(Yahoo! FZ10 group, 28 April 2004)...
{In response to the question `Has anyone noticed that it is harder to get the camera to focus if you turn it? It seems to like to be horizontal rather than vertical.'}
I can remember that the FZ10 autofocus detects vertical contrasts which are very common in every scene, and when you turn the FZ, it must use horizontal contrast detection which are less efficient.