Customer Reviews

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1A 5MP Compact Digital Camera with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Blue)

5 star:		(103)
4 star:		(41)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

PLUS - Attractive design, clean layout. Conforms to hand well. Blk/Blue/Silver colors. Easy menu system. Crisp 2.5" LCD. Compact 10x zoom with IS. Fast operation! Excellent value!

MINUS - Weak audio recording (8 bit, 8 Khz, Mono). Limited manual controls. Only F4.2 Aperture at full zoom. Warranty - 90 days labor. Has to boost ISO in low light to compensate for flash.

SUMMARY - While it seemed innovation in digital cameras was slowing down, Panasonic keeps driving forward. With a volume of 16 cu. inches, it surpasses the Coolpix S4 (16.6) as the smallest ultra zoom camera. Held before by the Olympus C-770 (26.6) which I also own. Even at full zoom the lens extends out only 0.55" (14 mm). I'd recommend visiting the Panasonic product website as they have good details on the features of the camera. Such as, quick startup (less than a second to power on), quick focusing, long battery life (despite a small 3.7V 1000 mAh battery), and high sensitivity modes, mostly all improved with new Venus III engine. The battery charges up in only ~2 hours with a very small charger that has a fold down AC plug.

Very nice LCD display: 2.5" with 207K pixels. Wide horizontal viewing angle. Has a High Angle mode which works well to see the display above your head. Easy to access boost mode which helps outdoors and it does "gain" up for low-light. No reflective coating, however this does not cause a problem since the display is viewed straight on. May want to invest in a clear protective sheet to limit scratches.

A few gripes: Given the fact it records good video, why do they have it record sound in low quality? The built-in microphone does pick up sounds okay, however you do notice a difference compared to cameras such as the Canon S2 and Olympus C-770, which record in 16 bit, 44.1 Khz, stereo. With a 2 GB card you can record only ~20 minutes of high quality video. It would have been nice if Panasonic had built-in a better video codec, like MPEG4 to keep the file size down. If you're inclined, save the video to your computer and run it through an encoder such as Windows Media Encoder or QuickTime 7. You can shrink down the 20 minute video to ~150 MB without much loss in video quality. Granted this does require a CPU with some horsepower.

The tradeoff with the lens design is that it does not have a wide range of aperture settings (F2.8 - F4.2), thereby causing some limitation in light gathering ability and depth of field ability. Other long zooms can open up to F3.7 at full tele. It only adjusts to it's minimum setting of F7.1 in very bright scenes. Although when you compare to other cameras in this size, the apertures are not bad. In regards to noise, there is minimal occurence at ISO 80/100. It increases as you move up, however it never seems to balloon out of control, even at ISO 800 or 1600. Granted it's noisy, but you can clean it up with a program like NeatImage. Also, you can open up the shutter for night shots to 1, 8, 15, 30, or even 60 seconds.

The flash is physically small and adequate in output. Seems to have decent coverage (not quite as good as the Oly C-770 which had a dual range pop-flash). However to compensate for the limited output it will boost the ISO to 200 or 400 which makes for a more grainy picture (a well-lit room may keep it at ~125). There also could be red-eye problems here (if you don't use the red-eye reducing flash mode). With Image Stabilization, you can utilize more natural light shots w/o having to resort to the flash as often.

A few tweaks: I'd recommend adjusting the picture quality from "Fine" (default) to "Normal". This will compress the image down to around 1.1 MB, however there is minimal loss in quality. There are three picture modes to use: Natural, Standard, & Vivid. Each mode progressively increases the sharpness and contrast of the image at the expense of noise. Natural will display a smooth image with more neutral colors; Vivid will make the image sharper and colors will stand out, at the expense of some additional noise. I was using Vivid, however it may saturate colors more than I like. Also, there is an economy mode that will turn off the display after 15 seconds of inactivity and during flash recharge. This seems to work well since the display instantly powers on with a touch of any button.

Accessories are hard to find right now, however the only one I'd get is the spare battery. A 512 MB SD card is very inexpensive now and even the supported maximum 2 GB card is a drop in the hat (limited to 2 GB due to FAT16 file system).

