Panasonic DMC TZ3

While the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1 was already amazingly compact for a 10x zoom camera, the DMC-TZ3 goes one step further: It is even a little more compact and has the zoom range slightly shifted in the direction of wide angle. This should be especially pleasing for travel and reportage photographers who are looking for something small and fine for their shirt or trouser pockets on the way.

Short evaluation

Pros

• largely well coordinated range of functions
• Continuous mode with continuous run option
• WVGA video mode (848 x 480 pixels)
• good battery life
• optical image stabilizer
• very fine and brilliant LC screen
• effective, intelligent ISO function for detecting subject movement
• very good optical performance for this optical design and lens class
• short storage times
• practical zoom range with light wide angle and a lot of tele
• ultra-compact housing untypical of class

Cons

• no image parameter settings (color saturation, sharpness, image contrast)
• in bright environments unusable, mirroring monitor
• built-in miniature flash unfavourably placed in the grip area of the camera due to the design (danger of shadowing!)
• visible noise reduction effects at high sensitivities
• Full-speed USB 2.0 interface (faster high-speed class more contemporary)
• no electronic recognition and retouching of red eyes (desirable with this type of camera), no face recognition
• automatic exposure only
• unreliable white balance auto under artificial light
• no manual focusing

The Panasonic TZ3 offers, among other things, 28 mm wide-angle – and that with page formats of 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 – as it does, is described below in the test. A further innovation is the intelligent ISO function, which detects subject movements and adjusts sensitivity and exposure time to avoid motion blur – the MEGA-O.I.S. image stabilizer now standard on Panasonic is of course also on board.

Ergonomics and workmanship

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 is the third camera and second generation of Panasonic’s “pocket superzooms”. In contrast to the TZ1, which has a periscope-type lens with parts arranged across the camera, the TZ3 has a conventional zoom lens that slides together extremely flat when switched off. The 37 mm TZ3 is a few millimetres flatter than the TZ1 – in width, it has left even more springs at just 105 mm. Despite its compact dimensions, the camera has a TFT screen with a diagonal of three inches (= 7.6 cm), which simultaneously serves as a viewfinder and also has a very fine resolution of 230,000 pixels. An optical viewfinder, on the other hand, does not exist – although it would be bitterly necessary in certain situations. Especially in bright surroundings (sun, beach, snow etc.) you can’t see much on the TFT except reflections, the Power-LCD function doesn’t help much. The monitor image will then become visibly brighter, but not bright enough to see something on the screen even in bright light. The battery is emptied much faster. Another display function is the so-called high-angle mode. The liquid crystals of the LCD are thus aligned in such a way that the screen remains reasonably legible even when shooting overhead. This is not a fully-fledged replacement for a pan and tilt mechanism, but it keeps the camera dimensions compact and the production costs of the camera low. Apart from that, the TFT is very good, offers a colourless, high-contrast and sharp image, does not draw any streaks and hardly delays.

The housing quality is – typical for Panasonic – very good. The camera has a noble metal housing, with which it conveys a robust impression. However, there are slight weaknesses: firstly, the large TFT screen that needs to be protected from scratches and blows, secondly the thin lens curtain and finally the somewhat thin battery compartment cover on the underside of the case. After actuating a slider, the spring-loaded lid opens and you can remove the SD memory cards and the battery, which is again specially secured against falling out. The 3.7 Volt and 1,000 mAh mini battery is sufficient for about 270 shots – a good value for the size. In terms of memory cards, the Panasonic swallows everything that corresponds to the form factor of an SD card – i.e. up to 2 GBytes for SD and MMC as well as 8 GBytes (as soon as available, certainly also 16 and 32 GBytes) for SDHC. Next to the battery compartment there is – at a sufficient distance – another tripod thread on the underside of the housing, which is made of plastic and is also not in the optical axis, as panorama photographers always like it.

On the back of the case there is a giant TFT screen, which takes up almost the entire surface, some space for the thumb to hold the camera securely, and some, unfortunately small buttons, which are hardly bigger than a pinhead. The menu and confirmation button is still the largest, with four navigation buttons arranged around it, including two more. The navigation buttons are used outside the menus to call up certain functions directly, such as flash setting, quick playback, self-timer and exposure compensation. The two lower keys are also assigned several times. The left one is used for setting the display inserts (no information, parameter displays, histogram, grid) and for setting the LCD mode (normal, bright, wide viewing angle) when pressed for a long time. The right button is used to display a function menu that allows you to quickly set some important shooting parameters such as continuous advance mode, white balance, sensitivity, aspect ratio, resolution, and compression. Overall, the buttons are surprisingly easy to use despite their small size, as they protrude far enough out of the case to be able to be felt even blindly.

