FZ150 System error. (1 Viewer)

Two days into a trip to Turkey and my wife's FZ 150 has gone on strike.

When the camera is switched on, there is the sound of the zoom hunting (it is stuck in a partly extended position) and at first the view on the screen or viewfinder appears normal, but after a few seconds the screen goes black and the message 'SYSTEM ERROR (ZOOM)' appears. When the camera is switched off the lens hunts again,, but remains jammed in its partly extended position.

We;ve tried leaving the battery out for a while ad when I tryto restore factory settings the error message appears before there is time to do anything.

Has anyone any information on this fault?

For future reference to FZ150 owners, I contacted Panasonic a couple of days ago and they replied today, saying that a reset might work, but since I'd tried that and failed because of the error message coming up so quickjly, then I should contact them with a view to sending the camera in for repair. Not very handy when we're still in Turkey.

Their reply gave me a feeling that maybe this fault wasn't unknown to them and it gave me the motivation to have another go.

I tried and failed about 20 times to get into the reset command before the black-out, but eventually I managed to hit the reset - to no avail.

I tried some more, then as I flicked through the settings options, working against time I came across on page 4 a command for Lens Resume.

I didn't have a clue what it meant but after a few more abortive attemts I was quick enough to get into it and set it before the black out.

It worked. The camera switches on normally and will be field tested in the morning.

The error reporting on this camera is a total mess. If the error message appearing prevents the correction of the error in question, what is the bloody point?