Doug Wilcox (alternate photo-gallery) (Yahoo!, FZ10 group, 17 April 2004)...
{Doug was told this trick by his friend Helen in England} ...if you tweak the zoom control towards tele as it switches on, it stops it from doing that lengthy `drawing in' of internal elements to start up at 1x zoom, and instead zooms to whatever point you select with the zoom control.
{Picture below taken by Doug Wilcox with FZ10 through a crystal ball.}