Fuji F300EXR 12.0 Megapixel Extended Zoom Reviews Roundup

Worst camera we've ever owned, D. Swenson "djs"
I typically have been loyal to Canon cameras, but a friend who owns a camera store talked my husband into this camera. It's been the worst camera we've ever had. It's not user friendly and the photos are almost always blurry. Worse than a phone camera. You couldn't blow up any of these pictures at all. I end up deleting more than I keep. I would never buy another fuji. I will return to Canon.

Great for it's size, Business owner
Takes good pictures and easy to carry around when you want a smaller camera. Pictures are pretty good quality too

Great little camera, musicmt
We bought this a gift for our son (after doing extensive research) for part of his college graduation gift. He then drove cross-country and captured the trip in pictures. He loves the camera because it is compact and takes great pics.

BE careful., A. Tay "Private Tay"
I know this camera is discontinued
But the current versions are mainly vamped-up versions - with GPS, longer zoom, touch screen
GOT this camera for an overseas trip
Like all cameras, this one was built to perform under certain conditions
For the best shots, you need to be outdoors
At 24mm, it's f3.5
At the 360mm setting, it's f5.3 - not that bad, since an average 300mm tele is f4
Watch out because:
a. even though the camera offers Aperture Priority and Manual, it offers limited f stops
So at 24mm, it's f3.5, f7.1 and f11
At 360mm, it's 5.3, 11 and 16
Kind of disappointing if you like a bit more control
Amazing how camera makers always try this trick
Some other camera maker offers just 2 f-stops
b. I was taking pictures of a cat and the f-stop went from f3.5 to 7.1
Guess the aperture setting 'ring' is loose
So the shutter speed dropped a lot
Result? Blur shots
c. the flash raises each time you power up the camera
Irritating in a way and worse, I think it lowers battery life
Plus side:
The PASM ring is well built
Even though this camera is more than 2 years old, I prefer the design to the newer Lumix Tz25
With the Fuji 300EXR,
a. I don't need to switch between viewing and shooting
(I suspect most people turn off the camera after viewing what they've shot)
Most people won't slide the lever from 'preview' to 'shoot'
So if you need to get a quick shot, chances are, you'll miss it
Because the camera was at preview and won't shoot
Gets worse if you're the impatient sort like me
I immediately zoom up when I turn the camera on
And if it's in preview mode, it just means I've enlarged the picture I shot earlier
There seems to be a lapse when I switch from preview to shoot
Common problems:
a. When the makers increase the zoom, from say 15x to 24x, chances are, the maximum aperture at the widest setting also decreases, from around f3.0 to f3.5
b. GPS shortens battery life
c. Touch screen doesn't work - that's just me
Try to see how responsive it is with gloved fingers, greasy screen and wet surfaces

camera, artist
excellent service the new product in it's original package was sent in two days with an added bonus of a new camera case.This camera is small enough to fit in a pocket yet can zoom in 15 x without extra lens. Ideal for travel.

Good outdoors, horrible indoors, ManangK
I used to have a finepix f10 (and a much older before that which I used for 5 years and only replaced because it was old; was still working great and very sturdy). I used it a lot for taking photos for my food blog. It was great on close up with no flash. So after 2 years of using it (still working great and sturdy despite being subjected to flour and oil) I thought I'd "upgrade" to this one. Was I in for a major disappointment. None of the indoor photos were clear. All were blurry if I suppress the flash. If I use the flash, the subject or anything white is white...the darker subjects are dark...nothing is clear...I used different setting (EXR, Adv., etc.) but i have to say I am limited in my knowledge on cameras (just a p&s type). Can't even use it on any family parties. Even the video (which I was hoping to use also to make yt vlog on cooking/baking) Outdoor pics were beautiful, though...but even my old cam does that. Since I blog regularly and have to use the camera almost daily, I just grabbed back my trusted old finepix f10 for any indoor photo and never changed its setting except for flash/no-flash and macro. I use this f300exr on family parties by the pool, or garden photos. I use another watertight/freezeproof/weatherproof fujifilm for underwater/beach type of family activity since it is also useless for indoor shots (I am a loyalist because of my experience with my first two finepix).
I don't think I would trust any exr again. If anyone has another brand to recommend for my purpose, I would greatly appreciate it.

unclear pics, kater13
All of my pictures turned out very unclear and sorta blurry. I was very disappointed. I tried all different modes, and they all turned out cloudy. I suppose I could have been using it wrong, but regardless the pictures were very low quality.

Battery life, G. mcpeak
Maybe I am doing something wrong but my battery gives up after only 6 hours and four or five pictures if the GPS tracking system is not manually turned off, at least that is why I think the battery has such a short life. apparently the GPS does not shut off when the camera is turned off.
Took forever to figure out how to format and since it is one of the steps you must do to get the camera to work I wonder why they made it so hard to find?
Camera maybe getting too small and as a consequence it is getting harder to operate than some of the older larger digital cameras.
In my opinion the older larger digital cameras had a better feel to them.

Excellent choice, Guy
I did a lot research on this class of camera.
This is by far the best choice for: battery life , ease of use, and picture quality.
Buy a Sandisk 16 Mg ultra memory card, (the camera does not come with one) and you will have enough speed and memory for any outing or vacation.

Image stabilization doesn't work like that... and other issues., Robert S. Tobias
Bottom line: This camera was a great value when it was release and is still a good value today. If you should find it on sale then it's probably back to being great. Otherwise you might be able to get more camera for your money with a different camera.
This used to be a state of the art camera. However, that was then and this is now. Many of its great features are still great and available in less expensive, even more fully featured cameras.
Not to get too technical but here's an example of how advertising is used to compensate for a feature that isn't so great: The listing, provided by Fuji, claims to be able to compensate for handshake *and* subject movement. That's just not true, for this camera or any other. The *only* ways to compensate for subject movement are to have the subjects hold real still or use a fast shutter. If you want to use a fast shutter and there's not a lot of light then you need to use a higher ISO. If you want to use a higher ISO then the images will be nosier (back in the film days that was called grainier). Cameras can, with better sensors, provide images with reduced noise in low light. Unfortunately, this camera is not one of those which may explain the attempt to describe how the image stabilization system can somehow resolve limitations with the sensor.
Finally, battery life isn't that great. With any digital camera it's a good idea to have a spare, charged, battery with you and that is especially true with this camera.

Great Camera!, Deb
Purchased this camera through Murphy's Camera Shop and was very impressed with how quickly it arrived. They even sent the $50.00 rebate form. I sent the form in and received my check in a week..wow! Now for the camera..I purchased for a wedding gift for my son and his new wife. They had been to a camera shop and picked this camera out. They took it on their honeymoon to Colorado and said they love, love, love the camera. We watched the slideshow of all of their pictures, and the shots were amazing! They did not have anything negative to say about the camera. I tried the camera out before I gave it to them to make sure it was working for the honeymoon. The only small issue I had was with the location of the flash. It is in a spot where I normally have my hand, but I think it is something you can get used to. It is also a lot quicker than my digital camera. You do not have to wait between pictures. I would recommend this camera to anyone.

Great Camera!, Deb
Purchased this camera through Murphy's Camera Shop and was very impressed with how quickly it arrived. They even sent the $50.00 rebate form. I sent the form in and received my check in a week..wow! Now for the camera..I purchased for a wedding gift for my son and his new wife. They had been to a camera shop and picked this camera out. They took it on their honeymoon to Colorado and said they love, love, love the camera. We watched the slideshow of all of their pictures, and the shots were amazing! They did not have anything negative to say about the camera. I tried the camera out before I gave it to them to make sure it was working for the honeymoon. The only small issue I had was with the location of the flash. It is in a spot where I normally have my hand, but I think it is something you can get used to. It is also a lot quicker than my digital camera. You do not have to wait between pictures. I would recommend this camera to anyone.

Good idea in a non-ergonomic body, Teapot Tales
Overall, this camera has great specs, but before you start using it, you have no idea how uncomfortable this little camera can be. First of all, it lacks any good grip curves and it is slippery (meanwhile, it is rather heavy for its size). Secondly, they designed this pop-up flash that is completely automatic and you cannot make it not to pop up every time you power camera up. And the spot where the flash pops up is where you really want to keep your left hand index finger.
Even after you update this camera's firmware, the device still goes through batteries like crazy. One day of intermittent shooting could mean up to THREE battery changes.
The video shooting mode has some atrocious auto-focus problems. The camera cannot keep up with any moving objects, so they keep being shot out of focus.
Also, the wide-angle mode (no zoom) causes some pretty bad fish-eye like results, so if you have to shoot a portrait, you need to step back a little (if you can) and use a bit of zoom - like 2-3x.
On the bright side, this camera has wonderful sensor mode settings, great low-light performance, it is rather fast and has tons of zoom power. While its small size can be a bit of disadvantage, but it does not change the fact that the camera is very portable and hardly takes up any space. It feels heavy and reasonably well-built.

Fujifilm FinePix, LindaK
Tiny little camera with amazing results. Bought this for my husband, but now I want it. Haven't learned how to use all the features yet, but point-and-click is excellent. So is video. It's so much easier to slip this little camera in your pocket when you're on a trip. It gives even better results than my regular camera.

Fujifilm FinePix, LindaK
Tiny little camera with amazing results. Bought this for my husband, but now I want it. Haven't learned how to use all the features yet, but point-and-click is excellent. So is video. It's so much easier to slip this little camera in your pocket when you're on a trip. It gives even better results than my regular camera.

fufi F300exr, cad
This is a real nice camera and takes a great picture. The zoom is great and the automatic functions work well.

fufi F300exr, cad
This is a real nice camera and takes a great picture. The zoom is great and the automatic functions work well.