With a current street price of $300, Panasonic expects to sell a lot of these. In fact, given the features and performance, it will likely take sales away from it's other models. I'd highly recommend this to both beginner and expert users!

RECOMMENDED BAG - Search for the "LowePro Rezo 50". It's a great fit for this camera.

We had a Lumix FZ20 with a 12x zoom, which we loved to death except for three major downfalls -- it was big and clunky, it was slow to focus and wouldn't focus at all sometimes, and it had a major noise problem in lighting that never bothered our previous cameras. When we heard that the TZ1 would give us a 10X zoom at 1/3 the size and without focusing problems, we obsessed for months waiting for it to hit the market. We've now had our TZ1 for a few months and have taken 2 long vacations and about 2,500 photos with it. Here's our expansive list of thoughts...

Incredible: Having a 10x zoom that can go in a standard small case from Target and can be tossed in a daybag or purse.

Great: Panasonic has improved their focus system and added a focus assist light, and the old focus struggles are gone. The time needed to lock in a shot and capture it is now fast and accurate, and capturing subjects in low light isn't a problem any longer. What a relief.

Life Saver: How did we ever live without image stabilization? Panasonic started this movement, and now many other brands are using it. When utilizing the full 10X zoom, this feature is just plain necessary without a tripod.

Amazing: The macro/close-up mode allows you to get close enough to a bee that a 4X6 photo is all bee and the veins in its wings are crisp and clear. Our photos show things on raspberries that we couldn't even see with our naked eye. This feature, more than any other, makes people say, "What kind of camera do you have?!"

Major Downfall: Our greatest joy in this camera is the 10X zoom. But it has also proven to be our greatest disappointment because it is unusable over large distances. We didn't have this problem with our larger FZ20, and we can only assume that it's because the TZ1 lens is about 1/3 the size. If you want to zoom in on your child 25 feet from the water's edge, or a bird 15 feet up in a tree, you're in business. But if you want to zoom in on a mountain top, or crop a scenic vista, you'll be greeted with print quality that rivals the old 110 film format of 1980. Everything gets fuzzy and washed out, as if the photo was taken through a window with the sun bouncing off it.

Marjor Downfall 2: For some reason, Panasonic can't seem to get past their problems with noise in less-than-optimal lighting conditions. We've owned Pentax, Olympus, and Minolta cameras and never had this problem with them. Outdoor photos at dusk, night photos with a subject more than 6 or so feet away, and indoor photos in a room larger than about 10X10 all turn into a grainy, spotted mess. The "starry night" setting helps in specific circumstances, like shooting a city skyline at night, but there's still some noise to spare. And if there's anything red in the shot, forget it. You can manually lock in a lower ISO to counteract this effect, but then you get a photo that's too dark to use anyway -- not to mention that the whole purpose of a point-and-shoot camera is to eliminate manually setting things.

Unnecessary Hassle: While the menu system is easy to navigate, we wish we had to use it much less. The scene mode wheel at the top includes only three of the usual suspects (auto, macro, and movie) and leaves out all other obvious modes that should be at your fingertips (portrait, scenery, sport, night portrait [flash] and night scenery [no flash]). Reaching any of these requires digging through the menu. There are two "open" settings on the wheel that you can pre-set to these choices, but two isn't enough and those "open" spots would be much better utilized with unusual/personalized settings like baby (records your child's age to the day), underwater, etc.

Hassle Saver: In contrast to the bizarre shortage of settings available on the mode wheel, there is an extremely handy dedicated button for adjusting the exposure value. Too much sun? Too much shadow? Without having to go into the menu, you can bump the exposure up or down, one to three increments at a time, to achieve the balance you want.

Worry Saver: There's a great review setting that not only plays back your shot for a couple seconds after recording it, but also zooms in on it for a couple seconds to show what your quality will be after printing at 4X6. We used to think things looked fine on the little screen, then realized they were blurry after reaching print size. Now we know right away if we need to retake the photo.

