Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3K 7.2MP Digital Camera with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black)

I love this camera. I bought it over a year and a half about from another website and paid $280. Why is it now $500 everywhere I look? I used this camera all the time, though I have to say it was a bit heavy and not nearly thin enough to keep in my purse.

I am highly disappointed with Amazon's and many other online retailer's price with this camera. $500 is absolutely ridiculous considering I paid almost HALF of that over a year and a half ago. It's a great camera, I'll give you that, but I think you can get similar quality with another brand and newer model.

I am most disappointed with it's short life. It worked great while I had it until I had it on my tripod. I knocked it over on the CARPET and it dropped in slow motion. It barely hit the ground and managed to jam the lens in. I did every suggestion online. I even took the camera and lens apart. It won't budge. It's $160 to fix so I thought it'd be the same price to buy a new one. It's not.

My conclusion? It's a great camera, but not worth this "new" price. The fact that the lens jammed this easily was a shock, and even more of a shock that this camera costs TWICE what I paid for it OVER A YEAR AND A HALF AGO!!!

I bought this camera a week ago as a used special on another site, and once I learned what it can and cannot do, I'm quite pleased. I am a semi-pro photographer who was looking for a p&s to give me a viable photo tool for those times I don't want to carry my DSLR and related equipment. I believe I've found it - the Leica glass is great for a camera like this, and convenient access to important options via intelligently designed button/function features make this a pretty easy camera to enjoy. It is not a serious camera so don't ask it to be, but once you gain a familiarity with it's functions and capabilities, it will do a very nice job of capturing respectable photos for you. Important: any ISO over 200 will produce noise/graininess that for my tastes is unacceptable, so I won't do that. I stay at ISO 100 and 200 and I stay pretty much happy with the results.
The site [...] did a complete review a few years back - great info source for what to expect. No disrespect to Amazon, but seek out used/refurbished alternatives for much better pricing, or go with a more current version of this camera. Happy shooting...

This was a great purchase for me. I've had it now for 1 1/2 yrs. The screen view is great. The down side is that I think the picture quality isn't as good as some of my friends cameras who don't have quite the zoom. Next time I purchase, I'll prob go with a little less zoom, higher quality for my point and shoot camera and then get a high grade professional camera for photography fun.

I wanted the best of both worlds, compact body with maximal zoom. Overall I am happy with my camera, however, you never get the best of both worlds. It's much heavier and bulkier than other compacts, and the zoom and picture quality don't really reach the bigger cameras. You should decide which feature is more important to you, if you want a compact, get a SONY DSC-W170. Picture quality is better than the Panasonic and you get at least 5x zoom. If you want a really good camera get a Canon Powershot G10. Or a Nikon. So, after saying all this, I wouldn't buy it again.

The more I use my TZ3, the less I like it. I cannot take a picture on a nice sunny day without having vertical lines across the horizon. This renders the image useless. Pictures taken using the flash are either totally washed out or they are underexposed. Quality of images taken with low light levels are also poor. This leaves a limited range of lighting conditions where a decent image can be taken.

Based on my experiences I would not recommend this camera. There are many positive reviews on Amazon so perhaps my camera is simply defective. I have contacted Panasonic and they will not help me because my camera is out of warranty.

We have several older digital cameras including a Kodak and a Canon and they do not exhibit the problems that I have encountered with the TZ3 so I know that what I am experiencing is not normal for digital cameras.

I'm at the point where I will soon pitch this camera into the garbage and buy a new camera. However, I doubt that it will be a Panasonic Lumix.