Dueling pocket super zooms: DMC-ZS7 versus Fuji F300EXR, R. Guilmette "ronbaby"
(Note: I just now posted the following detailed comparison/review of the Fuji F300EXR and the Lumix (Panasonic) DMC-ZS7 over in the customer review section for the Lumix DMC-ZS7. I am reposting that here also, in its entirety, because it contains quite a lot of info in the F300EXR too, and thus may also be of some interest to folks looking at the F300EXR.)
-=-=-=-
Hummm... where to begin. I'm a very experienced amateur photographer. My dad and I used to develop and print our own color film & prints in our basement darkroom, back 40 years ago when essentially zero amateurs even attempted this. I even worked for a short while (and got paid) as a photographer. (But that also was a long time ago.) Still, I know my way around a camera.
I've owned several different film cameras in my life, but sold off the last one a few years ago because I could see the handwriting on the wall. My first digital was an Olympus C-5000, which was nice, but only 5mp. It had a couple of special features that I really miss. I'll come back to those. After that I got myself an Olympus SP-570UZ, in part because that is the ONLY model in the Olympus SP line that actually had a hotshoe for external flash. I'll come back to that too.
So anyway, recently I knew that I was going to be taking two trips, one of which was a rather challenging hike in Yosemite, so I decided to get myself something really compact and light. Lucky for me I found not one by two big-zoom pocket compacts on sale as open box items in Amazon marketplace at ridiculous low prices. (They have probably fired the guy who listed those by now, because really I got these both dirt cheap.)
The first one I ordered was a Fuji Finepix F300EXR... basically last year's model, open box, at a knock down price. This is another shirt-pocket big zoom compact (15x zoom, 12mp, 3.0" LCD). Then I saw the Lumix DMC-ZS7 (black)... also last year's model... on Amazon as a open box for an even more ridiculously low price, so I said "what the hell" and bought that one too, intended to return one of the other, depending on which one I liked best. (I am a big fan of buying last year's model of anything and everything. No matter what it is, this year's model is always overpriced, because all companies know that they can gouge the "early adopters".)
So I got both and ran a few trivial picture quality comparisons and for both outdoor and indoor the DMC-ZS7 was quite clearly superior in terms of picture quality. (I *did not* actually make any "low light" tests. I feel obliged to mention that because the marketing materials for the Fuji assert that it gives markedly superior low-light performance. I have not really checked this claim and thus can't say, one way or the other.)
Both of these cameras are 12 megapixel models, but as I say, my own test shots, when displayed side-by-side on my monitor left no doubt. Image quality was superior on the ZS7... perhaps not all that surprising of a result, given that the original MSRP at release was about a hundred bucks higher for the ZS7 versus the F300EXR.
Size and weight of both cameras is essentially identical. Both/either fit quite comfortably in a shirt pocket or a jeans pocket. (Because these were my first ultra-compacts, I wasn't sure that would be true until I received them.) Both are about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but a bit longer and only just barely thicker. Both cameras have outer skins that are mostly metal, with some plastic trim here and there. Both feel quite solid and build quality of both appears to my eye to be excellent.
The F300EXR has slightly longer zoom (15x versus 12x) but given the choice, I'll take the better image quality over that extra zoom length. Both cameras have nice 3.0 inch high-res LCDs, and both of those are sharp as a tack. Both can take 720p high-res movies, and both have HDMI outputs. (These were two features I really wanted.) Both cameras come with essentially identical standard accessories, AV cable, USB cable, manual(s), software disks, and writs strap. Both provide at least a modicum of manual controls... something else I definitely wanted... as well as shutter & aperture priority modes.
Controls on both cameras are comfortable and, for the most part, intuitive. The F300EXR has a kind of outer ring around the normative North/South/East/West/OK button set, and in playback and other contexts this is helpful. The ZS7 doesn't have that, and to make matters worse the "legend", i.e. symbols indicating the function, that are on each of the North/South/East/West buttons pn the ZS7 are simply engraved into the tiny shiny metal buttons, making them very nearly impossible to even read in dim light (or actually impossible if I don't have my reading glasses on).
The F300EXR power switch is push-down type, whereas on the ZS7 it is a slider switch. (I prefer the latter.) On the F300EXR, the only way to playback is to power on (causing the lens to extend and the flash to pop up) and THEN press the playback button to switch to playback mode This is clearly wasteful of time & battery power. The ZS7 has a more sensible slider switch which can be set to either recording or playback mode BEFORE you slide the power switch to ON.
As has been noted elsewhere, the F300EXR flash pops up and stays up whenever the power is on, and unfortunately, it is right win the spot where you are most likely to rest your left index finger. (You DO hold your cameras with both hands, right?) By popping up, the F300EXR's flash maybe gets a tiny bit further from the lens (thus reducing red eye?) but I doubt this "feature" really buys you much. The flash on the ZS7 is just there on the front of the camera. No pop-up action. Anyway, the pop-up flash on the F300EXR is not really annoying, just a bit surprising sometime when you power on and feel a little pushing up under your left index finger.
On the ZS7, I noted that my left index finger sort-of naturally came to rest often on the upper left front corner of the camera. That's not a problem until the camera wants to use the infrared thingy to help with auto-focus, at which point your'll note immediately that you need to move your left index finger slightly to get it out of the way of the infrared.
The menu system of the F300EXR is quite good. It's clear, easy to read, dark-gray/light-gray superimposed over whatever would otherwise be displayed on the LCD at the moment. The menu system of the ZS7, yellow-on-white, didn't seem quite as nice to me, but both/either will get the job done. One major irritant with both of these that could easily be rectified by the manufacturers is a missing feature that I have on my Olympus SP-570UZ, i.e. built-in verbose help pages/screens within the menu system. On the SP-570UZ, if you don't understand or are not sure about the function of some setting or another, you are just one tap away from a very helpful verbose English language description of the function of that setting. It's almost like carrying a condensed/abridged version of the manual around with you, only better. Why all digital cameras don't have this feature is beyond me. It really doesn't take up much memory OR require much programming and even the simplest digital cameras nowadays are so complex and have so many features and functions that most have manuals that go on for more than 100 pages. Are we supposed to MEMORIZE all that before sallying forth into the field to take pictures?? I think not. So put it in the camera! That way we can't lose it, like that bleedin' lens cap we haven't seen in the last five years.
The super deluxe let-me-do-it-all-for-you point-and-shoot automatic-everything modes on both cameras produced generally excellent results in a variety of situations and conditions. To my eye, auto-focus, auto-exposure, and auto white balance on both cameras pretty much always produced acceptable results, however as I've said, I am old-school, and where "auto with aperture priority" on small cameras such as these, where you can't really get thin depth of field no matter what you do (because the lenses are just too tiny), seem like an entirely useless/superfluous setting, I did feel the need to try auto with shutter priority on both cameras for various shots, just to keep the respective "intelligent" auto modes from mucking up the shot with excessively optimistic shutter speeds that wouldn't actually work in practice, especially handheld, towards the long ends of the zoom ranges.
Battery life on both the F300EXR and the ZS7 was beyond excellent, and seemed to me to be well beyond what you would ever need for any one sitting OR even for an entire short vacation. I mean who on earth takes 250+ shots in one sitting? I'm an old-school guy who grew up on film cameras and who always had to worry about running out of film. 8GB SDHC cards are dirt cheap, so if you get one of those, then really, in the modern digital era, the only thing you ever really need to worry about running out of is battery power. But as I say, with these cameras it seems like you don't even really need to worry about that much either. I'm paranoid, so I bought an extra (cheaper than Panasonic) third-party spare battery for the ZS7, and now I feel like an idiot for having done so, because really, I doubt that I'll ever even use it. I took about 100 shots on an all-day hike in Yosemite and I still had plenty of power left at the end of the day. Today I did my 31+ minute test movie, and even that didn't move the needle on the battery charge indicator... a rather surprising result given that modern video compression is known to be rather CPU (and power) intensive.
The two Olympus cameras I had before I bought these two shirt-pocket compacts were straightforward to get pictures and movies from, even when I was plugging them into my UNIX system. Both cameras just acted like a USB drive, with a FAT filesystem and so forth, and both could be "mounted" as a drive on UNIX or even,,, yecch... Windoze. I assumed that all digital cameras behaved this way nowadays, but I was disappointed to learn that the F300EXR doesn't work this way. Instead, it speaks some protocol called PTP. In order to get stuff directly off the camera (from FreeBSD) I was going to have to load some additional software and diddle several system settings. Blecch. I never did. Instead I just bought myself a cheapie SD/SDHC card reader. Problem solved. On the other hand, the ZS7 _does_ behave just like a USB drive, so I could just plug it in, mount it as a drive, and start pulling stuff off. I like that. It's simple.
The ZS7 has three features that definitely set it apart from the Fuji F300EXR, i.e. GPS, stereo sound recording, and the ability to record movies with some modern flavor of data compression, specifically AVCHD. Personally, I don't give a flying fig about the GPS. It's been set to off since I got the camera. (I _do_ already know what city I am in, thank you very much.) If I can ever figure out how to get actual GPS _coordinates_ out of the ZS7, and not just city names, then I will think that the GPS might have some usefulness, e.g. for the unlikely day I am lost in the forest with a satellite phone and need to tell my rescuers where I am. But as I have so far not seen any setting on the ZS7 that would give me raw GPS hours/minutes/seconds coordinates, I still don't see the GPS feature as being at all useful, even with the GPS picture-tagging feature. I mean hey! If I have a shot of Half Dome, I think I can remember that I took in in Yosemite. If I'm looking at a shot I took of the Eiffel Tower... well... umm... DUH! GPS is obviously just one of those techno bells and whistles that camera designers add just because they can, cheaply, and because the guys in the marketing departments think that it sounds techno-cool. There are at least half a dozen OTHER features that could be added to these kinds of cameras for one tenth the cost and that would actually help people to take better pictures, but those ones don't seem to make it into the designs for some reason. (See rant below.)
The ability to record stereo sound is likewise rather superfluous, in my opinion. I mean seriously, you have two microscopic microphones and they are sitting about 1/2 inch from one another. Do we really think that the left and right are going to hear anything significantly different from the other? If you do, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Lastly, the modern video compression and the AVCHD recording format actually were and are things that I really cared/care about and want/wanted. I just now did a 30+ minute 720p/30 test recording on the ZS7. (Yes, apparently the ZS7 _does not_ have the seemingly arbitrary 29 point something minute per movie time limit that some other digital cameras I've read about have.) Anyway, my little 31+ minute ZS7 720p/30fps test recording came out to just over 3.6GB on the SDHC card. That seems to me to be not too shabby, but as this is the first and only digital camera I've ever owned that can record HD or even SD movies, I really have nothing to compare it against. Oops! Wait a minute! I almost forgot the F300EXR!
OK so I did a 720p/24fps test recording using the F300EXR. I just shot for about 11 minutes. The resulting (AVI aka "motion JPEG") file size came out to about 1.25GB. So ummm... hummm... maybe the newer fancy schmancy compression of AVCHD ain't all that big of an advantage, filesize-wise, after all. I mean if you ignore the fact that one camera (ZS7) was recording 30 frames per second and the other one (F300EXR) was only recording 24fps, then the file sizes divided by the length of the recordings actually seem to come out to a fairly comparable number for either camera (and/or either type of compression used), i.e somewhat over 1GB per ten minutes of 720p recording. BUT WAIT! We need to consider the relative quality of the recordings also. I'll discuss and compare that below.
I should note also that for my two test movie recordings for the ZS7 and the F300EXR I had the cameras on a tripod, pointed in a fixed direction into my backyard, and there was no zooming. Many ducks and Canada geese wandered in and out of the frame during the recording, but other than that, the subject matter was certainly highly redundant/compressible. In short, if I had done these test recordings by just pointing the camera out of the side of a moving train, I think I could safely bet that the resulting video files would have been substantially bigger than these ones actually came out to be.
Oh! Did I mention that both the F300EXR and the ZS7 allow zooming during movies? (On the ZS7 you don't hear the zooming at all on the recording, but on the F300EXR you do, but just a little.)
As I alluded to above, both the ZS7 and the F300EXR can be connected to your big modern flat screen TV via a special HDMI cable. Neither camera ships with one of these, but the cables can be had for a few bucks each off Amazon. (Do I need to warn you to make sure you order the Right Kind for your specific camera?)
The ZS7 shoots all movies resolutions, including 720p, at 30 frames per second. The ZS7 gives a choice of recording in "motion JPEG" (AVI?) format, AVCHD format, or AVCHD format annotated with GPS info. The F300EXR shoots 720p only a 24 frames per second and will record only in motion JPEG (AVI) format. AVCHD definitely should, in theory at least, provide better and more modern compression and thus considerably smaller movie files. But see below.
My short 720p test recordings on the ZS7, when played back via my LG BD370 and Samsung 42 inch 720p plasma were OK, but not what I would call stunning as regards to clarity. Close ups of a cat in the garden who wasn't moving all that much were, ummm, acceptable, but it appears to me that when some of the branches (and leaves) of my local oak tree were in the shot, and when the leaves were moving on account of a passing breeze, or when I was panning or zooming, the complexity of the images was pushing the outer envelope of the video compression and/or the recording bit rate. The oak leaves definitely did not appear to me to be crystal clear. If you are not too critical, the the ZS7 will do just fine at 720p/30/ACVHD for your cat, your kids, or your family barbecue, and will definitely produce results that are likely better than any standard-def videocam, if only just.
I, for one, have never been a believer in the advantages of 1080 over 720 HD. Unless you routinely sit two feet away from your big flat screen with one of those 8 1/2 x 11 Fresnel sheet magnifiers, you are really never going to notice any advantage of 1080 over 720. For me, even my local stations, when viewed in 720p on my Samsung 720p plasma are sharp as a tack. 1080 HD is mostly just a marketing thing designed to separate consumers from their excess money.
I mention all this only because I want you to know that if you are expecting "broadcast quality" 720p from either the ZS7 or the F300EXR you ARE going to be disappointed. These pockatable cameras are just not going to give you the same clarity as a dedicated professional videocam costing 50 times as much. But like I say, these cameras will still give you acceptable video of the family barbecue. (These kinds of higher-end pocket digital cameras are really the modern equivalent of the old family 8mm camera of bygone days... but actually a bit less sharp, I'm sad to report.)
All that being said, the 720p/24fps recordings created by the F300EXR were definitely and obviously not in the same class as the 720p/30fps test recordings I did with the ZS7. And no, I do not think that this was just a matter of the difference in the frame rate. The test recordings from the ZS7 definitely appeared as if they had been shot with higher resolution, relative to the test recordings produced by the F300EXR. But don't get too excited. As I said above, neither of these cameras produces anything that could be mistaken for "broadcast quality" 720p. Still, in comparable 720p recordings, the ZS7 produces unambiguously and noticeably sharper and clearer results, relative to the F300EXR. (But I would be happy to take either camera, any day, and by a country mile, over any cellphone-cam.)
Other points on video recording...
The F300EXR apparently has a "feature" (aka bug) in the audio recording. I noticed this when I did some test recording in my backyard. Whenever the ducks and geese got really quiet and when the traffic noise from the nearby major arterial subsided, and when there were no planes overhead, in short when things got mostly quiet, the F300EXR apparently invoked some sort of demented auto level adjustment algorithm that causes the recording to go dead quiet, at least until the actual sound you are recording picks up a bit again. On playback, these dead quiet periods were really noticeable, and seemed, well, odd. The ZS7 has no such mis-feature.
I really wanted the ACVHD recording feature of the ZS7 because I have both an older Panasonic Blu-Ray player (DMP-BD60) and also a medium old LG Blu-Ray player (BD370) that both claimed to be able to play ACVHD, and I wanted to see if I could record some stuff in ACVHD format, burn it to a DVD, and then play it on one or both of these Blue-Ray players. Well, I can now report that I _have_ been able to do exactly this. I took two short 720p test recordings made in the ACVHD mode on the ZS7, used the software that came with the ZS7, copied the recordings to the hard drive on my Windoze7 system, and then used the software that came with the ZS7 to burn both recordings to a single DVD, and then popped that into my LG BD370, and it just worked, with even a little top-level menu that allowed me to select which of the two test recordings to play. That's the good news.
The bad news is that it was almost impossible to do all this because of at least a couple of really atrocious bugs in the Panasonic PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 HD software that came with the camera. The worst of these bugs was that on Windows7, at least, critical buttons like "next" and "back" and "ok" and "abort" that appear at various points during interaction with the software *are not even readable*!! I'm not kidding. The titles that should appear on these buttons actually display as black characters on a black background!! So I ended up having to look at the PDF of the camera manual, and at its screen shots of the software in operation, in order to deduce which of the several completely black buttons on the screen was actually the "back" button, which one was the "next" button, and so forth. Without the camera's PDF manual and its screen shots, the PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 HD software would have been totally un-navigable and thus totally useless, and I would not have been able to get my ACVHD recordings off the SDHC card OR subsequently burn them onto a DVD. In short, PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 HD is seriously broken. I groped around for a long time on Panasonic's web site and eventually found a version 5.2, downloaded it and tried to install it and the install process failed with some utterly mysterious and entirely uninformative error message. De-installing 5.1 before trying to install 5.2 made no difference. (Panasonic needs to hire some monkeys to test their camera-external software. Even a monkey could see that both PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 and PHOTOfunStudio 5.2 have critical flaws.) At the time of this writing I don't even know yet whether I will be able to even reinstall the 5.1 version successfully or not. At least I could get it to burn my ACVHD movies onto DVDs, albeit only while working around the unlabeled back/next/etc. buttons. But I can't even get 5.2 to install! Even stranger, Panasonic's web site talks about various 6.x versions of this same PHOTOfunStudio software, but I'll be bleeped if I can even find where they might be hiding those versions on their web server, let alone anything on the Panasonic web site that says what the differences might be between the different versions OR anything which lists which versions are compatible with which Lumix camera models.)
(NOTE: The ONLY reason I am giving the ZS7 four rather than five stars is because of all of these unforgivable external software snafus.)
Just a few final complaints about the Fuji F300EXR the ZS7, and probably every other pockatable digital camera currently on the market... (begin rant mode).
Firstly, I know these things are already both tiny and packed to the rafters with internal guts, but seriously, how hard would it be for thje manufacturers to add a little optical or digital viewfinder, or alternatively, in the absence of that, to make and sell a reasonably priced thing that fits over the LCD, shades it, and provides a small lens with a diopter adjustment? Despite the marketing hype, these LCDs are utterly useless in the presence of bright sun. You just can't frame a shot with the sun behind you. Just as importantly, it seems that everybody who designs these kinds of pocketable digitals is under the age of 45. I say that because obviously, not a single one of them knows the first thing about presbyopia. I am over 45, have presbyopia (like everybody else my age) and I can't be talking with my friends, ten feet in front of me, and then look down at the LCD on my camera, one foot in front of my face, and see it other than as a big blur, at least until I put my reading glasses back on, by which time I have missed the moment AND the shot. This sucketh. I've seen shade thingies on sale that fit over 3 inch LCDs and have little diaopter adjustable lenses, and these would be perfect for people like me and our pocket cameras, but alas, these things are mostly sold to the DSLR crowd and thus cost and arm and a leg. SOMEBODY should make and sell them for $19.95 (please?) That would still yield a 10,000% profit over manufacturing cost.
My (now ancient) Olympus C-5000 had a little optical viewfinder. That proves that it can be done, and indeed, that technology is actually regressing in some ways. the C-5000 had a viewfinder and that was 6+ years ago! This new generation of pockatable cameras, unlike my C-5000 from 6 years ago, are (a) useless in bright sun and (b) semi-useless to the 99.9% of people over age 45 who need/use reading glasses.
Another useful feature that my old C-5000 had that I seriously miss, and that I'm 100% sure would be dirt cheap to add to this current generation of pocket cameras was a tiny little infrared remote control. 2-second and 10-second delay timers just don't cut it if you want to get in the shot with all your pals AND have time to compose yourself and smile your best smile. Also, I want to be able to set my camera on the other side of the garden and then fire it remotely from inside the house when and if I see some wildlife passing right in front of it. Again, technology is regressing. I had a remote control 6+ years ago. Now I don't. :-( Why? They are cheap to make and the IR camera sensor already has to be there anyway, for the IR-based auto-focus assist.
More absent features...
It's too bad the designers of the current generation of pockatables are all boxed into the amateur "snapshot" mindset. I guess that we should be grateful that they at least include tripod mounts on these cameras, even if only as an afterthought. But come on! If you are going to build a camera with a tripod mount, then it is almost idiotic that the user can't even tell the whole "intelligent auto" fly-by-wire almost-artificial-intelligence master brain/computer that "Hey! We are tripod mounted now, so you, camera-brain, can automagically select slower shutter speeds and thus, correspondingly lower auto-computed ISO settings (for less noise)." In short, there should be a "tripod mounted" setting which will modify the settings selected by the "intelligent auto" system. (It doesn't count as "intelligent" if the camera doesn't know what even the stupidest human knows, i.e. that the camera is tripod mounted and thus more stable and jitter-free.) In a similar/related vein, why can't these designers of pockatable cameras include some facility for plugging in the electronic equivalent of a good old fashioned shutter-release cable, you know, for when you are tripod mounted AND when you want to do shutter release without even touching... or jiggling... the camera? I was able to buy a cheapie third-party "electronic" shutter-release thingy for my semi-old SP-570UZ and it worked like a charm and was dirt cheap. It plugs into the SP570UZ's USB connector, so no extra precious camera surface area was needed in the design of this on the camera side. This is SOOOOOO technically trivial, and yet so useful to anybody who really cares about getting a rock-solid non-blurred shot that it is a travesty for ANY digital camera not to have support for this kind of optional external accessory. I mean it's like buying an expensive BMW and then looking down where the cigarette lighter should be and just seeing an empty hole. Dumb. Really dumb.
More stuff I wish I could have...
Connectors: Now that these pockatable cameras are getting big zooms and other higher-end features, how about thinking outside of the box and providing just some cheap/easy but potentially extremely useful connectors, specifically (a) a good old fashioned flash "sync cord" socket and/or (b) a micro phone jack / TRS jack where an external stereo microphone could be plugged in? Either of these would be technically trivial and dirt cheap to add, so how about it manufacturers?
You manufacturers really don't have to worry about these extra features causing "cannibalization" of your higher-end (and more expensive) DSLR or super-zoom bridge camera lines for the simple reason that the markets for these things are just plain DIFFERENT MARKETS. Anybody planning a trip deep into the amazon rain forest and who wants the best photos he can get IS going to buy a DSLR, no matter what nice little tweaks he can get on a pocket portable. Conversely, anybody going into the jungle and who just wants some snapshots to take home is NOT going to spring for a DSLR or an expensive bridge camera... or be willing to carry the extra weight... just so he can get an external mic jack or an electronic shutter release. Different markets. 'nuff said.
Here endith the lesson.
Other than the above nits, I actually love both the F300EXR and the ZS7. They are both stunning and phenomenal pieces of engineering. But of the two, the ZS7 is the one I will be keeping.