Good and Bad: The 2.5-inch screen is big and wonderful, and it does a better job of gaining up and down than our previous digitals have. However, it's still hard to see in bright sunlight and we often gamble on whether we framed a shot as we wanted. The biggest inconvenience is that we often don't find out until later that we took some blurry or overexposed photos.

Irritating: The detached lens cap drives us mad. If you have even one other thing in your hands (like the case you just pulled the camera from), removing the lens cap becomes an ordeal. And once it's hanging from the strap, even the slightest breeze will blow it in front of the lens. I understand the lack of an automatic "door" for the lens saves on battery useage, but it's so not worth it.

Appreciated: The battery charger is ultra-tiny and requires no cord. The prongs flip out from the back to plug into the wall directly. This is a huge plus for us because we hate that we have to pack a whole bag in our suitcase just for chargers -- the cell phone, iPod, shaver, back-up camera (made that mistake once and never will again), etc.

Bonus: Of all the batteries we've owned over the years, this one lasts the longest. We've had 200-photo travel days where we haven't even had to use the spare we always carry. Another bonus is that the batteries are affordable, relatively speaking.

Confounding: We'll never understand why every camera over $200 isn't weather resistant. For just a few bucks more, they could be manufactured for the real world where simple things like rain and snow happen, and where real people do things like drink something cold on a hot day and get condensation water on their hands. Olympus seems to understand this, but their photo quality isn't as high. Why should we have to choose?

Overall: Despite the number of negative comments above, we really do love our TZ1. If the two "Major Downfalls" above were remedied, we would even give the TZ1 5 stars. Our current 4 stars is based on "The Big Picture" (yes, bad pun intended). Considering the $300-ish price point, and the fact that a point-and-shoot does all the work for you, you can't expect the moon served to you on a platter. Given the size of the TZ1, we can hardly believe our good fortune in having a 10X zoom packed in. Given that it's an automatic point-and-shoot, we can hardly believe our good fortune when we see the gorgeous photos we turn out with little to no effort on our part. And we can hardly believe that we got all of this for just over $300. The pros far outweigh the cons, and when this camera is good, it's VERY GOOD.

Looking for a compact long zoom camera with optical stabilization that takes great outdoor photos? Currently this is the only choice and a pretty good one at that. I'm very pleased with the image quality of outdoor photos. Colors compare well to the Canon SD600 that I also carry. The TZ1 takes sharp photos. A handy feature is that the zoom works even in movie mode. Indoor image quality seems ordinary. Movie mode is quite adequate so much so that I sold my video camera.

The camera has quickly won praise from professional reviewers. It also won a TIPA (Techincal Image Press Association) award for innovative design and image quality.

Update 4 May 2006: I don't think I've given enough credit to the TZ1. I'm astounded by the versatility of this camera. Photos are amazingly sharp.

Update 21 May 2006: Oy! Camera is totally dead. Some kind of power problem that requires warranty work to fix. The warranty is only 60 days from purchase! Awful.

Update 18 July 2006: Bigston (Chicago), the repair depot for Panasonic DMC-TZ1, deserves credit for getting me a loaner camera (albeit a lesser camera), making a quick repair (new electronics and lens), and shipping the repaired camera directly back to me in Paris. The whole process took 7 weeks with several major Bigston snafus.

Conclusion: This is an excellent zoom camera. I was unlucky that I got a lemon. There are no other reports of the same failure. Had I been in the US, I would have had an acceptable repair turnaround time. I was lucky to have the failure within the 60 day warranty period. THE WARRANTY IS OUTRAGEOUSLY SHORT. Had I bought the camera here in France, the warranty would have been 2+ years. I RECOMMEND BUYING ELECTRONICS ONLY IF YOU GET/PAY FOR A 1+ year warranty/exchange.

