The obvious attraction of the Panasonic DMC FZ18 is its 18x optical zoom lens. This is one of the first digital cameras to increase the lens length on a consumer digital camera beyond 12x. The lens is supported by image stabilisation to help cut down on any camera shake caused by the added weight of the lens. The DMC FZ18 also hosts a number of manual controls and settings and is based on the lines of a digital SLR camera. In fact it is one of the most feature packed cameras you can buy. It has 8 megapixels.