About three years ago I bought a Panasonic Lumix digital camera. What a beauty it was – and still is. But I just happened upon its younger, slimmer, more beautiful and much smarter little sister, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS4, and I am smitten.

Yes, I know there are even “better” cameras out there. But for $130, this is absolutely the best bang for your buck.

Let’s cover the major points:

The 8.1 megapixel picture resolution seems close to a billion times better than your cell phone’s 0.3 megapixels. Your pictures will be in JPEG format, and your choice of 3264 x 2448, 3264 x 2176, 3264 x 1840, 2560 x 1920, 2048 x 1536, 2048 x 1360, and 1920 x 1080.

Take video (with audio, of course) in QuickTime MJPEG format at three different resolutions: QVGA 320 x 240, VGA 640 x 480, and WVGA 848 x 480 (widescreen).

The lithium battery pack lasts about 400 pictures. I guess that depends on how many videos you shoot, as well, and how much you use the camera for playback. In my opinion, the rechargeable battery pack is not as nice as popping in some fresh AA batteries at a moment’s notice, but I’ll adapt.

Picture stabilization is great, saving countless pictures from the inherent shakiness that quick snapshots tend to otherwise yield.

Not to get in to the nitty gritty of each one, this little beauty has pre-programmed settings named for a myriad of special lighting and framing circumstances. Clues are in the program names: Pet, Food, Snow, Baby1, Baby2, Beach, Candle, Sunset, Fireworks, Landscape, Soft skin, Starry sky, Flash-burst, Night scene, Sports mode, Aerial photo, Party/indoor, Portrait mode, Self-portrait, Hi-speed burst, Night portrait, and High sensitivity.

Additional built-in special effects include Cool, Warm, Sepia, Vivid, and Black & White.

Shutter speed can be set from an alarming range of 1/2000 of a second all the way to 60 seconds!

There’s a built-in flash with 4 modes, and light sensitivity can be set at ISO 80, ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 1000, ISO auto, and ISO auto (1600-6400) – but that last one is pushing your luck in a dark room.

Internal memory of 50 MB can capture pictures and video that can be transferred later to a large memory MultiMediaCard or SD Memory Card. I use a 2 GB SD card and download the content to my iMac every week or so to keep the card empty and ready for lots of new video.

So not to sound like a total nerd, I won’t get into the specs of the excellent lens system other than to point out that you can shoot clearly from 5 cm to infinity.

Some yada-yada points: DPOF support, Direct print, Face detection, Scene detection, Built-in speaker, PictBridge support, USB 2.0 compatibility, Backlight compensation, RGB primary color filter, 2.5″ color LCD display, Continuous shooting mode, and 4 White balance presets.

Get one.