I've spent the last year reading and looking at the Canon Powershot S2, Sony H1 and Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7. Looking at the new Canon Powershot S3 and the Sony H5 I found myself drawn to the new Panasonic TZ1K camera because of the new Venius III engine, fast response times and the best Lens in the business. For a Family person that takes pictures of children playing sports and takes over a hundred pictures a month but never develop pictures bigger than an 8 X 10, this is the perfect camera. Sure some people criticize Panasonic's cameras for picture noise above ISO 200 but it doesn't matter if you are doing less than 8 X10 photos. The sharpness of the photos is amazing for a camera that's under $350. After all, if noise is a concern then spend a lot more money and get a DSLR. This camera is not totally perfect and requires a little learning curve of the features but it worth the half hour of time to read the manual. The best feature of this camera is that is a megazoom that is lightweight, can easily fit in your pocket and is $150 cheaper than a Canon Powershot S3 and Sony H5. Sure the Canon and Sony have more manual features and higher megapixels but they can't fit in your pocket. I think 5-megapixels with a Leica lens will be more than satisfying for most people that take spontaneous family pictures. This TZ1K feels well made and the screen is very sharp. Good job Panasonic for making the perfect pocket do-all zoom camera!

I spent a while researching before purchasing this camera, finally making the choice between the TZ1 and the Canon A700. Both had above average zoom for relatively compact cameras (6x for the A700) and both were around $300. I was initially attracted to the TZ1 by the excellent 10x optical zoom, at the time not found on any other camera of this size (not small enough to go in jeans/shirt pocket but can go in jacket pocket or round neck or in a bag), but there were a few features it lacked that I wasn't too happy with. For one, the battery is a proprietary lithium-ion, instead of the two AA's that the A700 used. I have always preferred to use AA's, as they are easily replaced if they run out when you're not in a position to be able to charge them, and high capacity batteries tend to have good life (although obviously this depends on the camera). I had read that the battery life of the TZ1 was below average, and this was probably the biggest rubbing point in choosing this camera. My other problem is that it lacked a "Manual" mode where aperture size and exposure can be manually set. After having a point-and-shoot camera and being unhappy with its performance, especially in low-light conditions, I had hoped to be able to play with manual settings on my next model. Before making my mind up, I tried out each camera at a local store and was immediately impressed with the build quality of the TZ1. I thought the A700 felt cheap and plasticy in comparison.

Although tempted by the AA batteries and the manual settings of the A700, I eventually took the plunge and ordered the TZ1. After playing around with it for a bit, I can say that I am very pleased with my purchase and don't regret it at all. There are far more manual settings than I was expecting - exposure can be manually set to 1/8, 1/4, ½ or 1 second for low light conditions, or to 15, 30 or 60 seconds in "Starry Sky" mode. The ISO can also be manually selected up to 800, with 1600 automatically selected if necessary when the camera is in "High Sensitivity" mode. There are no manual aperture size controls, but there are a wide range of modes and also white balance settings (e.g. cloudy, artificial light, sunny, etc.) which really do make a difference if you use the right one. I haven't had a chance to play around with it that much yet but I'm hoping that the starry sky mode combined with one of the white balance settings which gives a smaller aperture size will allow photos of car light trails etc. to be taken. I have used the 60 second exposure to successfully take pictures of constellations, and the movement of the stars is even visible. I have also found that the TZ1 takes really impressive low-light images that really capture what the eye is seeing, rather than making everything bright orange like my previous camera did. The image stabilization also helps considerably here, and exposures of up to about ½ second can be used without having to support the camera or use a stand. The issue with the proprietary battery still bugs me a bit and I would have preferred it if it used AA's and had a longer battery life. I can still get a full day's shooting out of it though, and the battery charges within 1-2 hours. I also bought a spare battery which I carry with me just in case.

Of course the main selling point of this camera is the zoom which is certainly impressive. 10x zoom is substantially better than the 3x or 4x usually found on cameras of this size, and by setting the image quality to 3MP, an optical zoom of 12.5 can be used - 50x with digital zoom! The image stabilization really helps here as well, and clear pictures can be taken at 10x (or 12.5x) without using a stand. Although I only tried the A700 briefly, I found that even at only 6x, without the image stabilization, photos at the tele end of the zoom were invariably blurred, especially indoors. I may well have not been using the optimum settings, however.

