Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5S 9MP Digital Camera with 10x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Silver)

Key new features of the TZ5 that really work. 1) Zoom during movies: If used sparingly, zooming can produce very nice results. 2) Improved viewing screen: The improved resolution makes it much easier to use this camera. 3) IA (Intelligent Auto): This was missing from the TZ3. IA combined with the new engine (V4) makes the camera work quite well for most picture taking situations. 4) The mode switch on the back, which switches between taking pictures to viewing pictures, is an excellent addition of a frequently used function to a dedicated button. It is duplicated on the little wheel, but you will always use the new switch. 5) The quick menu button - very handy for changing the most common settings. 6) The TZ5 has an improve menu structure on the amazingly clear screen. 7) I almost forgot, the TZ5 takes better sharper pictures than the TZ3, especially in low light situations without the flash. By far, this is the best super zoom small pocket-size camera to buy. After writing the above review, I took this camera to China, where I took pictures under a wide variety of conditions. The 10x zoom was essential for the scenes, some of which were in the distance and others were fine detail 50 or 100 feet away. I took dim-light pictures of the Terra Cotta soldiers in a huge room where flash was useless. The results were sharp and well exposed even at 10x zoom. Is this camera as good as an expensive single lens reflex camera? It was good, but not as good. Then again, you cannot buy a 10x zoom SLR, and an SLR will not drop into your pocket while you are walking around. At least not my pockets.

I bought this camera a couple of months ago primarily because it was one of the very few still cameras that also recorded movies at 720p resolution. (A couple more have been released since.) My previous camera, a Fuji F700 had just died after a long and fruitful life and I was looking to upgrade. This camera seemed to be just the ticket. I wanted a camera with great stills, of course, but also good quality video, because I don't want to carry two pieces of equipment around. This camera delivers on both ends.

Let's start with the pros. The pictures are very good, I don't see any problems with them. The 3" screen is very sharp and really nice. The 10x zoom is terrific. The camera is a nice comfortable size.

Battery life is pretty amazing. Although I bought two backup batteries, I find that I don't have to use them at all. Also, the charger, with foldup electrical prongs, is tiny and does a great job recharging in 90 minutes or so. Easy enough to throw the charger in the suitcase as well.

The cons are not too bad, but annoying and simple to fix. After shooting a still picture, the camera, of course, shows you a still of what you've just shot. However, when you turn the camera sideways to shoot, say, a picture of the Eiffel Tower, the playback will flip the shot so that you don't have to turn the camera. Why have that gorgeous 3" screen if you're not going to use it? I'll readily admit this is a minor annoyance, to be sure. This is the default mode, and after some searching in the camera's memory, it can be changed to that the playback mode doesn't flip the picture.

When shooting video, the camera's default is to have continuous focus. Even if you're not moving the camera much, the camera will continue to go in and out of focus while shooting video, blurring everything. This is more annoying than the picture flip I mentioned. This is also correctable in the menu.

The third annoyance is the camera's memory reading ability. I have an 8 GB card, which is more than ample memory for anything. In fact, the camera can shoot about 33 minutes of video on the highest-quality setting - 720p, 30 frames/sec. However, when you go to shoot video, the camera only reads that there are 8 minutes and 30 seconds of video. This is no big deal; however, after you shoot, say, 1 minute of video, and the counter counts down to 7 minutes and thirty seconds, then you press the shutter release again to stop recording, the reading changes right back to 8 minutes and 30 seconds, the maximum amount of memory recognizable by the camera. This makes you think that the video didn't get saved.

This thinking that the video didn't get saved is reinforced when you go to play it back, leading to my final annoyance, the camera's integration with my Panasonic Viera plasma TV. I didn't buy a Panasonic camera for this purpose, but as long as I did, I figured, "what the hey?" The TV has an SD slot in back, so you can take your memory card out of the camera and stick it directly into the TV and have a slide show of your pictures. Sounds good, right? But it doesn't play back video through the card slot.

To play back the 720p video on the 720p plasma TV, you have to use cables, and connect it to one of the inputs. The problem with this is that the cables provided aren't even composite cables - they're the standard red, white, and yellow - and this degrades the video quality. This is just plain dumb, dumb, dumb. The only way you can look at the video in all its HQ glory is on your computer.

