Impress Watch, a Japanese technology site, has shared a number of full-resolution ISO 100 samples from a pre-production FZ18. Their preview can be found here. With the exception of the three shots taken through a ton of atmospheric haze, the samples show excellent "per pixel detail" throughout the entire zoom range. In my opinion, a very impressive job by the lens considering the pixel pitch. The downsides to this camera are predictable (poor high ISO performance, poor dynamic range), but its good to see early indications that this camera will otherwise deliver the goods.

Direct links to full-resolution image samples:
4.6mm (full wide, 28mm equivalent) f/4
19.7mm f/7.1
31.3mm f/3.6
65.3mm f/3.6
82.8mm (full tele, 504mm equivalent) f/4, Sample 1
82.8mm f/4, Sample 2
82.8mm f/4, Sample 3

I'm really looking forward to this little camera.

My two-year-old son Philip took this photo of his four-year-old brother Oliver today:



Every time I take photos, my boys want to do so as well. As you might imagine, it makes me nervous to see Oliver holding my Canon 5D; and Philip, you can forget about it! After reading the reviews, I finally got around to buying each of them a Fisher Price Kid-Tough Camera. These have been recently updated, such that the awful LCD is slightly larger and the awful quality images can be larger than 640 x 480 using interpolation. The boys absolutely love the cameras. They are easy to use, easy to hold, seem rugged, have a very nice viewfinder (considering), work with PC or Mac, accept an SD card (512MB card holds a couple thousand images at the standard 640x480 size), and did I mention the boys love them?

Here are some samples of what my budding young photographers did the first day they got a camera to call their own:

Philip's first slideshow.
Oliver's first slideshow.

If you decide to buy the the KidTough camera and this user review has helped you, you can help me by purchasing from Amazon after going there via the links below (one for the pink version, the other for blue).



Visiting the Amazon page using that link doesn't change your price but makes it so that Amazon shares a bit of the profits with me. I can honestly recommend Amazon for photography gear. In addition to competitive prices, they have great customer service and one of the best return policies around (though if the item is being sold on Amazon by a third paty seller, then the return policy of that seller would apply).