Although I've only had the camera for 2 weeks, I've taken nearly 200 pictures with it and have been thrilled with its performance. I first purchased the Kodak p880 but returned it because I couldn't handle how incredibly long the shutter lag is! I take a lot of candid pictures of my kids and large groups, so I need a camera that is fast on, fast zoom and fast focus, or the picture is gone. The fz30 takes very little time to turn on (the lens is already extended). The manual zoom (12x optical!!) allows me to zoom in very quickly and the focus time is incredible. One morning my daughter crawled a good 25 feet away from me to a corner of our basement where the lights were not yet on. I used all 12x of the zoom to get an up close shot of her, took the picture and was amazed. I couldn't see her as well the picture turned out. Yes, there was some noise (the iso was 400), but unless I print out an 8x10 it does not detract from the picture and I can't imagine a lot of situations when the lighting will be that poor and the subject that far away. I print quite a few large photos (8x10 and up) and have found the noise that I kept reading about on the fz30 to be a non issue. The image stabilization feature works incredibly well. The above mentioned picture of my daughter is not the least but fuzzy. The manual controls are fantastic, and stay set even when you turn the camera off. I had read that battery life was an issue for the fz30, so I purchased an extra one, but I haven't needed to use it yet. I routinely use the LCD, I've done a lot of fiddling with the camera on top of all the pictures and the camera is still showing two power bars. Overall, this is a fantastic camera that I don't think can be beat for the speed, quality and price (not to mention the convenience of not having to carry around extra lenses)!