All in all, these are minor annoyances, I'll admit. But they do keep me from giving the camera a 5-star rating.

Firstly, be aware that this is a "point-and-shoot" camera. I had read too many reviews where the only negatives were comparing it to digital SLRs. I think there is some confusion that because it has a 10x zoom that it is a full-blow SLR. Not so. It is like any other compact digital in many of its functions. It is only about 1/2 inch thicker than my Casio due to the lens, so it fits nicely in your palm, fanny pack, or pocket.

Secondly, the 10x zoom is AWESOME. Other features, like the image stabilizer, makes the Lumix TZ5 zoom even better (if that's possible).

Also nice is the 28mm wide-angle Leica lens - quite a professional addition to a point-and-shoot.

Other awesome features are the intelligent exposure, intelligent scene selector and burst shooting.

Menu is easy to learn and use (we didn't even read the instructions).

For a die-hard compact digital camera geek like myself, the pictures this camera produces look excellent. Be assured, the color is MUCH sharper than in the examples above (perhaps due to compression by amazon).

I had read that the battery door and tripod mount were plastic and flimsy for such a heavy-duty camera. For sure, plastic seems like a cheap addition to such a sturdy camera. But I haven't noticed either being flimsy. Of course, knowing they are plastic makes me handle them with a little more care.

The LED screen is LARGE and automatically adjusts in brightness according to your environment.

Another feature I appreciate (for a point-and-shoot) is the little rubberized ridge on the front right - just perfect for your fingers in taking quick one-handed shots.

Lastly, if you want to see this camera in action, go to [...] and search on "panasonic lumix tz5". You will be impressed.

I assume anyone who's reading this review already has looked at the specs, so I won't regurgitate them. I did a lot of research and went through a couple of cameras (Fuji F100fd, Cannon SD770IS) before I settled on this one, and I'll explain why I settled on this one above the other two. My main criteria were:

1. Picture quality
2. Low-light performance
3. Speed (boot up, focus speed, etc.)

I first bought the Fuji F100fd because of its low-light performance. I found that although low-light performance was good, it wasn't as good as it was hyped up to be. ISO 400+ pictures were a bit grainy -- much better than my previous Canon SD450, but not near as good as I had expected. In decent light, the picture quality was superb, the best of any point-and-shoot I've used. However, the killer was speed. The focus and time-to-shoot was too slow, and by the time it actually took the picture the moment was gone most of the times. So this wasn't working for me.

Having owned two Canon Powershots before, I knew what I was getting when I swapped to a SD770-IS. Overall it's a great camera, and takes very nice pictures, almost as nice as the F100fd. The speed is superb, as expected. However, it does very poorly in low light, and you basically have to plan on using the flash all the time. My camera also did poorly in bright light, most of the pictures in sunlight were over-saturated. (The front panel of this particular camera was popping out a little, a manufacturing defect, which may have affected the light meter on the camera). Given the issues in low and bright light and the front panel problem I decided I would try something else.

I read reviews that the TZ5 pictures were noisy, so I was a little apprehensive about picture quality when I got the camera. It's somewhat true, if you zoom 16X you'll see the pictures get a little grainy. But after having some developed into prints, you can't tell at all on the prints. This would only be a problem if you needed to blow the prints up into poster size. So aside from being able to see grainyness when you blow the picture way up, the picture quality is really good.

The TZ5 did much better than expected in low light - almost as good as the F100fd. There is more noise than the F100fd, but the overall picture tone and sharpness are still excellent.

I was very happy with the speed. Almost as good as the Canons, much better than the Fuji. So this was the keeper for me.

There a lot of other things that I was very pleased with that I didn't consider before buying the camera. I'm particularly pleased with its continuous shooting mode - you can take rapid continuous shots indefinitely at about 2 photos per second. So if you're shooting kids, it's the perfect feature to make sure you catch that one split second smile. The LCD is just beautiful, it puts my laptop lcd screen to shame. It also allows you to quickly and easily change settings while in manual mode without having to navigate down a tree of menus. And the image stabilization is excellent.