The menus of the camera are quite clear (which is also due to the relatively small adjustment possibilities) and designed to be easy to use. There are a total of three main sections, divided into the Record menu, Setup menu and Play menu, the latter being accessible only during playback and the former only during recording. The setup menu offers 19 menu items on four pages, including basic settings such as time, language, grid settings, sounds, power save mode, and auto playback. The shooting menu is even only three pages long and offers 15 setting points, some of which can also be reached via the function menu. Only this menu contains settings such as autofocus, exposure mode, digital zoom, autofocus auxiliary light, and color mode. Why you can find the time setting again here is not quite clear. Finally, the playback menu has 14 options spread over three pages, where you can mainly select subsequent image editing, audio dubbing and slide show.

There are some very important controls on the top of the camera. In addition to the shutter release button (which has a good pressure point), this also includes the ring rocker around it, which is used to adjust the zoom when taking pictures and to enlarge or reduce (except for the thumbnail view in the image overview) the image section when playing back. The button to the right of the shutter-release button is not likely to be used very often; here the image stabilizer can be deactivated and its behavior and effectiveness can be influenced. Also to the right of the shutter release is the power button, which is quite easily accessible but cannot be accidentally pressed due to its tightness. To the left of the shutter release button is the program dial. The TZ3 is a pure automatic camera, so that the ambitious photographer is unfortunately denied some possibilities to change the exposure. In addition to a normal shooting mode, there are two settings for scene modes, so that you can at least switch between these two quickly. If you set the wheel to one of these motif programs, the last one used there will be used – unless you select another one from the 21 options via a menu that appears briefly. Some special programs also have their fixed place on the program selector wheel, which includes the macro mode, the movie function, the (direct) print settings, the camera memo function (more on this later) as well as the playback mode in addition to the single mode (in which hardly any settings can be made).

Also on the top of the camera you will find the built-in microphone and the miniature loudspeaker of the camera. If you let your eyes wander down to the side, you will find an eyelet on the right side of the case for attaching a wrist loop and a fairly sturdy flap behind which the usual connections (USB interface, audio/video output, mains input) are located. The TZ3 is very comfortable to hold thanks to its small handle and the thumb recess on the back. If the camera position is too casual, the middle finger can stand in the way of the flash and provide the “most beautiful” picture effects. A one-hand operation of the TZ3 is possible (but not recommended); the camera lies with both hands in the hand and is much safer and more comfortable to operate.

Optics

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 features a 10x zoom lens that bears the Leica logo. This collaboration between Panasonic and Leica has been going on for a few years now and can be found in a similar form at Sony/Zeiss and Kodak/Schneider-Kreuznach. The lens does not change its small image equivalent focal length with the choice of the aspect ratio, whereby the formats 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 are available. Only the resolution shrinks slightly at 16:9. Panasonic achieves this with a small trick: the 1/2.35″ CCD has 8.5 million pixels, of which only a maximum of 7 million are used. This leaves more or less unused pixels at the edge of the image in any direction, depending on the aspect ratio. The image diagonal thus remains constant when the aspect ratio changes. The lens has a real focal length of 4.6 to 46 mm, whereby the viewing angle through the small image sensor corresponds to a 28-280 mm 35mm lens. This covers both the wide-angle and the telephoto range sufficiently, and the camera is very universally suitable, e.g. for travel or reportage photography. The lens extends by 2 cm after switching on – at full telephoto it even extends by 3.7 cm. This is achieved by a 2-fold nested tube. When using the 4x digital zoom, the lens of course does not extend any further, only a detail enlargement is carried out. With reduced resolution, the TZ3 uses the Panasonic-typical extra-optical zoom, which extends the zoom range overall.

The zoom itself is audible only by the relatively quiet engine and a slight “hissing” of the mechanics. The zoom speed of 2.7 seconds from wide-angle to telephoto doesn’t set any speed records, but it is very finely adjustable in at least 30 steps. The steps are finer in the wide-angle range than in the telephoto range – which is perfectly ok. Of course, the zoom level is made clear on the monitor by means of a bar or a concrete indication of the zoom factor.