In conclusion, I would recommend the TZ1 to anyone who wants a good quality camera capable of taking clear pictures at high zoom and in low-light conditions but does not want to carry around a large D-SLR. For my uses, the 10x zoom and 5MP resolution was is a far more potent combination than 3x or 4x with a 6MP or 7MP resolution like many other model's at this price point. The interface is simple to get the hang of if you have used a digital camera before, yet there are still more advanced features that previous owners of point-and-shoot cameras can have fun exploring and experimenting with.

I used to have a old Leica camera that gave me really nice pictures. After playing with many different film and digital cameras in last few years, I am glad to re-discover the beauty of Leica lens on this great pocket sized camera.

We have purcahsed a few different digital cameras from other brands, including Canon, Sony, and Nikon. For larger size, I really liked Nikon D70s, which takes great pictures, if you don't mind the weight and size. But my wife really likes a smaller one for taking with her in her hand bag.

Many people selecting the camera with how many mega pixel first. From our experience, mega pixel is not the first critiria for selecting a good picture. For many instances, with other brand of small camera (I don't want to bash other brand, so no name mentioned here), when my wife tried to shot photos for our children, camera would not be ready until they already gone from the scene. Many times, the other small camera would not be able to get good focus. Another problem we have with other brand small camera was no enough optical zoom so that the person very small in the picture. You can see mega pixels will not help in any of those cases. From our experience, if you have taken a good picture even with 3Mega pixel, that would be able to produce a nice 8x11 inch print out.

This little Panasonic DMC-TZ1K solved many of our problems. It produces fabulous pictures. Its pictures have vivid color. It reminds me my old Leica film camera in its picture quality. Its amazing 10x optical zoom with optical stablization produce really nice picture. 10x optical zoom is similar to a 200mm zoom lens in DSLR or SLR camera. This small camera also can take three pictures per seconds, instead of take three seond per picture of our old smaller digital one. Its size is not smallest for men's shirt pocket all the time, but small enough for fit in wonmen's bag without noticed.

This camera has no manual focus, due to its small size. For taking picture in different situation, it has two sets of scene sittings, one set for different objects, another one for different sceneray. If you are shooting for dark situation, please make sure select the night scene setting -- this camera will emit extra light for help focus in the dark night. The camera has a built-in light meter sort of thing that showing you if the light is enough before taking the picture.

If we plan to take a lot of night picture in dark places, we probably will take our Nikon D70s with a big external flash. Without flash shoe and manual focus, like all other small camera, it is hard to take good picture in dark places.

With enough room light or outdoor light, getting this camera is the first step for shooting a good picture. You will be delighted that you get this camera.

PLUS - Attractive design, clean layout. Conforms to hand well. Blk/Blue/Silver colors. Easy menu system. Crisp 2.5" LCD. Compact 10x zoom with IS. Fast operation! Excellent value!

MINUS - Weak audio recording (8 bit, 8 Khz, Mono). Limited manual controls. Only F4.2 Aperture at full zoom. Warranty - 90 days labor. Has to boost ISO in low light to compensate for flash.

SUMMARY - While it seemed innovation in digital cameras was slowing down, Panasonic keeps driving forward. With a volume of 16 cu. inches, it surpasses the Coolpix S4 (16.6) as the smallest ultra zoom camera. Held before by the Olympus C-770 (26.6) which I also own. Even at full zoom the lens extends out only 0.55" (14 mm). I'd recommend visiting the Panasonic product website as they have good details on the features of the camera. Such as, quick startup (less than a second to power on), quick focusing, long battery life (despite a small 3.7V 1000 mAh battery), and high sensitivity modes, mostly all improved with new Venus III engine. The battery charges up in only ~2 hours with a very small charger that has a fold down AC plug.

Very nice LCD display: 2.5" with 207K pixels. Wide horizontal viewing angle. Has a High Angle mode which works well to see the display above your head. Easy to access boost mode which helps outdoors and it does "gain" up for low-light. No reflective coating, however this does not cause a problem since the display is viewed straight on. May want to invest in a clear protective sheet to limit scratches.