There were also some things that were so-so. It's pre-set white balance is mediocre, but using a custom white balance the pictures are excellent. The face detection is ok, it doesn't work if the face is pointed a little sideways, or the face is partially obstructed. The battery life is not bad, but not fantastic. But since I don't use the flash much I've never run out of charge.

The video is pretty good, but it has its set of flaws. Although it records in 720p resolution, the quality is not as sharp as you would expect from a 720p movie. It looks equivalent a 480i video (in sharpness) from a good camcorder, so it's about as good as a decent 480i camcorder. It records in motion jpeg (quicktime .mov container), which means the video files are much larger than they would be using mp2, mp4, or h.264, and only devices that play quicktime will be able to play it right off the camera. The microphone isn't very good, so make sure you're close to the subject matter. The zoom using video is very slow, and the focus is slow (goes in and out) for a few seconds whenever the zoom changes. All that being said, it's great to have video recording - the convenience of having it my camera resulted in me not using our sony camcorder since I got the TZ5. I end up taking more video and photos now.

The one real issue with the camera is that it doesn't take good pictures when there is a bright background. With the Canon and Fuji, I would simply use the flash to make sure I didn't end up with a silhouette. And they both did a great job illuminating the subject matter at an appropriate light level. The TZ5 does a really poor job with this. You still end up with under-illuminated subject matter. I've tried a bunch of different settings and still have the issue, which is a real shame.

But overall, I'm very pleased with the camera. It's probably the best point-and-shoot that approximates the functionality of a DSLR. So this one is a keeper for me.

To view some photos I took with the Lumix TZ5 click on this link, and make sure you view in full screen::
http://www.photoworks.com/photo-sharing/shareSignin.jsp?shareCode=ACF7F02C5F5&cp=ems_shr_alb_pml&cb=PW

To view a video of "Frisky" the dog taken with the TZ5, click on this link:
http://www.vimeo.com/1461466

You'll see mixed reviews on the quality of the photos, but I find the quality outstanding for a compact camera, or for any camera for that matter. The photos that you'll see are all taken in the easy mode, which is called "IA" for Intelligent Auto, and they were all taken without flash - even the one inside the screened porch.
What I love most about this camera is it's ability to keep the subject in focus, even when the subject and/or the photographer is moving! I shot a butterfly fluttering around, with the zoom (in IA mode) and it came out perfectly in focus. The photo of the horse & buggy was also taken effortlessly in IA mode with the zoom. Photos from the airplane, perfect, even took a few from the moving car and there was no blur (not in the samples)! Amazing. Colors are bright and clear, and you can choose how vivid you want them to be. These photos were taken in "standard" color, incidentally. It picked up all the hues of the sunrise in the harbor and sunset on the beach.
The zoom works beautifully, very smooth and quiet. Again, automatic focus in zoom (and otherwise) is the best I've seen in any camera of this size and price range.
I love the wide angle lens. It captures so much more than I'm used to and gives a really nice, almost dimensional look to the photos.
The battery life is pretty good until you use the movie mode, and that does take a lot out of it. It's a good idea to have an extra one ready just in case.
The ergonomics are excellent, easy to shoot with one hand, and easy to navigate the menu.
The LCD screen, as you know, is one of the best out there. It works well in sunlight, and if the day is very bright, you can adjust the contrast and make the screen darker if needed. Beautiful resolution when playing back your photos on the LCD screen!
The movie feature is also quite good FOR A DIGITAL PHOTO CAMERA. The zoom is slow (which it states in the manual), but the pictures are clear. HD mode does take a lot of memory and battery obviously, but it's a great feature to have. I shot some whales from the shore with zoom at 10x and they came out pretty well even though they were quite far away (contact me if you'd like to see that video). I took the movie of Frisky indoors in the evening with the regular lighting in the home and it I think it looks very good.
In conclusion, I highly recommend the Panasonic DMC-TZ5. It is not a digital SLR, but has many of the features without the bulk or the price, so it's great for travel. I have an SLR and an older 5MP compact digital, but I never expected this much photo quality out of a compact.
Bravo Panasonic!