In contrast to the zoom factor, the TZ3 can shine less at the light intensity. This is ultimately a tribute to the size. In the wide angle, the largest aperture is only F3.3 and at the telephoto end even only F4.9. So it’s good that the TZ3 at least – like all current Panasonic digital cameras – has the Mega O.I.S. image stabilizer. This is a real optical stabilizer – and not an electronically cheated one, as it is quite common with some manufacturers. The Panasonic uses sensors to register how the camera is moving and attempts to compensate for this movement with the aid of a sliding lens group in the lens. You don’t hear it, but you can see the effect (especially at the tele end) on the monitor of the camera; the picture is much calmer with Mega-O.I.S. switched on. Even in movie mode, the image stabilizer helps to keep the image smoother. The Mega-O.I.S. has two operating modes: In mode 1 the stabilizer is permanently active, in mode 2 it is only active during exposure. Mode 1 is not quite as effective, but the monitor image is stabilized. In Mode 2, the monitor is wobbly before the shutter release, but during the exposure there are optimal initial conditions, because the lenses are not yet at the stop. In practice, you can expect a gain of about 2 f-stops in mode 1, in mode 2 you can expect a gain of about 3 f-stops. At the tele end this means that with mode 1 you can still expose 1/80 instead of 1/300 s from your hand, with mode 2 also 1/40 second is enough. Since the image stabilizer is of little use for moving subjects, Panasonic has added a further function (the “intelligent ISO function”), which is explained in more detail in the last section of the test.

The Panasonic TZ3 is also quite variable when it comes to autofocus – even though it unfortunately lacks a manual focus setting. Both the measuring fields and the speed can be set. You can choose between a 9-point multi-field autofocus, a larger central measuring field, a small central measuring field and a high-speed autofocus with one or three measuring points. In addition, there is the possibility to set a continuous autofocus, which continuously adjusts the focus, which can increase the shutter speed and is especially useful for sports shots or other moving subjects. In high-speed mode, the autofocus works faster, but with an average of 0.7 seconds it is still not one of the fastest of its kind. The autofocus becomes noticeably slower, especially at the low light Tele end, but above all it often gets problems finding a focus point at all. In dark environments the autofocus always gets help from a red auxiliary light, which can also be disabled via the menu, as it’s not particularly discreet. With auxiliary light, the autofocus works reliably at a distance of approx. 3 meters, depending on the subject, the range is also slightly higher. It should also be mentioned that the multi-field autofocus does not work quite as reliably or reproducibly as a limited to one measuring point, since there is always a little chance of which measuring point the camera weights more strongly. It’s also a pity that Panasonic doesn’t use face recognition functions yet, as it is common with Fujifilm, Nikon and Pentax, for example. Such functions work quite reliably and also help the autofocus on the jumps to find the correct focus point with several measuring fields.

In terms of the autofocus setting ranges, the Panasonic is quite well equipped in view of the relation of the zoom. In the wide angle you can get up to 50 cm closer to the subject, but at the far end of the telephoto you have to keep a distance of 2 meters – but in comparison to the wide angle you also have 10 times the magnification. In macro mode, which has its own place on the program selector wheel, these minimum distances shrink significantly in some cases. At the extreme end of the telephoto, one can now approach the motive up to one meter; if one zooms out a little, one has to content oneself again with a close-up limit of 2 meters. Only in the wide angle the minimum shooting distance shrinks significantly to up to 5 cm, which already means a quite decent magnification. However, this shooting distance should frighten a lot of butterflies, so that they probably take distance and fly away instead of posing for a nice photo.

Flash

The camera is equipped with a small flash, which is located at the upper edge of the housing between the handle and the lens. This position is very unfavourable, and so it is very easy to have a finger in front of the flash – as we already mentioned at the beginning of this test (under “Ergonomics and Workmanship”). Also not to be underestimated is the tendency to red eyes, which is caused by the proximity of the flash to the optical axis. Although the TZ3 has the usual pre-flash to reduce red-eye, there are no plans to remove it from the camera at a later date. From the functional range, the flash is quite ok for an automatic camera, as it offers besides an automatic also the possibility to be triggered with every picture or to be turned off completely. Even a long-term synchronization is planned, even if only in combination with the pre-flash against red eyes. Flash is also possible in macro mode, but will cause the lens to shade if the subject is too close.

With a guide number of 6 (manufacturer’s specification), the flash is not particularly powerful, so that the camera often raises it up to ISO 640 when the sensitivity is automatically adjusted in order to be able to illuminate the subject. This helps the flash range to get a jump on, but the noise reduction works quite strongly and irons away many image details in addition to the noise. The image is not illuminated evenly, especially in the wide-angle range; in the corners the image becomes visibly darker due to the vignetting (partly caused by the lens). However, shadows through the lens only occur in the macro range. The colour neutrality, on the other hand, can be described as good: Color casts do not occur with the small flash. However, the flash exposure is not quite as precise. Not only is it quite abundant, but it’s also clearly too strong in situations with a little more ambient light. Especially when shooting people, the flash effects are annoying and lead to the infamous “cheese faces”. The only thing that helps here is to do without the automatic mode and turn off the “juice” of the flash in the menu. There is no flash shoe or sync socket for connecting external flash units.

