21 out of 21 people found this review helpful.
Pocketable10x zoom. Had to change color settings for best results.
Date of Review: Dec 27, 2006
The Bottom Line: Pocketable 10x stabilized lens!!! Very useful for distant subjects (e.g. at zoo). Default color balance too cool/blue for my tastes; though adjustable, the setting is buried deep in menu.
10x stabilized zoom. Fits into shirt pocket.
If you want these features, your only choices are to buy this camera, or its successor the TZ3, which also has a 10x zoom, but starts with a wider field of view - 28mm versus 35mm. (The TZ3 wasn't available yet when I bought the TZ1, which is why I didn't consider it.)
However, I almost returned this camera in the first week because the photos just weren't as attractive as those from other cameras I've used (by Canon, Sony, Ricoh, Minolta, and Kodak). Then I set the color effect to "warm" and realized that the Panasonic's default white balance is slightly cooler (bluer) than other brands. Actually, it's more accurate to say that the Panasonic tends to be neutral, while the others produced slightly warm colors (which I prefer).
Once I changed the color setting, I was much happier, as the rest of the camera's features are extremely good. Unfortunately, the "warm" setting sometimes overcompensates (especially early morning and late afternoon) making photos too reddish. The setting is not the most convenient - it is buried in page 3 of the menu, and can only be on or off, with nothing in between.
Still, this camera's good features more than make up for its shortcomings with color tone. I should also mention that color preferences are highly subjective - some people like the cooler colors (though probably a minority opinion), so you should figure out your own preferences before deciding if the Panasonic's colors are an issue or not.
Aside from the color issue, I'm very impressed with this camera. Two years ago I had a Canon S1-IS, which I liked a lot, and I'm amazed that this camera has very similar features (10x stabilized zoom, high quality zoom-able movie mode) in a MUCH smaller package and at a LOWER price. The old Canon could never fit in my shirt pocket, whereas this one fits easily.
The rest of this review lists my point-by-point thoughts on this camera's individual features. Although I will be rather critical, it should also be clear that this versatile camera is worth the occasional quirks.
The 10x zoom lens
The zoom range is equivalent to 35-350mm on a standard 35mm film camera. Hence, like most compact cameras, it can't go as wide as the 28mm SLR standard, meaning this camera isn't ideal for landscapes and architecture where a wide view can be extremely helpful. Conversion lenses/adapters are not available for this camera, so if you value wide views, you should look at the TZ3, whose 10x zoom starts at 28mm.
Despite its huge range, the lens performs well, with an impressive f/2.8 aperture at the 35mm end. Compared to my old Canon S1-IS, sharpness and purple fringing levels are similar. In other words, the lens loses some sharpness and is prone to purple fringing around bright objects at maximum zoom, but this is not terrible at normal viewing sizes. However, Panasonic's aggressive noise reduction can remove fine details, an effect that is more noticeable at higher zoom levels.
As for purple fringing, it can be noticeable at maximum zoom, but is removable with a free Photoshop plugin called "PFree" (found here: http://www.sd3.info/pf828/PFree/PFree0-1.html).
Other optical defects, like red-green (lateral) chromatic aberration are amazingly low.
Almost as important as the long zoom is the excellent image stabilization. The stabilization routinely gives me sharp photos at 350mm and 1/80 sec shutter, and I can usually manage 1/8 sec or slower at the 35mm end. This is a big help with still subjects in low light. However, image stabilization will NOT help with moving subjects, and actually makes things worse by enticing you to use slower shutters (greatly blurring moving subjects).
One thing I dislike about the zoom is that it takes 3 seconds for the zoom motor to move from wide angle to max telephoto. This contrasts with my other digicam (a Ricoh Caplio R3), which takes only 1 second to go from 28mm to 200mm (a 7x range). If I want to quickly zoom in on something, often the moment is gone by the time the motor is done moving.
Autofocus
I have mixed results here. At wide angle, the autofocus is excellent; it's even accurate in total darkness with its autofocus assist lamp. But at maximum zoom, good focus requires strong sunlight, and even then it may miss. Indoors and on cloudy days, focusing is tricky, although it helps to use spot metering, where you can control exactly what object to focus on.