P.S. One other small nit about digital cameras generally and the ZS7 and F300EXR specifically. All the digital cameras I've ever owned, including these two news ones are all apparently too stupid to even know which way is up. Literally. Can't you manufacturers fix this?? iPhones seem to always know which way is up, so why can't all digital cameras?
(Like many of the comments above, the following comments are addressed to the camera manufacturers.)
Look, this is very simple guys. Every JPEG file has a built-in orientation and thus, a built in "upper left" corner. So why is it that when I take my digital camera and orient it vertically, you know, as in "portrait" orientation versus "landscape" orientation, and then I take a shot and then load the JPEG onto my PeeCEE and then try and view the thing, the picture shows up on my screen lying on its side, rather than oriented properly? This is definitely YOUR FAULT for not writing the JPEG file in way so that it will have proper (gravity based?) orientation.
This is beyond stupid, particularly because I know for a fact that both the ZS7 and the F300EXR do in fact know which way is up, and they just aren't using that information properly. I know they know which way is up, because in default factory settings on both, when I play back any JPEG that was shot "portrait" (vertical) it shows on the LCD in ``proper'' orientation, i.e. holding the camera normally (horizontal orientation) and then playing back a vertical-orientation shot, these cameras re-orient the images so that they appear on the LCDs vertically, and with big wide black bands on either side. To accomplish this, obviously both cameras must be adding some sorts of annotations to all JPEGs they produce which indicate whether the shot was taken horizontally or vertically. So the cameras do know which was is "up" for any given shot. And they even save notes about that for each shot/JPEG. Unfortunately, both cameras are too dumb to simply arrange for the JPEGs themselves to be oriented properly, based on which was is up and which way is down at the time the shot was taken. That's dumb. Really dumb.
P.P.S. Lowepro Ridge 30 cases fit either of the cameras described above perfectly. DO NOT try to get a Ridge 20, based on the interior size specs and the exterior size specs for these cameras. First, you will have trouble finding a Ridge 20, because apparently, they don't make them anymore. And as I learned, even if you get one, you will wish you hadn't, because they are so tight that it will be a chore getting either of these cameras in or out of the case. Go with the Ridge 30, which is just slightly roomier, and thus perfect for either of these cameras.

