Lumix TZ7 Reviews
Panasonic Lumix TZ7 Reviews
5/5 – Fantastic purchase – ideal for travelling
Fantasic camera that packs in many features into a small body with a 12x Optical Zoom that can be up to 48x with Digital Zoom added in ‘Normal Mode’.
The Digital Zoom feature is not available in the Intelligent Auto mode but the ‘Normal Mode’ (available on the mode selector dial) has many customisable features such as Quality, Sensitivity, White Balance, AF More, Metering Mode, Intelligent Exposure, and Min. Shutter Speed amongst others.
After having used the camera for a number of days I cannot fault it. It has received many excellent reviews on the Internet from many sites and it seems to live up to all of these so far.
Video recording can be performed with either the AVCHD Lite mode or Motion JPEG (which produces Quicktime .mov files). After trying taking movies in both modes I can say so far that the AVCHD Lite produces better quality footage. You can shoot up to 15 mins at a time and the manual recommends that you have a Class 6 SDHC card so that there are no errors when writing to the memory card. There is a dedicated record button on the rear of the camera so you can take footage very quickly.
Using the camera is very easy and the built-in menus are very simple to use. There are 27 individual modes to choose from including Fireworks, Aerial, Baby, Food, Beach, Snow, Starry Sky (with shutter speed selection of up to 60 sec), Sunset, Candle Light, Sports, Scenery, Night Scenery and Underwater (when used with the optional underwater case) and others.
The buttons feel very well built and the mode dial on the top is easy to use. Some Internet reviews did state that the wheel can be dislodged easily so that it can move out of the current mode – this has happened a few times when it is a case or pocket but is not a serious problem at all since you can just turn the dial back to the required mode. When you turn the dial you feel it ‘click’ slightly when it moves into another mode so that you can be sure which mode you are in. The LCD screen also shows which mode you are in when you turn the dial.
The camera comes very well packaged in a small, neat box which contains all the usual accessories (battery, wrist strap, battery case, charger, AV cable, USB cable, printed instruction manual for camera and supplied software as well as a software CD). The camera does not come with a case, screen protector, SDHC card or the HDMI AV cable but these can be purchased separately.
Overall I would give this camera 5 out of 5 and the powerful, compact zoom makes this a fantastic travelling camera and the 25mm wide angle lens makes a massive difference when taking landscape shots.
There are many images that I and other TZ7 owners have taken that are currently available on Flckr including a Group dedicated to TZ7 photos so they can give you a very good idea of the power of this camera.
5/5 – Hard to fault, all things considered
To get the best photos, you obviously need an SLR and some great lenses. Hmm. Well, I have an SLR and some great lenses, but I tend to leave them at home when I go on a trip.
So I bought this TZ7 to take with me when I can’t be bothered to take my SLR, which is nearly all the time. The TZ7 is small enough to go in a jacket pocket, or to hang unobtrusively from your belt. But is it good enough for anyone used to the quality of an SLR?
For me it is good enough, as long as you adjust your expectations. Which you have to do when you have such a small camera with a 25 to 300 zoom. Try getting a 25 to 300 zoom for an SLR! Even more amazing is that it’s a very decently sharp lens. It’s a little bit less than razor sharp at the extremes of the zoom range, but almost all my shots came out nice and sharp (but not too sharp, meaning the camera isn’t over-processing things).
So the lens is good, and since the lens is the TZ7’s party piece, that’s a good thing.
Next on the list of killer features is HD video. This is 720p video, not `full’ HD, but what do you expect? The great thing is that you can use the optical zoom while taking video, which is rare in these cameras. It zooms slowly so the noise of the zoom isn’t picked up by the microphone but works very well. You get stereo sound too, and the quality of the sound is way ahead of any camera like this I’ve tried before. You might think that you wouldn’t get proper stereo with microphones so close together, but it does a decent impersonation of it. Videos look pretty good, with the image stabiliser smoothing things out even at full zoom. Hold it carefully and it looks like you’re using a tripod. You will need a decent computer and graphics card to play HD video though, or a compatible HD TV. You may need to buy an HDMI cable since you don’t get one in the box.
The next great thing is the LCD. It has 460,000 pixels and looks fantastic. It even brightens and dims automatically depending on the ambient light, and you can see it from any angle, so Panasonic’s ‘high angle mode’ is no longer necessary.
If you know what you’re doing you can use the good smattering of `manual’ features to good effect. I’m not talking about changing the aperture or shutter speed, but you can adjust exposure compensation, bracketing, white balance, ISO etc. You can set auto ISO to not go higher than 400 or 800, which is useful since things look less than great above ISO400.
If you can’t be bothered with all that, set the mode dial to iA (intelligent auto) and leave everything to the camera. It works remarkably well, and you’ll see the symbol change in the top corner of the LCD to tell you what scene it thinks you’re taking. It even automatically goes into macro mode when set to iA.
But I use mine mostly in standard mode, and I keep the ISO to 80 for the very best results.
One of the best things about the TZ7 is the superb auto exposure system that gets the exposure spot on in an amazing variety of challenging situations that would completely fool my other cameras. Reliable auto-exposure, top-notch image stabilisation, really quick and accurate autofocus, a great LCD… these are the things that give you the confidence to pack the TZ7 as your only camera on a trip.
There must be downsides though… mustn’t there? Not many, to be honest, unless you expect the unreasonable, like good performance at ISO1600, or in very low light. The TZ7 doesn’t overcome the laws of physics.
But minor niggles for me are that there’s a physical switch between record and playback mode, so unlike some cameras, you can’t just half-press the shutter to get to record mode if you’re in playback mode. Also, I’d prefer to have the metering options in the quick menu, which is otherwise very useful for changing settings. Face recognition I think is little more than a gimmick and one I couldn’t get to work reliably. Face detection works very well though.
Actually, there is one other thing, and it’s the battery. The TZ7 uses a battey with a Panasonic microchip in it. If you want a spare battery, and you probably will, since battery life is just average (HD video seems to sap battery life quite quickly), you’ll have to buy a proper Panasonic one, and they’re quite expensive. Third party batteries won’t work, at least for now. I nearly knocked off the fifth star because of this.
But the bottom line is that the TZ7 captures sharp, well-exposed images pretty much all the time with the minimum of fuss. I like mine very much indeed.