Vladimir's Tech Blog

Ok, I hope that you have read the first part of my review already. You will not find here some detailed test of this device, like some pro guys are doing. Anyway, there are many professional reviews available on the net, and I am sure you can find them easily. Here you can see what an average user of point-and-shoot cameras thinks about Panasonic Lumix TZ-7. If you did not read the first part, you can find it here.

I am writing this article two months after the purchase date of the Lumix TZ-7. I believe I had enough time to figure out its pros and cons, and all together I can say I am quite happy with the features of the camera. Of course, there are some things that I do not like about it, but overall I find it to be great camera for average user who wants to have excellent still images and video capabilities in one box.

First of all I want to mention that problem with lose dial button that may people online are mentioning as major drawback of this camera, is not so big in my eyes. Yes, it is true that there is a high chance that the button will move to another position when you put camera in the pocket or case, but I really do not understand what is such big deal about that – it takes you just one second to move the button into position you want, and honestly you would need most of the times to change the scene mode if you want to get the best possible shot. The button is not lose in the sense that it could fall off or break – it is just easily rotates when you manipulate with the camera. This problem should definitely not influence your decision to buy or not to buy Lumix TZ-7.

The mentioned dial button has 6 positions: Intelligent Auto, Manual mode, My scene 1 (MS1) and 2 (MS2), Scene mode (SCN) and Clipboard. I virtually never use Intelligent auto mode, as I prefer to keep little bit of control what is camera actually doing. The Intelligent auto mode is in fact selecting for you one of the predefined scene modes and it is good for people who really want to use TZ-7 as point-and-shoot camera. Scene mode, My scene 1 and My scene 2 are exactly same – the idea here is that you can keep some predefined scene modes which you are often using on positions MS1 and MS2, and you should use SCN position to select some other scene modes which you use less frequently. I guess that this approach makes sense, but I personally tend to forget which modes I configured on MS1 and MS2, so I anyway use SCN position. The last position on the dial button is for clipboard mode, where you can take 2 megapixel photos that you need to have easily reachable – for example you can take a photo of the map which you want always easy to reach. Again, I guess this might be good idea, but in the practice I did not find any real value of clipboard option. Finally, the manual mode is not fully manual, but it still gives you more control over different parameters like ISO settings, white balance, minimum shutter speed, etc. I am using manual mode from time to time, but most of the time I keep using one of predefined scene modes. The camera is coming with 27 predefined scene modes and you can find their description at Panasonic site. I will not spend much time here explaining each of these modes. Instead, I will just mention some of them that I am using often and their key features.

Probably the most used scene modes in my case are portrait and scenery, for making photos of people and nature. Most of the photos taken in this mode are crisp and with good colors, without need to think too much about camera settings. The portrait mode can be used with flash, while scenery mode by default switches flash off. There are also night versions of these two modes, where night portrait boost ISO value and use slower shutter speeds but still has option of using flash, and night scenery allows shutter speed to be up to 8 seconds. It took me a while to figure out that you need to turn off optical stabilization in order to reach such long exposure times. If you are not using the tripod and optical stabilization is on, camera will smartly detect that the optimal shot in night condition will be obtained by using very high ISO values, and not by increasing exposition time. Unfortunately I could not find way to manually specify the shutter speed in the night scenery mode – it is still up to camera to decide about that. There is also starry sky mode where you can select among 3 predefined shutter speeds -15, 30 and 60 seconds, so it can be kind of useful for night shots. I managed to get few pretty good looking night shots in this mode. Other than that, I find beach, sunset, sport and party mode useful, while the others I am not using so much. Anyway I believe that other users’ opinion might differ.