Dueling pocket super zooms: DMC-ZS7 versus Fuji F300EXR, R. Guilmette "ronbaby"
(Note: I just now posted the following detailed comparison/review of the Fuji F300EXR and the Lumix (Panasonic) DMC-ZS7 over in the customer review section for the Lumix DMC-ZS7. I am reposting that here also, in its entirety, because it contains quite a lot of info in the F300EXR too, and thus may also be of some interest to folks looking at the F300EXR.)
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Hummm... where to begin. I'm a very experienced amateur photographer. My dad and I used to develop and print our own color film & prints in our basement darkroom, back 40 years ago when essentially zero amateurs even attempted this. I even worked for a short while (and got paid) as a photographer. (But that also was a long time ago.) Still, I know my way around a camera.
I've owned several different film cameras in my life, but sold off the last one a few years ago because I could see the handwriting on the wall. My first digital was an Olympus C-5000, which was nice, but only 5mp. It had a couple of special features that I really miss. I'll come back to those. After that I got myself an Olympus SP-570UZ, in part because that is the ONLY model in the Olympus SP line that actually had a hotshoe for external flash. I'll come back to that too.
So anyway, recently I knew that I was going to be taking two trips, one of which was a rather challenging hike in Yosemite, so I decided to get myself something really compact and light. Lucky for me I found not one by two big-zoom pocket compacts on sale as open box items in Amazon marketplace at ridiculous low prices. (They have probably fired the guy who listed those by now, because really I got these both dirt cheap.)
The first one I ordered was a Fuji Finepix F300EXR... basically last year's model, open box, at a knock down price. This is another shirt-pocket big zoom compact (15x zoom, 12mp, 3.0" LCD). Then I saw the Lumix DMC-ZS7 (black)... also last year's model... on Amazon as a open box for an even more ridiculously low price, so I said "what the hell" and bought that one too, intended to return one of the other, depending on which one I liked best. (I am a big fan of buying last year's model of anything and everything. No matter what it is, this year's model is always overpriced, because all companies know that they can gouge the "early adopters".)
So I got both and ran a few trivial picture quality comparisons and for both outdoor and indoor the DMC-ZS7 was quite clearly superior in terms of picture quality. (I *did not* actually make any "low light" tests. I feel obliged to mention that because the marketing materials for the Fuji assert that it gives markedly superior low-light performance. I have not really checked this claim and thus can't say, one way or the other.)
Both of these cameras are 12 megapixel models, but as I say, my own test shots, when displayed side-by-side on my monitor left no doubt. Image quality was superior on the ZS7... perhaps not all that surprising of a result, given that the original MSRP at release was about a hundred bucks higher for the ZS7 versus the F300EXR.
Size and weight of both cameras is essentially identical. Both/either fit quite comfortably in a shirt pocket or a jeans pocket. (Because these were my first ultra-compacts, I wasn't sure that would be true until I received them.) Both are about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but a bit longer and only just barely thicker. Both cameras have outer skins that are mostly metal, with some plastic trim here and there. Both feel quite solid and build quality of both appears to my eye to be excellent.
The F300EXR has slightly longer zoom (15x versus 12x) but given the choice, I'll take the better image quality over that extra zoom length. Both cameras have nice 3.0 inch high-res LCDs, and both of those are sharp as a tack. Both can take 720p high-res movies, and both have HDMI outputs. (These were two features I really wanted.) Both cameras come with essentially identical standard accessories, AV cable, USB cable, manual(s), software disks, and writs strap. Both provide at least a modicum of manual controls... something else I definitely wanted... as well as shutter & aperture priority modes.
Controls on both cameras are comfortable and, for the most part, intuitive. The F300EXR has a kind of outer ring around the normative North/South/East/West/OK button set, and in playback and other contexts this is helpful. The ZS7 doesn't have that, and to make matters worse the "legend", i.e. symbols indicating the function, that are on each of the North/South/East/West buttons pn the ZS7 are simply engraved into the tiny shiny metal buttons, making them very nearly impossible to even read in dim light (or actually impossible if I don't have my reading glasses on).
The F300EXR power switch is push-down type, whereas on the ZS7 it is a slider switch. (I prefer the latter.) On the F300EXR, the only way to playback is to power on (causing the lens to extend and the flash to pop up) and THEN press the playback button to switch to playback mode This is clearly wasteful of time & battery power. The ZS7 has a more sensible slider switch which can be set to either recording or playback mode BEFORE you slide the power switch to ON.
As has been noted elsewhere, the F300EXR flash pops up and stays up whenever the power is on, and unfortunately, it is right win the spot where you are most likely to rest your left index finger. (You DO hold your cameras with both hands, right?) By popping up, the F300EXR's flash maybe gets a tiny bit further from the lens (thus reducing red eye?) but I doubt this "feature" really buys you much. The flash on the ZS7 is just there on the front of the camera. No pop-up action. Anyway, the pop-up flash on the F300EXR is not really annoying, just a bit surprising sometime when you power on and feel a little pushing up under your left index finger.
On the ZS7, I noted that my left index finger sort-of naturally came to rest often on the upper left front corner of the camera. That's not a problem until the camera wants to use the infrared thingy to help with auto-focus, at which point your'll note immediately that you need to move your left index finger slightly to get it out of the way of the infrared.
The menu system of the F300EXR is quite good. It's clear, easy to read, dark-gray/light-gray superimposed over whatever would otherwise be displayed on the LCD at the moment. The menu system of the ZS7, yellow-on-white, didn't seem quite as nice to me, but both/either will get the job done. One major irritant with both of these that could easily be rectified by the manufacturers is a missing feature that I have on my Olympus SP-570UZ, i.e. built-in verbose help pages/screens within the menu system. On the SP-570UZ, if you don't understand or are not sure about the function of some setting or another, you are just one tap away from a very helpful verbose English language description of the function of that setting. It's almost like carrying a condensed/abridged version of the manual around with you, only better. Why all digital cameras don't have this feature is beyond me. It really doesn't take up much memory OR require much programming and even the simplest digital cameras nowadays are so complex and have so many features and functions that most have manuals that go on for more than 100 pages. Are we supposed to MEMORIZE all that before sallying forth into the field to take pictures?? I think not. So put it in the camera! That way we can't lose it, like that bleedin' lens cap we haven't seen in the last five years.
The super deluxe let-me-do-it-all-for-you point-and-shoot automatic-everything modes on both cameras produced generally excellent results in a variety of situations and conditions. To my eye, auto-focus, auto-exposure, and auto white balance on both cameras pretty much always produced acceptable results, however as I've said, I am old-school, and where "auto with aperture priority" on small cameras such as these, where you can't really get thin depth of field no matter what you do (because the lenses are just too tiny), seem like an entirely useless/superfluous setting, I did feel the need to try auto with shutter priority on both cameras for various shots, just to keep the respective "intelligent" auto modes from mucking up the shot with excessively optimistic shutter speeds that wouldn't actually work in practice, especially handheld, towards the long ends of the zoom ranges.
Battery life on both the F300EXR and the ZS7 was beyond excellent, and seemed to me to be well beyond what you would ever need for any one sitting OR even for an entire short vacation. I mean who on earth takes 250+ shots in one sitting? I'm an old-school guy who grew up on film cameras and who always had to worry about running out of film. 8GB SDHC cards are dirt cheap, so if you get one of those, then really, in the modern digital era, the only thing you ever really need to worry about running out of is battery power. But as I say, with these cameras it seems like you don't even really need to worry about that much either. I'm paranoid, so I bought an extra (cheaper than Panasonic) third-party spare battery for the ZS7, and now I feel like an idiot for having done so, because really, I doubt that I'll ever even use it. I took about 100 shots on an all-day hike in Yosemite and I still had plenty of power left at the end of the day. Today I did my 31+ minute test movie, and even that didn't move the needle on the battery charge indicator... a rather surprising result given that modern video compression is known to be rather CPU (and power) intensive.
The two Olympus cameras I had before I bought these two shirt-pocket compacts were straightforward to get pictures and movies from, even when I was plugging them into my UNIX system. Both cameras just acted like a USB drive, with a FAT filesystem and so forth, and both could be "mounted" as a drive on UNIX or even,,, yecch... Windoze. I assumed that all digital cameras behaved this way nowadays, but I was disappointed to learn that the F300EXR doesn't work this way. Instead, it speaks some protocol called PTP. In order to get stuff directly off the camera (from FreeBSD) I was going to have to load some additional software and diddle several system settings. Blecch. I never did. Instead I just bought myself a cheapie SD/SDHC card reader. Problem solved. On the other hand, the ZS7 _does_ behave just like a USB drive, so I could just plug it in, mount it as a drive, and start pulling stuff off. I like that. It's simple.
The ZS7 has three features that definitely set it apart from the Fuji F300EXR, i.e. GPS, stereo sound recording, and the ability to record movies with some modern flavor of data compression, specifically AVCHD. Personally, I don't give a flying fig about the GPS. It's been set to off since I got the camera. (I _do_ already know what city I am in, thank you very much.) If I can ever figure out how to get actual GPS _coordinates_ out of the ZS7, and not just city names, then I will think that the GPS might have some usefulness, e.g. for the unlikely day I am lost in the forest with a satellite phone and need to tell my rescuers where I am. But as I have so far not seen any setting on the ZS7 that would give me raw GPS hours/minutes/seconds coordinates, I still don't see the GPS feature as being at all useful, even with the GPS picture-tagging feature. I mean hey! If I have a shot of Half Dome, I think I can remember that I took in in Yosemite. If I'm looking at a shot I took of the Eiffel Tower... well... umm... DUH! GPS is obviously just one of those techno bells and whistles that camera designers add just because they can, cheaply, and because the guys in the marketing departments think that it sounds techno-cool. There are at least half a dozen OTHER features that could be added to these kinds of cameras for one tenth the cost and that would actually help people to take better pictures, but those ones don't seem to make it into the designs for some reason. (See rant below.)
The ability to record stereo sound is likewise rather superfluous, in my opinion. I mean seriously, you have two microscopic microphones and they are sitting about 1/2 inch from one another. Do we really think that the left and right are going to hear anything significantly different from the other? If you do, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Lastly, the modern video compression and the AVCHD recording format actually were and are things that I really cared/care about and want/wanted. I just now did a 30+ minute 720p/30 test recording on the ZS7. (Yes, apparently the ZS7 _does not_ have the seemingly arbitrary 29 point something minute per movie time limit that some other digital cameras I've read about have.) Anyway, my little 31+ minute ZS7 720p/30fps test recording came out to just over 3.6GB on the SDHC card. That seems to me to be not too shabby, but as this is the first and only digital camera I've ever owned that can record HD or even SD movies, I really have nothing to compare it against. Oops! Wait a minute! I almost forgot the F300EXR!
OK so I did a 720p/24fps test recording using the F300EXR. I just shot for about 11 minutes. The resulting (AVI aka "motion JPEG") file size came out to about 1.25GB. So ummm... hummm... maybe the newer fancy schmancy compression of AVCHD ain't all that big of an advantage, filesize-wise, after all. I mean if you ignore the fact that one camera (ZS7) was recording 30 frames per second and the other one (F300EXR) was only recording 24fps, then the file sizes divided by the length of the recordings actually seem to come out to a fairly comparable number for either camera (and/or either type of compression used), i.e somewhat over 1GB per ten minutes of 720p recording. BUT WAIT! We need to consider the relative quality of the recordings also. I'll discuss and compare that below.
I should note also that for my two test movie recordings for the ZS7 and the F300EXR I had the cameras on a tripod, pointed in a fixed direction into my backyard, and there was no zooming. Many ducks and Canada geese wandered in and out of the frame during the recording, but other than that, the subject matter was certainly highly redundant/compressible. In short, if I had done these test recordings by just pointing the camera out of the side of a moving train, I think I could safely bet that the resulting video files would have been substantially bigger than these ones actually came out to be.
Oh! Did I mention that both the F300EXR and the ZS7 allow zooming during movies? (On the ZS7 you don't hear the zooming at all on the recording, but on the F300EXR you do, but just a little.)
As I alluded to above, both the ZS7 and the F300EXR can be connected to your big modern flat screen TV via a special HDMI cable. Neither camera ships with one of these, but the cables can be had for a few bucks each off Amazon. (Do I need to warn you to make sure you order the Right Kind for your specific camera?)
The ZS7 shoots all movies resolutions, including 720p, at 30 frames per second. The ZS7 gives a choice of recording in "motion JPEG" (AVI?) format, AVCHD format, or AVCHD format annotated with GPS info. The F300EXR shoots 720p only a 24 frames per second and will record only in motion JPEG (AVI) format. AVCHD definitely should, in theory at least, provide better and more modern compression and thus considerably smaller movie files. But see below.
My short 720p test recordings on the ZS7, when played back via my LG BD370 and Samsung 42 inch 720p plasma were OK, but not what I would call stunning as regards to clarity. Close ups of a cat in the garden who wasn't moving all that much were, ummm, acceptable, but it appears to me that when some of the branches (and leaves) of my local oak tree were in the shot, and when the leaves were moving on account of a passing breeze, or when I was panning or zooming, the complexity of the images was pushing the outer envelope of the video compression and/or the recording bit rate. The oak leaves definitely did not appear to me to be crystal clear. If you are not too critical, the the ZS7 will do just fine at 720p/30/ACVHD for your cat, your kids, or your family barbecue, and will definitely produce results that are likely better than any standard-def videocam, if only just.
I, for one, have never been a believer in the advantages of 1080 over 720 HD. Unless you routinely sit two feet away from your big flat screen with one of those 8 1/2 x 11 Fresnel sheet magnifiers, you are really never going to notice any advantage of 1080 over 720. For me, even my local stations, when viewed in 720p on my Samsung 720p plasma are sharp as a tack. 1080 HD is mostly just a marketing thing designed to separate consumers from their excess money.
I mention all this only because I want you to know that if you are expecting "broadcast quality" 720p from either the ZS7 or the F300EXR you ARE going to be disappointed. These pockatable cameras are just not going to give you the same clarity as a dedicated professional videocam costing 50 times as much. But like I say, these cameras will still give you acceptable video of the family barbecue. (These kinds of higher-end pocket digital cameras are really the modern equivalent of the old family 8mm camera of bygone days... but actually a bit less sharp, I'm sad to report.)
All that being said, the 720p/24fps recordings created by the F300EXR were definitely and obviously not in the same class as the 720p/30fps test recordings I did with the ZS7. And no, I do not think that this was just a matter of the difference in the frame rate. The test recordings from the ZS7 definitely appeared as if they had been shot with higher resolution, relative to the test recordings produced by the F300EXR. But don't get too excited. As I said above, neither of these cameras produces anything that could be mistaken for "broadcast quality" 720p. Still, in comparable 720p recordings, the ZS7 produces unambiguously and noticeably sharper and clearer results, relative to the F300EXR. (But I would be happy to take either camera, any day, and by a country mile, over any cellphone-cam.)
Other points on video recording...
The F300EXR apparently has a "feature" (aka bug) in the audio recording. I noticed this when I did some test recording in my backyard. Whenever the ducks and geese got really quiet and when the traffic noise from the nearby major arterial subsided, and when there were no planes overhead, in short when things got mostly quiet, the F300EXR apparently invoked some sort of demented auto level adjustment algorithm that causes the recording to go dead quiet, at least until the actual sound you are recording picks up a bit again. On playback, these dead quiet periods were really noticeable, and seemed, well, odd. The ZS7 has no such mis-feature.
I really wanted the ACVHD recording feature of the ZS7 because I have both an older Panasonic Blu-Ray player (DMP-BD60) and also a medium old LG Blu-Ray player (BD370) that both claimed to be able to play ACVHD, and I wanted to see if I could record some stuff in ACVHD format, burn it to a DVD, and then play it on one or both of these Blue-Ray players. Well, I can now report that I _have_ been able to do exactly this. I took two short 720p test recordings made in the ACVHD mode on the ZS7, used the software that came with the ZS7, copied the recordings to the hard drive on my Windoze7 system, and then used the software that came with the ZS7 to burn both recordings to a single DVD, and then popped that into my LG BD370, and it just worked, with even a little top-level menu that allowed me to select which of the two test recordings to play. That's the good news.
The bad news is that it was almost impossible to do all this because of at least a couple of really atrocious bugs in the Panasonic PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 HD software that came with the camera. The worst of these bugs was that on Windows7, at least, critical buttons like "next" and "back" and "ok" and "abort" that appear at various points during interaction with the software *are not even readable*!! I'm not kidding. The titles that should appear on these buttons actually display as black characters on a black background!! So I ended up having to look at the PDF of the camera manual, and at its screen shots of the software in operation, in order to deduce which of the several completely black buttons on the screen was actually the "back" button, which one was the "next" button, and so forth. Without the camera's PDF manual and its screen shots, the PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 HD software would have been totally un-navigable and thus totally useless, and I would not have been able to get my ACVHD recordings off the SDHC card OR subsequently burn them onto a DVD. In short, PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 HD is seriously broken. I groped around for a long time on Panasonic's web site and eventually found a version 5.2, downloaded it and tried to install it and the install process failed with some utterly mysterious and entirely uninformative error message. De-installing 5.1 before trying to install 5.2 made no difference. (Panasonic needs to hire some monkeys to test their camera-external software. Even a monkey could see that both PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 and PHOTOfunStudio 5.2 have critical flaws.) At the time of this writing I don't even know yet whether I will be able to even reinstall the 5.1 version successfully or not. At least I could get it to burn my ACVHD movies onto DVDs, albeit only while working around the unlabeled back/next/etc. buttons. But I can't even get 5.2 to install! Even stranger, Panasonic's web site talks about various 6.x versions of this same PHOTOfunStudio software, but I'll be bleeped if I can even find where they might be hiding those versions on their web server, let alone anything on the Panasonic web site that says what the differences might be between the different versions OR anything which lists which versions are compatible with which Lumix camera models.)
(NOTE: The ONLY reason I am giving the ZS7 four rather than five stars is because of all of these unforgivable external software snafus.)
Just a few final complaints about the Fuji F300EXR the ZS7, and probably every other pockatable digital camera currently on the market... (begin rant mode).
Firstly, I know these things are already both tiny and packed to the rafters with internal guts, but seriously, how hard would it be for thje manufacturers to add a little optical or digital viewfinder, or alternatively, in the absence of that, to make and sell a reasonably priced thing that fits over the LCD, shades it, and provides a small lens with a diopter adjustment? Despite the marketing hype, these LCDs are utterly useless in the presence of bright sun. You just can't frame a shot with the sun behind you. Just as importantly, it seems that everybody who designs these kinds of pocketable digitals is under the age of 45. I say that because obviously, not a single one of them knows the first thing about presbyopia. I am over 45, have presbyopia (like everybody else my age) and I can't be talking with my friends, ten feet in front of me, and then look down at the LCD on my camera, one foot in front of my face, and see it other than as a big blur, at least until I put my reading glasses back on, by which time I have missed the moment AND the shot. This sucketh. I've seen shade thingies on sale that fit over 3 inch LCDs and have little diaopter adjustable lenses, and these would be perfect for people like me and our pocket cameras, but alas, these things are mostly sold to the DSLR crowd and thus cost and arm and a leg. SOMEBODY should make and sell them for $19.95 (please?) That would still yield a 10,000% profit over manufacturing cost.
My (now ancient) Olympus C-5000 had a little optical viewfinder. That proves that it can be done, and indeed, that technology is actually regressing in some ways. the C-5000 had a viewfinder and that was 6+ years ago! This new generation of pockatable cameras, unlike my C-5000 from 6 years ago, are (a) useless in bright sun and (b) semi-useless to the 99.9% of people over age 45 who need/use reading glasses.
Another useful feature that my old C-5000 had that I seriously miss, and that I'm 100% sure would be dirt cheap to add to this current generation of pocket cameras was a tiny little infrared remote control. 2-second and 10-second delay timers just don't cut it if you want to get in the shot with all your pals AND have time to compose yourself and smile your best smile. Also, I want to be able to set my camera on the other side of the garden and then fire it remotely from inside the house when and if I see some wildlife passing right in front of it. Again, technology is regressing. I had a remote control 6+ years ago. Now I don't. :-( Why? They are cheap to make and the IR camera sensor already has to be there anyway, for the IR-based auto-focus assist.
More absent features...
It's too bad the designers of the current generation of pockatables are all boxed into the amateur "snapshot" mindset. I guess that we should be grateful that they at least include tripod mounts on these cameras, even if only as an afterthought. But come on! If you are going to build a camera with a tripod mount, then it is almost idiotic that the user can't even tell the whole "intelligent auto" fly-by-wire almost-artificial-intelligence master brain/computer that "Hey! We are tripod mounted now, so you, camera-brain, can automagically select slower shutter speeds and thus, correspondingly lower auto-computed ISO settings (for less noise)." In short, there should be a "tripod mounted" setting which will modify the settings selected by the "intelligent auto" system. (It doesn't count as "intelligent" if the camera doesn't know what even the stupidest human knows, i.e. that the camera is tripod mounted and thus more stable and jitter-free.) In a similar/related vein, why can't these designers of pockatable cameras include some facility for plugging in the electronic equivalent of a good old fashioned shutter-release cable, you know, for when you are tripod mounted AND when you want to do shutter release without even touching... or jiggling... the camera? I was able to buy a cheapie third-party "electronic" shutter-release thingy for my semi-old SP-570UZ and it worked like a charm and was dirt cheap. It plugs into the SP570UZ's USB connector, so no extra precious camera surface area was needed in the design of this on the camera side. This is SOOOOOO technically trivial, and yet so useful to anybody who really cares about getting a rock-solid non-blurred shot that it is a travesty for ANY digital camera not to have support for this kind of optional external accessory. I mean it's like buying an expensive BMW and then looking down where the cigarette lighter should be and just seeing an empty hole. Dumb. Really dumb.
More stuff I wish I could have...
Connectors: Now that these pockatable cameras are getting big zooms and other higher-end features, how about thinking outside of the box and providing just some cheap/easy but potentially extremely useful connectors, specifically (a) a good old fashioned flash "sync cord" socket and/or (b) a micro phone jack / TRS jack where an external stereo microphone could be plugged in? Either of these would be technically trivial and dirt cheap to add, so how about it manufacturers?
You manufacturers really don't have to worry about these extra features causing "cannibalization" of your higher-end (and more expensive) DSLR or super-zoom bridge camera lines for the simple reason that the markets for these things are just plain DIFFERENT MARKETS. Anybody planning a trip deep into the amazon rain forest and who wants the best photos he can get IS going to buy a DSLR, no matter what nice little tweaks he can get on a pocket portable. Conversely, anybody going into the jungle and who just wants some snapshots to take home is NOT going to spring for a DSLR or an expensive bridge camera... or be willing to carry the extra weight... just so he can get an external mic jack or an electronic shutter release. Different markets. 'nuff said.
Here endith the lesson.
Other than the above nits, I actually love both the F300EXR and the ZS7. They are both stunning and phenomenal pieces of engineering. But of the two, the ZS7 is the one I will be keeping.

