable NiMH cells is quite good. Plan on buying a couple of sets of high-capacity NiMH batteries and a good charger right along with the camera, they'll pay for themselves many times over, over the life of the camera.

Storage
No card is included with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ5, although it accepts SD/MMC cards; 14.5MB RAM is built into the camera.

We strongly recommend buying at least a 128MB card, preferably a 256MB one, to give yourself enough space for extended outings.