A few gripes: Given the fact it records good video, why do they have it record sound in low quality? The built-in microphone does have good sensitivity, however you do notice a difference in sound quality compared to cameras such as the Canon S2 and Olympus C-770, which record in 16 bit, 44.1 Khz, stereo. With a 2 GB card you can record only ~20 minutes of high quality video. It would have been nice if Panasonic had built-in a better video codec, like MPEG4 to keep the file size down. If you're inclined, save the video to your computer and run it through an encoder such as Windows Media Encoder or QuickTime 7. You can shrink down the 20 minute video to ~150 MB without much loss in video quality. Granted this does require a CPU with some horsepower.

The lens has a focal range of 35 - 350mm. It focuses fast and zooms with a smooth, quiet operation. The tradeoff with the design is that it does not have a wide range of aperture settings (F2.8 - F4.2), which may cause some limitations in light gathering and depth of field ability. Other long zooms can open up to F3.7 at full tele. It will only adjust to it's minimum setting of F7.1 in very bright scenes. Although when compared to other cameras in this compact size class, the apertures range is more than acceptable. In regards to noise, there is minimal occurence at ISO 80/100. It increases as you move up of course, however it never seems to balloon out of control. The flexibility is there though to take a low light, fast moving subject shot at up to ISO 1600 with it's High Sensitivity mode. The resulting images have a sort of watercolor effect, however the image is definitely usable. The file size is smaller in this mode, maybe because it "blends" out unusable pixels. Other cameras simply can not capture photos in these low light, fast moving subject situations. You can open up the shutter for night shots to 1, 8, 15, 30, or even 60 seconds. The few night shots I've taken have been quite impressive. The overall image quality is very good to excellent with photos pushing towards more vibrant and colorful, albeit slightly softer.

The flash is physically small and adequate in output. Seems to have decent coverage (not quite as good as the Oly C-770 which had a dual range pop-flash). To compensate for the limited output it will often boost the ISO to 200 which can result in a more grainy picture (a well-lit room will keep the gain down to ~100-125). There also could be red-eye problems here (if you don't use the red-eye reducing flash mode). With Image Stabilization, you can utilize more natural light shots w/o having to resort to the flash as often. The camera can be hand held down to 1/8 shutter speed and still take crisp pictures, which is pretty amazing. When the flash is used it will sync at 1/30 second.

A few tweaks: I'd recommend adjusting the picture quality from "Fine" (default) to "Normal". This will compress the image down to around 1.1 MB, however there is minimal loss in quality. There are three picture modes: Natural, Standard, & Vivid. Each mode progressively increases the sharpness and saturation of the image, sometimes at the expense of noise. Natural will display a smooth image with more neutral colors; Vivid will make the image sharper and colors will stand out. I was using Vivid, however it may saturate colors more than I like. I would liked to have seen separate controls for Saturation, Sharpness, and Noise - rather than seemingly blending them together in one control. There is an economy mode that will turn off the display after 15 seconds of inactivity and during flash recharge. This works well since the display instantly powers on with a touch of any button. It will also go in to a power save mode after 2 minutes (this can be changed or disabled), which basically powers it down. To get it out of this mode, just press the shutter button of flip the on/off switch.

In regards to memory cards, a 512 MB SD card is very inexpensive now and even the supported maximum 2 GB card is a drop in the hat (limited to 2 GB due to FAT16 file system).

With a current street price of $300, Panasonic expects to sell a lot of these. In fact, given the features and performance, it will likely take sales away from it's other models. I'd highly recommend this to both beginner and expert users. It's a camera that seems to fill all the niches.

RECOMMENDED BAG - Search for the "LowePro Rezo 50". It's a great fit for this camera.

I got the camera this Tuesday. In the last 4 days, I've take over three hundred photos and numerous video clips. From this short experience, I have to say the camera is simply amazing.

I was a Canon fan. I had powershot G2 for four years. I liked it, though at the end the software malfunctioned. We had twins for two months. The G2 wasn't up to the job to record the babies life. The lag from pushing the button to taking the photo is too long. The video clip it makes is too small and too short... I read many review from dpreview and amazon since last month. Mainly considered Canon S3 IS and TZ1. At the end, my wife made the call to pick TZ1 since she wants a compact camera.

