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4.0 of 5 stars Great Travel Camera, May 31, 2008
I did a large amount of research before purchasing this camera because I cannot have the time or money that many people apparently are doing the eBay revolving door thing. Whatever i arrived at realize is the fact, disappointingly, there isn't a clearly superior compact or ultracompact camera nowadays. There are actually only cameras with greater or lesser compromises as well as the trick is picking out the one it is easy to deal with. The Lumix TZ5 was obviously a good travel companion and been found to acquire few flaws.
Since it irritates me when you say construct y perform a great deal of research after which it never share it (doesn't that irritate you?), areas of one's cameras I ruled out in accordance with my (not your) criteria:
Fujifilm FinePix F100fd (difficult menu design, pink banding issue), Canon PowerShot SD890 IS (reported awful handling and poorly designed controls), Casio Exilim Card EX S10 (No image stabilization, very slim, picture quality ok, weak zoom, tiny controls), Casio Exilim EX S880 (No image stabilization, reported poor image quality), Olympus Stylus 850 SW (reportedly poor video shooting, poor life of the battery), Pentax Optio V10 (No image stabilization), Casio EX Z1080 (Reduced pixels in comparison with others, 38mm starting range), Panasonic Lumix DMC FX55 (Reportedly fails to deliver on image quality, no viewfinder, larger), Ricoh Caplio R7 (No optical viewfinder, very noisy, some barrel distortion when fully extended, poor customer service network?, reported quality mediocre), Pentax Optio A40 (Reportedly poor autofocus), and Canon PowerShot A470 (No viewfinder, no image stabilization, weak zoom).
Unfortunately, doing all this research meant I didn't discover the Lumix TZ5 till the day my trip to Amsterdam I became literally reading the manual on the flight. I cannot recommend this, nevertheless it really does function as good crash test for what the digital camera could (and can even not) do out of the box.
As most likely know, it's not an ultracompact however it is quite a bit less big as some reviewers make out. Could integrate a hefty pocket but it is rather heavy and unprotected in the environment so I got a LowePro case for doing this that sat on my belt. Worked well, allowed for extra batteries and Facts, and access was quick for candid shots.
Things that worked well:
* The Intelligent Auto mode worked pretty well for almost all situations. I suggest studying the exposure compensation settings since I was required to start using these often in high contrast and full sun situations.
* One handed operation successful.
* Menu system was pretty intuitive for basic functions.
* Zoom is amazing and E.Zoom setting was useful. You'll want to read how to change the "extended optical zoom" which enable you to go out to 16.9x at reduced display quality (In my opinion you 'must' have picture set at max 9MB this also is then reduced to 3MB). I didn't use a zoom.
* The screen is gorgeous along with the playback is amazing a lot of us commented on that.
* Taking video is pretty easy, though Phoning have preferred submit in lieu of required to rotate a dial. See to it on playback to distinguish between precisely what is a still picture and precisely what is video I accidentally deleted some video because I think we were looking at poor still shots, rather than the start of video.
* Should the dial is accidentally rotated, the digital camera will likely not mean you can require a picture before you correctly choose an actually setting.
* Fairly quick start up not stellar although not bad.
* Can develop something called Travel Date, which can organize pictures by 1st, 2nd, 3rd day. This has been useful when sharing pictures and also help you to can remember the chronology of your trip.
* It is easy to zoom while taking video, although more slowly than with still shots.
What didn't fit nicely:
* Regardless what you read, the gorgeous LCD screen isn't an replacement for a view finder even though you apply the Auto Power LCD option to compensate. In daylight, even along the brightest setting, the screen washes out. More problems I had created was I had put together to cut out my glasses to compose on the screen, which had been an inconvenience with rapidly moving candid shots. This is the largest disappointment and that i removed one star because of this.
* Certain functions in the camera will undoubtedly are employed in certain settings. Just like, you can actually only set the self timer for 10 sec in IA mode, histograms can't be displayed in IA mode, exposure settings can easily provide in normal mode, extended optical zoom is not to be employed in movie mode, etc. It could be frustrating, and you will miss a good quality shot, with no all of that memorized. I imagine all cameras are similar to this, but thought I would mention it since were discussing an out of the box experience.
* The door in to the sockets around the right hand side comes open easily (would not lock closed but only snaps shut), a hassle some times. My business is concerned that it'll snap off at some point.
* Needless expenses, the flash is underpowered.
Overall, We are very happy with the TZ5 and impressed using the pictures and video it produced especially since i have had so very little experience with it. My mate, who will be a show maker by trade, have also been impressed using the camera. It truly is larger than I would have liked, though the upside to get a 10X zoom was more than worth it in my opinion.
Do add an extra battery I had both batteries in 4 hours of shooting, mostly stills but some video. Big hassle to run from juice having every day. A SD Extreme III 8GB was recommended in some reviews and it worked well in my situation, particularly with shooting video. In doing research about choosing a camera, one of the helpful websites I recently found was the "What Camera Breath analyzer Buy?" forum along at the Video camera Resource Page [...]
In checking reviews here on Amazon with the TZ5, remember that they are really organized by color, so check each color for the informatioin needed for this camera.
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