Picture quality

On the 1/2.35″ small CCD, which Panasonic produces itself, 8.5 million pixels are squeezed, of which a maximum of 7 million are used (for an explanation, see the “Optics” section). These are not just a few pixels on such a small area, which leads to the expectation of corresponding noise. To prevent this, Panasonic relies on the new Venus Engine III, which can process and combat color and brightness noise separately. The color noise in particular is often unpleasant with digital cameras, as uniformly colored surfaces are colorfully speckled as a result. The brightness noise, on the other hand, is not quite as unpleasant. As a result, the color noise gets a “special treatment”. So the TZ3 shines especially in this discipline; there is little noise, especially little color noise. Even at higher sensitivities, the TZ3 remains surprisingly noise free. Unfortunately, this strong noise reduction is also at the expense of the fine details. Already at a sensitivity of ISO 100 the typical character of noise reduction is noticeable, at higher sensitivities above ISO 400 the noise reduction increases to such an extent that fine details appear almost “softly washed”. Fujifilm, the competitor in this discipline, is still setting standards with its Real Photo technology. With such high sensitivities, skin structures, hair and other details no longer appear well resolved, so that the automatic sensitivity adjustment should be avoided if possible in poor lighting conditions. For relatively small prints or the presentation on the Internet, however, quite useful results are possible.

The Panasonic TZ3 is a typical shoot-to-print camera. It offers hardly any manual settings and no RAW mode. Instead, the images should come out of the camera as crisply as possible so that they can be sent directly to a printer or an industrial photo laboratory without any detours via complicated image processing. According to the DCTau test protocol, the TZ3 has excellent resolution values as expected, especially in the middle of the picture. There is a slight to medium drop in resolution towards the edge of the picture, depending on the focal length, but this remains at a good level. The best edge resolution is at medium focal lengths. In the case of the directional dependence of the resolution, the blue channel shows a peculiarity; here it is increased compared to the other color channels. Also the processing of fine image details and the efficiency is according to the camera class. The processing is aggressive and less suitable for demanding image processing; the efficiency, on the other hand, is good to very good depending on the focal length. The efficiency is again best at the medium focal length and slightly better at the telephoto end than at the wide angle. Where fine image details are aggressively processed, corresponding, disturbing artifacts can also be found. These are conspicuous in the TZ3; especially the color and brightness moirés that appear on fine structures on almost every falling and rising edge of any orientation. In addition, there are slight color artifacts due to low-pass filtering and aliasing effects, so that the camera can be used in this discipline little for the post-processing of images.

Sharpness, on the other hand, is surprisingly low for this type of camera. It is almost reserved in the dark parts of the picture, but increases slightly towards the lights. On bright, overexposed edges, slight overexposure occurs, but practically no visible color edges. The TZ3 is therefore extremely good in this discipline and would even be suitable for post-processing. The TZ3 also has amazingly good image quality characteristics, mainly due to the lens. The edge darkening is astonishingly small for such a zoomprot, even considering the size of the lens. The edge darkening is only visible in the wide angle, but very soft, at medium focal length the values are very good, while at the telephoto end a stronger vignetting occurs again (which is hardly noticeable). Even better is the distortion, which is low in all focal lengths. This is especially astonishing at the wide-angle end, and one can assume that Panasonic helped a bit with the camera’s internal image processing.

This small Panasonic is very neutral when it comes to colour reproduction, with good, strong colours. However, this only applies if the white balance is correct. This is not a problem under normal lighting conditions, but under artificial light the white balance fails. If the slight orange cast is still acceptable with incandescent light, there is a more or less strong green cast with fluorescent lamps depending on the colour temperature of the light. Even recourse to the white balance presettings is of little help here, as there is only one artificial light presetting that works satisfactorily neither with fluorescent light nor with incandescent light. There’s nothing else to do but to resort to the – fortunately existing – manual white balance; with the help of a piece of white paper or a grey card, the white balance can be helped on its way.

