I have a friend on another social site that posted some outdoor videos of his hiking in Vermont.  He posted videos from every season and they were awesome.  Then I realized that he was zooming while recording.  So I asked him if he was using a camcorder.  He said no that it was a simple pocket camera. 

Now, we've had some brand X's and Y's and they all had a video mode but none of them allowed us to zoom while recording.  So I had to ask the friend what pocket camera allowed zooming in/out while recording and he said he had a Panasonic DMC-TZ3.

Well the rest is history.  Brand X and Y have been passed on to others and now I have a DMC-TZ5 that I absolutely love.  So now we go out and take pictures and HD videos of nature.

We've found where the local mob of Cormorants roost at night and compete for the best spots, where the beavers cruise the banks and the geese hide their young.  We've followed a hybrid geese family (part domestic and part Canadian) from hatchlings to young adults.  Next year they will be ready to find their own mates.

And, of course, there are flowers, leaves, pine cones, tree bark, roots, grasses, and frogs and turtles and snakes too!

Oh yean! and the adolesent white tailed doe tearing up a garden, while she is enjoying lots of yummy things to eat.

And of course there are the various marmots, sparrows, swallows, robins, squirrles and assorted gulls thrown in too.

So I guess you can say that I am un-ashamedly a fan-boy of the DMC-TZ series of Panasonic pocket cameras.