P.S. One other small nit about digital cameras generally and the ZS7 and F300EXR specifically. All the digital cameras I've ever owned, including these two news ones are all apparently too stupid to even know which way is up. Literally. Can't you manufacturers fix this?? iPhones seem to always know which way is up, so why can't all digital cameras?
(Like many of the comments above, the following comments are addressed to the camera manufacturers.)
Look, this is very simple guys. Every JPEG file has a built-in orientation and thus, a built in "upper left" corner. So why is it that when I take my digital camera and orient it vertically, you know, as in "portrait" orientation versus "landscape" orientation, and then I take a shot and then load the JPEG onto my PeeCEE and then try and view the thing, the picture shows up on my screen lying on its side, rather than oriented properly? This is definitely YOUR FAULT for not writing the JPEG file in way so that it will have proper (gravity based?) orientation.
This is beyond stupid, particularly because I know for a fact that both the ZS7 and the F300EXR do in fact know which way is up, and they just aren't using that information properly. I know they know which way is up, because in default factory settings on both, when I play back any JPEG that was shot "portrait" (vertical) it shows on the LCD in ``proper'' orientation, i.e. holding the camera normally (horizontal orientation) and then playing back a vertical-orientation shot, these cameras re-orient the images so that they appear on the LCDs vertically, and with big wide black bands on either side. To accomplish this, obviously both cameras must be adding some sorts of annotations to all JPEGs they produce which indicate whether the shot was taken horizontally or vertically. So the cameras do know which was is "up" for any given shot. And they even save notes about that for each shot/JPEG. Unfortunately, both cameras are too dumb to simply arrange for the JPEGs themselves to be oriented properly, based on which was is up and which way is down at the time the shot was taken. That's dumb. Really dumb.
P.P.S. Lowepro Ridge 30 cases fit either of the cameras described above perfectly. DO NOT try to get a Ridge 20, based on the interior size specs and the exterior size specs for these cameras. First, you will have trouble finding a Ridge 20, because apparently, they don't make them anymore. And as I learned, even if you get one, you will wish you hadn't, because they are so tight that it will be a chore getting either of these cameras in or out of the case. Go with the Ridge 30, which is just slightly roomier, and thus perfect for either of these cameras.