What I like the camera so far:

1. The action is super quick. Turn on the camera, shoot the photos, focus, zoom... You don't feel the lag too much. Perfect for shooting babies.

2. The quality of the photo is very good. At the beginning, I was a bit worried for the critics of TZ1's noise. What nonsense! Photos are nice, sharp, well exposed and I don't feel the noise bother me at all even at iso 400 level. Photos printed are equally good. For anyone who doubts its photo quality, if you don't work for national geographic, leave your doubt aside.

3. The video works great. I put 1-GB SD card there and use it like a regular camcorder. It takes minutes good video clip. I'm about to buy a 2GB sd card and sell my digital camcorder all together. I don't feel I miss out much.

4. Did I mention the 10x zoom and its compact size? What a bless! The camera is well designed, engineered and crafted.

5. The menu is intuitive and easy to operate during action. Much better than my G2 experience.

6. Price? $308 from circuit. What a steal.

Things can be improved.

1. The software bundle has nothing I like, just normal stuff. It installed 6/7 different software, most useless.

2. You have to use the external battery charger to charge the battery. Hi, designers at Panasonic. What a stupid idea is that? If I'm carrying a compact camera around, do I really want to carry an external battery charger...

Overall the experience is good. 5 stars all the way.

I had been researching digital cameras for a while and had been trying to decide if a better zoom was more important than one of those teeny tiny cameras. This camera not only has a fantastic zoom but it is still smaller than many of the non-compact cameras with limited zoom. The camera is incredibly easy to use. It has a macro setting, which is fantastic for close ups and has adjustable flash settings. The flash itself is a teeny slit just above the lens but it is amazingly bright. You can review your pictures quickly and easily on the generously sized screen and downloading was a snap. The pictures come out amazingly clear and crisp. They're just terrific. It also has color settings right on the menu so if you wanted to make color look warmer or cooler (or in black and white or sepia) you can select it from the menu. The only thing I don't love about it is that it has an external lens cap that you have to actually take off yourself. It comes with a string to attach the cap to the side of the camera so you don't loose it though. I've found that most if not all cameras with an extended zoom tend to have external caps though. I also don't love that you have to take the battery out of the camera in order to charge it. I'm a little afraid that I'll forget to put it back in. I've seen that it's recommended to use high-speed SD cards with the camera but I don't find it very necessary. I used a normal 1GB SanDisk card and it still records the picture faster than many other digital cameras. One thing you have to know though is that the TZ1 does not have a viewfinder. You just use the LCD screen on the back. I actually like this more because then you're seeing exactly what you get and there is no more squinting through that teeny hole. Basically I think that it is the best camera that you can get - certainly in such a tiny package.

I've tested this camera out for a good while now and have found it hard to believe I ever considered less zooming capability acceptable. Very little jitter occurs even at the furthest settings due to the camera's great stabilization. The sport mode at an ISO of 200 produced usable but somewhat noisy pictures... even with a huge amount of zoom. Capturing the action wasn't much of a problem and the Continuous mode worked quickly and delivered nice action shots. The macro mode usually works great and the camera really stood out here so long as lighting worked out. I haven't had a chance to use it yet in bright sunlight but other reviewers around the net seem to find it stands out there as well. The menus are easy to navigate and any more complex questions are usually answered easily through the manual. One thing to note is that the camera has a detachable lens-cover which gets strung to the camera itself. It's not a major issue but it's a little different than most cameras. The battery lasted exceptionally long for its size and charged in around two hours through a wall-attached charger. When I got the camera, I opted for a 1 gig SD card which has been compatible and allows me to store 410 images at the highest quality or around 11 minutes of (surprisingly good) video. Videos are produced as .MOVs which is slightly annoying but can be worked with and are really great from a point-and shoot camera. While filming, you can even use the zoom features, granted they are slower than usual. All around, the camera seems well made and solid and it's clear Panasonic put a lot of work into it. The modes are intuitive and even technophobes will have a hard time getting confused in "simple-mode". --APPENDED-- After months of use and thousands of photos, if I could, I would change my vote to a 5. This camera is excellent!