Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 froze on me today - anybody know why?
 

I was taking some snapshots with my point & shoot Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 with a 12x optical zoom.

All of a sudden when I press the shutter button down, the screen went blank, all the icons were showing, & the camera just froze. I tried to turn it off & on but nothing happened. The lens would not retract. So I put the switch in the off position, & just put it in my bike bag, I had to be somewhere & did not have time to mess with it then & there.

When I got back to my car with my bike, opened the bag with the camera in it, & the lens had retracted.

I then later turned it on & off, & everything seemed normal, the last shot it froze on did not take, but everything else for that day, video & photos were still there on the card.

I tried taking a couple of snapshots, & it seemed normal, but I did notice it was a bit slow to process the picture & return to the screen.

what happened? I have only had this camera since July of this year. I am using a sandisk class 4 8gb SD card. I looked at the manual & it did say for shooting video a class 6 or higher card would be best. I was using the card that came with the camera, as I had spent a bit & did not feel like buying a whole new card right away. I have been shooting video & photos without problems up until this one incident.

other than that I have not done anything out of the ordinary with the camera. I have kept it clean & in a bag. It was a bright sunny day, & I was taking bright sunset shots when this happened, but I have taken photos like this before. Does a full or near full memory card cause problems like this? I do have a bit of material on it. Perhaps this affects the write or memory buffers or something like this?

So I am a little nervous & not sure what to do next, is the camera faulty? or do I need a different memory card?

It sounds like the battery is low. Recharge it.

I will try a recharge, but I believe the battery was fully charged, it was not low, or at least it showed full capacity on the LCD screen.

If that camera is anything like my cell phone, the battery meter is a liar. :)

that's weird, how am I supposed to keep track of the battery? or know when to recharge? that is like the broken gas gauge in one of our cars.

does anybody think this did some sort of damage to the camera?

If it's just a dead battery, then no, I doubt it would be damaged in any way. Cameras generally have safeguards built in to prevent operation of a task that will require more juice than what is available in the current battery. I constantly push my Nikon cameras to empty batteries, all the way to the point where the body locks up and won't let me do anything at all. Then I swap them, and all is well again. Remember that 100% draining a rechargeable battery is how they're designed to be used -- a recharge at 50% use will actually diminish the life of the battery, and it can also screw with the meter than shows life still present.

Yes, just like the gas gauge. In my car, it's about 3/4ths gone when the needle is on half full. I think it's the way the tank is designed (geometry), and where the measuring device sits in it. A battery is probably not all that different.

Just recharge and try again.