Dueling pocket super zooms: DMC-ZS7 versus Fuji F300EXR, R. Guilmette "ronbaby"
(Note: I just now posted the following detailed comparison/review of the Fuji F300EXR and the Lumix (Panasonic) DMC-ZS7 over in the customer review section for the Lumix DMC-ZS7. I am reposting that here also, in its entirety, because it contains quite a lot of info in the F300EXR too, and thus may also be of some interest to folks looking at the F300EXR.)
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Hummm... where to begin. I'm a very experienced amateur photographer. My dad and I used to develop and print our own color film & prints in our basement darkroom, back 40 years ago when essentially zero amateurs even attempted this. I even worked for a short while (and got paid) as a photographer. (But that also was a long time ago.) Still, I know my way around a camera.
I've owned several different film cameras in my life, but sold off the last one a few years ago because I could see the handwriting on the wall. My first digital was an Olympus C-5000, which was nice, but only 5mp. It had a couple of special features that I really miss. I'll come back to those. After that I got myself an Olympus SP-570UZ, in part because that is the ONLY model in the Olympus SP line that actually had a hotshoe for external flash. I'll come back to that too.
So anyway, recently I knew that I was going to be taking two trips, one of which was a rather challenging hike in Yosemite, so I decided to get myself something really compact and light. Lucky for me I found not one by two big-zoom pocket compacts on sale as open box items in Amazon marketplace at ridiculous low prices. (They have probably fired the guy who listed those by now, because really I got these both dirt cheap.)
The first one I ordered was a Fuji Finepix F300EXR... basically last year's model, open box, at a knock down price. This is another shirt-pocket big zoom compact (15x zoom, 12mp, 3.0" LCD). Then I saw the Lumix DMC-ZS7 (black)... also last year's model... on Amazon as a open box for an even more ridiculously low price, so I said "what the hell" and bought that one too, intended to return one of the other, depending on which one I liked best. (I am a big fan of buying last year's model of anything and everything. No matter what it is, this year's model is always overpriced, because all companies know that they can gouge the "early adopters".)
So I got both and ran a few trivial picture quality comparisons and for both outdoor and indoor the DMC-ZS7 was quite clearly superior in terms of picture quality. (I *did not* actually make any "low light" tests. I feel obliged to mention that because the marketing materials for the Fuji assert that it gives markedly superior low-light performance. I have not really checked this claim and thus can't say, one way or the other.)
Both of these cameras are 12 megapixel models, but as I say, my own test shots, when displayed side-by-side on my monitor left no doubt. Image quality was superior on the ZS7... perhaps not all that surprising of a result, given that the original MSRP at release was about a hundred bucks higher for the ZS7 versus the F300EXR.
Size and weight of both cameras is essentially identical. Both/either fit quite comfortably in a shirt pocket or a jeans pocket. (Because these were my first ultra-compacts, I wasn't sure that would be true until I received them.) Both are about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but a bit longer and only just barely thicker. Both cameras have outer skins that are mostly metal, with some plastic trim here and there. Both feel quite solid and build quality of both appears to my eye to be excellent.
The F300EXR has slightly longer zoom (15x versus 12x) but given the choice, I'll take the better image quality over that extra zoom length. Both cameras have nice 3.0 inch high-res LCDs, and both of those are sharp as a tack. Both can take 720p high-res movies, and both have HDMI outputs. (These were two features I really wanted.) Both cameras come with essentially identical standard accessories, AV cable, USB cable, manual(s), software disks, and writs strap. Both provide at least a modicum of manual controls... something else I definitely wanted... as well as shutter & aperture priority modes.
Controls on both cameras are comfortable and, for the most part, intuitive. The F300EXR has a kind of outer ring around the normative North/South/East/West/OK button set, and in playback and other contexts this is helpful. The ZS7 doesn't have that, and to make matters worse the "legend", i.e. symbols indicating the function, that are on each of the North/South/East/West buttons pn the ZS7 are simply engraved into the tiny shiny metal buttons, making them very nearly impossible to even read in dim light (or actually impossible if I don't have my reading glasses on).
The F300EXR power switch is push-down type, whereas on the ZS7 it is a slider switch. (I prefer the latter.) On the F300EXR, the only way to playback is to power on (causing the lens to extend and the flash to pop up) and THEN press the playback button to switch to playback mode This is clearly wasteful of time & battery power. The ZS7 has a more sensible slider switch which can be set to either recording or playback mode BEFORE you slide the power switch to ON.
As has been noted elsewhere, the F300EXR flash pops up and stays up whenever the power is on, and unfortunately, it is right win the spot where you are most likely to rest your left index finger. (You DO hold your cameras with both hands, right?) By popping up, the F300EXR's flash maybe gets a tiny bit further from the lens (thus reducing red eye?) but I doubt this "feature" really buys you much. The flash on the ZS7 is just there on the front of the camera. No pop-up action. Anyway, the pop-up flash on the F300EXR is not really annoying, just a bit surprising sometime when you power on and feel a little pushing up under your left index finger.
On the ZS7, I noted that my left index finger sort-of naturally came to rest often on the upper left front corner of the camera. That's not a problem until the camera wants to use the infrared thingy to help with auto-focus, at which point your'll note immediately that you need to move your left index finger slightly to get it out of the way of the infrared.
The menu system of the F300EXR is quite good. It's clear, easy to read, dark-gray/light-gray superimposed over whatever would otherwise be displayed on the LCD at the moment. The menu system of the ZS7, yellow-on-white, didn't seem quite as nice to me, but both/either will get the job done. One major irritant with both of these that could easily be rectified by the manufacturers is a missing feature that I have on my Olympus SP-570UZ, i.e. built-in verbose help pages/screens within the menu system. On the SP-570UZ, if you don't understand or are not sure about the function of some setting or another, you are just one tap away from a very helpful verbose English language description of the function of that setting. It's almost like carrying a condensed/abridged version of the manual around with you, only better. Why all digital cameras don't have this feature is beyond me. It really doesn't take up much memory OR require much programming and even the simplest digital cameras nowadays are so complex and have so many features and functions that most have manuals that go on for more than 100 pages. Are we supposed to MEMORIZE all that before sallying forth into the field to take pictures?? I think not. So put it in the camera! That way we can't lose it, like that bleedin' lens cap we haven't seen in the last five years.
The super deluxe let-me-do-it-all-for-you point-and-shoot automatic-everything modes on both cameras produced generally excellent results in a variety of situations and conditions. To my eye, auto-focus, auto-exposure, and auto white balance on both cameras pretty much always produced acceptable results, however as I've said, I am old-school, and where "auto with aperture priority" on small cameras such as these, where you can't really get thin depth of field no matter what you do (because the lenses are just too tiny), seem like an entirely useless/superfluous setting, I did feel the need to try auto with shutter priority on both cameras for various shots, just to keep the respective "intelligent" auto modes from mucking up the shot with excessively optimistic shutter speeds that wouldn't actually work in practice, especially handheld, towards the long ends of the zoom ranges.
Battery life on both the F300EXR and the ZS7 was beyond excellent, and seemed to me to be well beyond what you would ever need for any one sitting OR even for an entire short vacation. I mean who on earth takes 250+ shots in one sitting? I'm an old-school guy who grew up on film cameras and who always had to worry about running out of film. 8GB SDHC cards are dirt cheap, so if you get one of those, then really, in the modern digital era, the only thing you ever really need to worry about running out of is battery power. But as I say, with these cameras it seems like you don't even really need to worry about that much either. I'm paranoid, so I bought an extra (cheaper than Panasonic) third-party spare battery for the ZS7, and now I feel like an idiot for having done so, because really, I doubt that I'll ever even use it. I took about 100 shots on an all-day hike in Yosemite and I still had plenty of power left at the end of the day. Today I did my 31+ minute test movie, and even that didn't move the needle on the battery charge indicator... a rather surprising result given that modern video compression is known to be rather CPU (and power) intensive.
The two Olympus cameras I had before I bought these two shirt-pocket compacts were straightforward to get pictures and movies from, even when I was plugging them into my UNIX system. Both cameras just acted like a USB drive, with a FAT filesystem and so forth, and both could be "mounted" as a drive on UNIX or even,,, yecch... Windoze. I assumed that all digital cameras behaved this way nowadays, but I was disappointed to learn that the F300EXR doesn't work this way. Instead, it speaks some protocol called PTP. In order to get stuff directly off the camera (from FreeBSD) I was going to have to load some additional software and diddle several system settings. Blecch. I never did. Instead I just bought myself a cheapie SD/SDHC card reader. Problem solved. On the other hand, the ZS7 _does_ behave just like a USB drive, so I could just plug it in, mount it as a drive, and start pulling stuff off. I like that. It's simple.
The ZS7 has three features that definitely set it apart from the Fuji F300EXR, i.e. GPS, stereo sound recording, and the ability to record movies with some modern flavor of data compression, specifically AVCHD. Personally, I don't give a flying fig about the GPS. It's been set to off since I got the camera. (I _do_ already know what city I am in, thank you very much.) If I can ever figure out how to get actual GPS _coordinates_ out of the ZS7, and not just city names, then I will think that the GPS might have some usefulness, e.g. for the unlikely day I am lost in the forest with a satellite phone and need to tell my rescuers where I am. But as I have so far not seen any setting on the ZS7 that would give me raw GPS hours/minutes/seconds coordinates, I still don't see the GPS feature as being at all useful, even with the GPS picture-tagging feature. I mean hey! If I have a shot of Half Dome, I think I can remember that I took in in Yosemite. If I'm looking at a shot I took of the Eiffel Tower... well... umm... DUH! GPS is obviously just one of those techno bells and whistles that camera designers add just because they can, cheaply, and because the guys in the marketing departments think that it sounds techno-cool. There are at least half a dozen OTHER features that could be added to these kinds of cameras for one tenth the cost and that would actually help people to take better pictures, but those ones don't seem to make it into the designs for some reason. (See rant below.)
The ability to record stereo sound is likewise rather superfluous, in my opinion. I mean seriously, you have two microscopic microphones and they are sitting about 1/2 inch from one another. Do we really think that the left and right are going to hear anything significantly different from the other? If you do, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Lastly, the modern video compression and the AVCHD recording format actually were and are things that I really cared/care about and want/wanted. I just now did a 30+ minute 720p/30 test recording on the ZS7. (Yes, apparently the ZS7 _does not_ have the seemingly arbitrary 29 point something minute per movie time limit that some other digital cameras I've read about have.) Anyway, my little 31+ minute ZS7 720p/30fps test recording came out to just over 3.6GB on the SDHC card. That seems to me to be not too shabby, but as this is the first and only digital camera I've ever owned that can record HD or even SD movies, I really have nothing to compare it against. Oops! Wait a minute! I almost forgot the F300EXR!
OK so I did a 720p/24fps test recording using the F300EXR. I just shot for about 11 minutes. The resulting (AVI aka "motion JPEG") file size came out to about 1.25GB. So ummm... hummm... maybe the newer fancy schmancy compression of AVCHD ain't all that big of an advantage, filesize-wise, after all. I mean if you ignore the fact that one camera (ZS7) was recording 30 frames per second and the other one (F300EXR) was only recording 24fps, then the file sizes divided by the length of the recordings actually seem to come out to a fairly comparable number for either camera (and/or either type of compression used), i.e somewhat over 1GB per ten minutes of 720p recording. BUT WAIT! We need to consider the relative quality of the recordings also. I'll discuss and compare that below.