Movie mode
I love this camera's movie mode, and it's especially nice (and rare) that the optical zoom works while recording. The zoom motor is almost completely inaudible in the recorded audio, so you should have no fear of zooming to your heart's content.
Movie resolution is good (640x480 VGA). Some compression artifacts are visible, but they are not as bad as many other digicams. For example, the Canon S80 is worse, and some Sony digicams are also worse. However, files are larger than average, consuming 75 MB per minute. You can reduce the file sizes by reducing the resolution and/or framerate, but then movies look jerky and pixellated. A better way to reduce file sizes is to re-compress the files to DIVX format. To do this, I first convert the original movie (in MOV format) to AVI format using the freeware "RadTools" (http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm), and then edit/convert the AVI file using the excellent freeware editor "VirtualDub" (www.virtualdub.org). There are also commercial programs (e.g. Nero) that can do the conversion in one step.
LCD screen
The LCD is superb. Resolution is 207,000 pixels, a noticeable improvement over many cameras with ~100k pixels. The update rate is rapid and smooth. But like most LCDs, its hard to see in bright sunlight, even at max brightness.
Dumb scene modes
At the beginning of this review, I mentioned my strong preference for the "warm" color setting. Strangely, ALL color settings revert to default in ALL scene modes. Because scene modes are the only way to influence shutter speed and aperture, it is impossible to control color balance at the same time as aperture/shutter. Very limiting.
Incidentally, there are no less than 18 scene modes and though a couple of them are useful to me (sports and portrait) most seem unnecessary and poorly explained. A few are downright incomprehensible. For example, "Food" mode is explained as: "For taking pictures of food". Can a description be any less helpful? The instruction manual is only marginally better, explaining: "This (food) mode allows you to take pictures of food with a natural hue without being affected by ambient light in restaurants". So if "Food" mode compensates for indoor lighting, why isn't it just called "Indoor lighting mode"? For the record, I tried "Food" mode, and couldn't see any difference from the default. Other scene modes, like "Party", "Baby1" and "Baby2" are just as opaque.
The oil painting effect
Panasonic uses aggressive noise reduction that also flattens away some image detail. This has been heavily discussed online, and I initially thought this would be the camera's fatal flaw. As it turns out, most images turn out all right. Nonetheless, at ISO 200 and higher, the camera's effective resolution seems more like 2-4MP, instead of the full 5MP. That's still enough for most prints, but finely textured items, like grass and foliage, are affected more than other items, and may be noticeably affected even at normal viewing sizes and ISO 80. Overall, the oil painting problem is less severe than I originally thought, but it can be a problem if you crop and enlarge, or take many photos of fine textures. I would really like an option to turn noise reduction off, as 3rd party noise reduction programs (NoiseWare, NeatImage, NoiseNinja) are vastly superior to Panasonic's in-camera noise-reduction.
Miscellaneous
Battery life is neither astoundingly good nor abysmally bad. I get 200-300 photos per charge, less than my other digicam (the Ricoh Caplio R3) but still enough for a day of traveling. The battery charger has a nice compact design in which the prongs flip out of the back of the charger, so there is no long cord to get tangled or damaged.
Summary:
Despite this camera's flaws, pictures are for the most part very good and the camera is quite a joy to use. Although you won't always need the 10x zoom, it's awesomely handy in places like zoos where you can't get close to your subject. The lens' optical quality is quite good, and the stabilization gives at least 2 stops of increased hand-holdability in my experience.
The major gripe I had with this camera, color balance, is mostly correctable. The "warm" color setting produces results I like much better, and looks closer to what other camera brands like Canon produce by default. However, the color settings sometimes overcompensate, are cumbersome to adjust, and cannot be used at all in the scene modes.
Other reviews have noted the aggressive noise reduction, which makes photos look like oil-paintings at high ISO. I found the problem was usually acceptable, but reduced the effective resolution from 5 MP to around 2-4 MP. Fortunately, that's still enough for most purposes, except for finely textured objects, which can be affected even more severely.