The other nifty feature of TZ-7, which actually attracted me to buy this camera, is fantastic 12x optical zoom. On the photos below you can see the example of snapshots taken with two end position of the zoom lens – I would say this is quite impressive. People are normally not used to the compact cameras with such high zoom capabilities, so you could use your TZ-7 as great spy camera. This summer I made few very funny shots of people who had no idea I am actually able to capture them from such distance. Can you imagine trying to make such photos with DSLR and huge telephoto lens and not being obvious? If you like to be bad boy sometimes (like I do) or you are simply playing Sherlock Holmes, nothing can beat this camera at this point in time. Optical image stabilization works really well both for taking still shots and videos at 12x zoom. The photo quality at the maximal zoom level is pretty much the same comparing with no zoom, so in my honest opinion the super zoom is the major selling point of TZ-7, together with HD video capability.  What I also like very much is capability to choose between 4:3, 16:9 and 3:2 formats of photos. For standard holidays snapshots I prefer to use 3:2, because that way you can be sure nothing will be cropped of the photo if your girlfriend or mom wishes to print out some of the photos in the standard 15×10 cm size. The 16:9 can be also very useful if you watch your photos on HDTV screen. There is also Multi aspect feature, which allows you to save your photo immediately in all 3 formats. I am normally not using that feature as it is simply filling your SD cards with 3 copies of the same photo that you actually do not need most of the time.

When you come to the photo quality, I would say it is pretty good, but unfortunately I have feeling that the digital noise level is bit higher than I would like to see. When the image is magnified, I have the feeling that my old IXUS 40 camera was producing bit less noise. However, I believe that this is normal as 4 megapixel CCD of old camera should have bigger physical pixel size than this 10 megapixel sensor used by TZ-7. This is obvious example that the megapixel race is pointless in the compact camera world. Please Panasonic, do not give us more megapixels in the future TZ model, we do not need them! At beginning (first month of using TZ-7) I used to make photos in 4.5 megapixels, but then I realized that smaller dimensions of the photos are obtained simply by cropping the bigger photo and that effectively just the smaller middle part of CCD is used. The result is the photo with virtually identical noise level compared with the full resolution photo. What I am doing now is using maximal resolution and best quality settings when taking photos, and then I resize pictures on computer to get smaller photos without noticeable digital noise. Anyway I do not consider this as major issue and I am quite happy with the overall photo quality.

The video quality is also very, very competitive. Comparing with my old DV camera, it is much better, with good color saturation, excellent sound, smooth movement capture without any jerkiness and good image stabilization even at the highest zoom level. I made few recordings at couple of concerts which are very watchable and with good sound quality. People on YouTube find these recording to be excellent, I will post the links in the video section of this blog later, and you can check the example from the AC/DC concert below.

As I mentioned in the part one of TZ-7 review, you can use zoom while recording video and it is major advantage comparing with the competitors. TZ-7 is not replacement for quality HD camcorder however, but for me personally it is great that I can have always in my pocket the device which can make very quality videos. I personally do not have experience with HD camcorders at this point of time, but people on net say that TZ-7 video quality is not even close to the quality of Canon VIXIA camcorders for example. I believe them, but knowing how good video is TZ-7 producing, I would expect that image quality from dedicated HD camcorders is absolutely stunning in good conditions. Maybe one day I will discover that when the prices of HD camcorders drop, but at this point of time TZ-7 is everything that I need to make occasional good looking videos. The only problem I found regarding to video recording is that zoom is bit slow, but I can easily live with that. The focus can be bit slow when you are zooming during recording, and again people in other reviews mention that as a big issue, but for me it does not represent a major drawback. The European model is also limited to 15 minutes length of the captures, but I can easily live with it. The only situation until now when I needed to record clip longer than 15 minutes was the guitar solo of Angus Young which seemed to last forever. :-) It is also worth mentioning that there is dedicated video record button, which is very handy - you can start recording your video immediately, no matter in which mode your dial butt0n is set.

All together, I do not regret buying Lumix TZ-7 and I would recommend it to any amateur photographer who wants easy to use camera with excellent photo and video capabilities in a sleek case. Of course, this is not a gear for semi-pro or pro users, as it lacks manual control, capability to save photos in RAW format, etc. Basically it is another point-and-shoot camera, but excellent one, and it is worth every penny that I spend on it. I hope I will enjoy it at least for several years, until manufacturers offer something with the new options that would justify buying a new camera. Until then, I will happily stick to my TZ-7.