I should note also that for my two test movie recordings for the ZS7 and the F300EXR I had the cameras on a tripod, pointed in a fixed direction into my backyard, and there was no zooming. Many ducks and Canada geese wandered in and out of the frame during the recording, but other than that, the subject matter was certainly highly redundant/compressible. In short, if I had done these test recordings by just pointing the camera out of the side of a moving train, I think I could safely bet that the resulting video files would have been substantially bigger than these ones actually came out to be.
Oh! Did I mention that both the F300EXR and the ZS7 allow zooming during movies? (On the ZS7 you don't hear the zooming at all on the recording, but on the F300EXR you do, but just a little.)
As I alluded to above, both the ZS7 and the F300EXR can be connected to your big modern flat screen TV via a special HDMI cable. Neither camera ships with one of these, but the cables can be had for a few bucks each off Amazon. (Do I need to warn you to make sure you order the Right Kind for your specific camera?)
The ZS7 shoots all movies resolutions, including 720p, at 30 frames per second. The ZS7 gives a choice of recording in "motion JPEG" (AVI?) format, AVCHD format, or AVCHD format annotated with GPS info. The F300EXR shoots 720p only a 24 frames per second and will record only in motion JPEG (AVI) format. AVCHD definitely should, in theory at least, provide better and more modern compression and thus considerably smaller movie files. But see below.
My short 720p test recordings on the ZS7, when played back via my LG BD370 and Samsung 42 inch 720p plasma were OK, but not what I would call stunning as regards to clarity. Close ups of a cat in the garden who wasn't moving all that much were, ummm, acceptable, but it appears to me that when some of the branches (and leaves) of my local oak tree were in the shot, and when the leaves were moving on account of a passing breeze, or when I was panning or zooming, the complexity of the images was pushing the outer envelope of the video compression and/or the recording bit rate. The oak leaves definitely did not appear to me to be crystal clear. If you are not too critical, the the ZS7 will do just fine at 720p/30/ACVHD for your cat, your kids, or your family barbecue, and will definitely produce results that are likely better than any standard-def videocam, if only just.
I, for one, have never been a believer in the advantages of 1080 over 720 HD. Unless you routinely sit two feet away from your big flat screen with one of those 8 1/2 x 11 Fresnel sheet magnifiers, you are really never going to notice any advantage of 1080 over 720. For me, even my local stations, when viewed in 720p on my Samsung 720p plasma are sharp as a tack. 1080 HD is mostly just a marketing thing designed to separate consumers from their excess money.
I mention all this only because I want you to know that if you are expecting "broadcast quality" 720p from either the ZS7 or the F300EXR you ARE going to be disappointed. These pockatable cameras are just not going to give you the same clarity as a dedicated professional videocam costing 50 times as much. But like I say, these cameras will still give you acceptable video of the family barbecue. (These kinds of higher-end pocket digital cameras are really the modern equivalent of the old family 8mm camera of bygone days... but actually a bit less sharp, I'm sad to report.)
All that being said, the 720p/24fps recordings created by the F300EXR were definitely and obviously not in the same class as the 720p/30fps test recordings I did with the ZS7. And no, I do not think that this was just a matter of the difference in the frame rate. The test recordings from the ZS7 definitely appeared as if they had been shot with higher resolution, relative to the test recordings produced by the F300EXR. But don't get too excited. As I said above, neither of these cameras produces anything that could be mistaken for "broadcast quality" 720p. Still, in comparable 720p recordings, the ZS7 produces unambiguously and noticeably sharper and clearer results, relative to the F300EXR. (But I would be happy to take either camera, any day, and by a country mile, over any cellphone-cam.)
Other points on video recording...
The F300EXR apparently has a "feature" (aka bug) in the audio recording. I noticed this when I did some test recording in my backyard. Whenever the ducks and geese got really quiet and when the traffic noise from the nearby major arterial subsided, and when there were no planes overhead, in short when things got mostly quiet, the F300EXR apparently invoked some sort of demented auto level adjustment algorithm that causes the recording to go dead quiet, at least until the actual sound you are recording picks up a bit again. On playback, these dead quiet periods were really noticeable, and seemed, well, odd. The ZS7 has no such mis-feature.
I really wanted the ACVHD recording feature of the ZS7 because I have both an older Panasonic Blu-Ray player (DMP-BD60) and also a medium old LG Blu-Ray player (BD370) that both claimed to be able to play ACVHD, and I wanted to see if I could record some stuff in ACVHD format, burn it to a DVD, and then play it on one or both of these Blue-Ray players. Well, I can now report that I _have_ been able to do exactly this. I took two short 720p test recordings made in the ACVHD mode on the ZS7, used the software that came with the ZS7, copied the recordings to the hard drive on my Windoze7 system, and then used the software that came with the ZS7 to burn both recordings to a single DVD, and then popped that into my LG BD370, and it just worked, with even a little top-level menu that allowed me to select which of the two test recordings to play. That's the good news.
The bad news is that it was almost impossible to do all this because of at least a couple of really atrocious bugs in the Panasonic PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 HD software that came with the camera. The worst of these bugs was that on Windows7, at least, critical buttons like "next" and "back" and "ok" and "abort" that appear at various points during interaction with the software *are not even readable*!! I'm not kidding. The titles that should appear on these buttons actually display as black characters on a black background!! So I ended up having to look at the PDF of the camera manual, and at its screen shots of the software in operation, in order to deduce which of the several completely black buttons on the screen was actually the "back" button, which one was the "next" button, and so forth. Without the camera's PDF manual and its screen shots, the PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 HD software would have been totally un-navigable and thus totally useless, and I would not have been able to get my ACVHD recordings off the SDHC card OR subsequently burn them onto a DVD. In short, PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 HD is seriously broken. I groped around for a long time on Panasonic's web site and eventually found a version 5.2, downloaded it and tried to install it and the install process failed with some utterly mysterious and entirely uninformative error message. De-installing 5.1 before trying to install 5.2 made no difference. (Panasonic needs to hire some monkeys to test their camera-external software. Even a monkey could see that both PHOTOfunStudio 5.1 and PHOTOfunStudio 5.2 have critical flaws.) At the time of this writing I don't even know yet whether I will be able to even reinstall the 5.1 version successfully or not. At least I could get it to burn my ACVHD movies onto DVDs, albeit only while working around the unlabeled back/next/etc. buttons. But I can't even get 5.2 to install! Even stranger, Panasonic's web site talks about various 6.x versions of this same PHOTOfunStudio software, but I'll be bleeped if I can even find where they might be hiding those versions on their web server, let alone anything on the Panasonic web site that says what the differences might be between the different versions OR anything which lists which versions are compatible with which Lumix camera models.)
(NOTE: The ONLY reason I am giving the ZS7 four rather than five stars is because of all of these unforgivable external software snafus.)
Just a few final complaints about the Fuji F300EXR the ZS7, and probably every other pockatable digital camera currently on the market... (begin rant mode).
Firstly, I know these things are already both tiny and packed to the rafters with internal guts, but seriously, how hard would it be for thje manufacturers to add a little optical or digital viewfinder, or alternatively, in the absence of that, to make and sell a reasonably priced thing that fits over the LCD, shades it, and provides a small lens with a diopter adjustment? Despite the marketing hype, these LCDs are utterly useless in the presence of bright sun. You just can't frame a shot with the sun behind you. Just as importantly, it seems that everybody who designs these kinds of pocketable digitals is under the age of 45. I say that because obviously, not a single one of them knows the first thing about presbyopia. I am over 45, have presbyopia (like everybody else my age) and I can't be talking with my friends, ten feet in front of me, and then look down at the LCD on my camera, one foot in front of my face, and see it other than as a big blur, at least until I put my reading glasses back on, by which time I have missed the moment AND the shot. This sucketh. I've seen shade thingies on sale that fit over 3 inch LCDs and have little diaopter adjustable lenses, and these would be perfect for people like me and our pocket cameras, but alas, these things are mostly sold to the DSLR crowd and thus cost and arm and a leg. SOMEBODY should make and sell them for $19.95 (please?) That would still yield a 10,000% profit over manufacturing cost.
My (now ancient) Olympus C-5000 had a little optical viewfinder. That proves that it can be done, and indeed, that technology is actually regressing in some ways. the C-5000 had a viewfinder and that was 6+ years ago! This new generation of pockatable cameras, unlike my C-5000 from 6 years ago, are (a) useless in bright sun and (b) semi-useless to the 99.9% of people over age 45 who need/use reading glasses.
Another useful feature that my old C-5000 had that I seriously miss, and that I'm 100% sure would be dirt cheap to add to this current generation of pocket cameras was a tiny little infrared remote control. 2-second and 10-second delay timers just don't cut it if you want to get in the shot with all your pals AND have time to compose yourself and smile your best smile. Also, I want to be able to set my camera on the other side of the garden and then fire it remotely from inside the house when and if I see some wildlife passing right in front of it. Again, technology is regressing. I had a remote control 6+ years ago. Now I don't. :-( Why? They are cheap to make and the IR camera sensor already has to be there anyway, for the IR-based auto-focus assist.
More absent features...
It's too bad the designers of the current generation of pockatables are all boxed into the amateur "snapshot" mindset. I guess that we should be grateful that they at least include tripod mounts on these cameras, even if only as an afterthought. But come on! If you are going to build a camera with a tripod mount, then it is almost idiotic that the user can't even tell the whole "intelligent auto" fly-by-wire almost-artificial-intelligence master brain/computer that "Hey! We are tripod mounted now, so you, camera-brain, can automagically select slower shutter speeds and thus, correspondingly lower auto-computed ISO settings (for less noise)." In short, there should be a "tripod mounted" setting which will modify the settings selected by the "intelligent auto" system. (It doesn't count as "intelligent" if the camera doesn't know what even the stupidest human knows, i.e. that the camera is tripod mounted and thus more stable and jitter-free.) In a similar/related vein, why can't these designers of pockatable cameras include some facility for plugging in the electronic equivalent of a good old fashioned shutter-release cable, you know, for when you are tripod mounted AND when you want to do shutter release without even touching... or jiggling... the camera? I was able to buy a cheapie third-party "electronic" shutter-release thingy for my semi-old SP-570UZ and it worked like a charm and was dirt cheap. It plugs into the SP570UZ's USB connector, so no extra precious camera surface area was needed in the design of this on the camera side. This is SOOOOOO technically trivial, and yet so useful to anybody who really cares about getting a rock-solid non-blurred shot that it is a travesty for ANY digital camera not to have support for this kind of optional external accessory. I mean it's like buying an expensive BMW and then looking down where the cigarette lighter should be and just seeing an empty hole. Dumb. Really dumb.
More stuff I wish I could have...
Connectors: Now that these pockatable cameras are getting big zooms and other higher-end features, how about thinking outside of the box and providing just some cheap/easy but potentially extremely useful connectors, specifically (a) a good old fashioned flash "sync cord" socket and/or (b) a micro phone jack / TRS jack where an external stereo microphone could be plugged in? Either of these would be technically trivial and dirt cheap to add, so how about it manufacturers?
You manufacturers really don't have to worry about these extra features causing "cannibalization" of your higher-end (and more expensive) DSLR or super-zoom bridge camera lines for the simple reason that the markets for these things are just plain DIFFERENT MARKETS. Anybody planning a trip deep into the amazon rain forest and who wants the best photos he can get IS going to buy a DSLR, no matter what nice little tweaks he can get on a pocket portable. Conversely, anybody going into the jungle and who just wants some snapshots to take home is NOT going to spring for a DSLR or an expensive bridge camera... or be willing to carry the extra weight... just so he can get an external mic jack or an electronic shutter release. Different markets. 'nuff said.
Here endith the lesson.
Other than the above nits, I actually love both the F300EXR and the ZS7. They are both stunning and phenomenal pieces of engineering. But of the two, the ZS7 is the one I will be keeping.

P.S. One other small nit about digital cameras generally and the ZS7 and F300EXR specifically. All the digital cameras I've ever owned, including these two news ones are all apparently too stupid to even know which way is up. Literally. Can't you manufacturers fix this?? iPhones seem to always know which way is up, so why can't all digital cameras?
(Like many of the comments above, the following comments are addressed to the camera manufacturers.)
Look, this is very simple guys. Every JPEG file has a built-in orientation and thus, a built in "upper left" corner. So why is it that when I take my digital camera and orient it vertically, you know, as in "portrait" orientation versus "landscape" orientation, and then I take a shot and then load the JPEG onto my PeeCEE and then try and view the thing, the picture shows up on my screen lying on its side, rather than oriented properly? This is definitely YOUR FAULT for not writing the JPEG file in way so that it will have proper (gravity based?) orientation.
This is beyond stupid, particularly because I know for a fact that both the ZS7 and the F300EXR do in fact know which way is up, and they just aren't using that information properly. I know they know which way is up, because in default factory settings on both, when I play back any JPEG that was shot "portrait" (vertical) it shows on the LCD in ``proper'' orientation, i.e. holding the camera normally (horizontal orientation) and then playing back a vertical-orientation shot, these cameras re-orient the images so that they appear on the LCDs vertically, and with big wide black bands on either side. To accomplish this, obviously both cameras must be adding some sorts of annotations to all JPEGs they produce which indicate whether the shot was taken horizontally or vertically. So the cameras do know which was is "up" for any given shot. And they even save notes about that for each shot/JPEG. Unfortunately, both cameras are too dumb to simply arrange for the JPEGs themselves to be oriented properly, based on which was is up and which way is down at the time the shot was taken. That's dumb. Really dumb.
P.P.S. Lowepro Ridge 30 cases fit either of the cameras described above perfectly. DO NOT try to get a Ridge 20, based on the interior size specs and the exterior size specs for these cameras. First, you will have trouble finding a Ridge 20, because apparently, they don't make them anymore. And as I learned, even if you get one, you will wish you hadn't, because they are so tight that it will be a chore getting either of these cameras in or out of the case. Go with the Ridge 30, which is just slightly roomier, and thus perfect for either of these cameras.