In daylight in particular, signal transmission or coping with contrast in the real subject is a key problem of digital photography. Bright areas overshadow unpleasantly and often have little drawing, while the shadows “drown”. The ever-smaller pixels are not exactly conducive here, but Panasonic has nevertheless managed to master subject contrasts with up to 8.8 f-stops with the TZ3. This is an excellent value, since many other cameras in this class sometimes create considerably less (each f-stop more means twice as much light). The output dynamics are also good with 250 of 256 possible brightness levels, whereby the average brightness is neutral, while the shadows and lights appear somewhat softer. The good input dynamics are supported by a well-adjusted exposure. Although it is abundant – typical for Shoot-to-Print cameras – it is not too bright.

Finally, the pictures have to be saved on the memory card, for which the Panasonic Lumix TZ3 only provides the JPEG format in two quality levels. At the higher quality level, it stores visually lossless; at the higher compression level, twice as many images are possible on the memory card, but corresponding compression artifacts can also be expected. Overall, the image quality of the TZ3 is somewhat unbalanced. It has its strengths such as good colour rendering, high resolution, moderate sharpness, good input dynamics and low distortion, but these are countered by excessive noise reduction, strong artifacts and poor white balance in artificial light.

Special Functions

Now common at Panasonic, the TZ3 shines with a 16:9 video mode in WVGA format. 848 x 480 pixels are recorded at 30 frames per second until the memory card is full. If you have a widescreen TV (which can be connected directly to the camera) ready for playback, you can take full advantage of its screen area. Those who prefer the 4:3 format can fall back on 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 pixels, whereby 30 or 10 images per second can always be recorded. Of course, sound is also cut – even if it sounds a bit tinny. In addition, the microphone is on the top of the camera and therefore somewhat unfavorable for videos. After all, the image stabilizer also works with videos; which unfortunately cannot be said for the optical zoom. The zoom can only be adjusted before recording starts. The videos are saved in QuickTime Motion-JPEG format. Why Panasonic, as a camcorder specialist, does not use more efficient compression formats such as MPEG-4 or the modern H.264 (Casio and Sanyo are leading the way) is difficult to understand.

The continuous-advance mode gives the user the option of taking high-resolution pictures in rapid succession. A maximum of 2.7 frames per second is possible, with five or seven consecutive frames depending on the JPEG quality level. In a slowed down continuous-advance mode, on the other hand, two frames per second are possible until the memory card is full. In general, the storage times are extremely short, so that one hardly notices after a recording that it is stored at all. The camera is almost immediately ready to release again, even if the monitor image freezes for a short time. Prerequisite for this is of course an SD card with a speed of at least 10 MByte/s (SanDisk Ultra II, Lexar 80x or similar).

By the way, the camera has several functions that make you think of a little intelligence. This automatically rotates upright images. Even more clever is the “intelligent ISO function” functionality. To activate this function, there is a separate place on the program selector wheel. In four large measuring ranges, movements of the subject are reliably detected and the sensitivity is adjusted accordingly so that the subject can be captured without motion blur. Although the TZ3 already has an optical image stabilizer, it has no effect on moving subjects. Here, on the other hand, the image content is constantly analysed for movements that are “frozen” by means of short shutter speeds; the automatic can also be limited by setting the upper limit for sensitivity to ISO 400, 800 or 1,250. With the help of a demo mode you can even convince yourself that this actually works.

With the other settings, the TZ3 is partly spartan. Very nice is the possibility to display both a histogram and a grid on the screen. In vain, however, one looks for the possibility to be able to adapt the image parameters to one’s own needs. There is no way to directly influence sharpness, colour intensity and contrast; only a few profiles (standard, natural, colourful, cool and warm) are available. Images can be edited in the camera after they have been captured or during playback. They can be trimmed and reduced; the aspect ratio can also be adjusted later. Notes or comments about the image can be recorded as voice memos.

The camera is outgoing with its external connections. In addition to the obligatory mains connection, there is also a combined USB/AV socket. The home TV can thus be used to play back pictures and videos; a slide show is also possible. The picture signal can be switched between PAL and NTSC – the aspect ratio of the television is also set (16:9 or 4:3). The camera can be connected to a computer or PictBridge compatible printer using the USB cable. The computer recognizes the camera as a mass storage device and can directly access the contents of the memory card. Unfortunately, the camera only supports USB 2.0 full-speed and not the faster high-speed version.

Bottom line

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 shines above all with its powerful zoom lens, which offers both a wide angle and telephoto focal length. Paired with the extremely compact housing dimensions, this results in a camera suitable for trouser pockets, which is particularly suitable for travelling with light luggage – even if the ambitious photographer doesn’t find enough possibilities to intervene in the automatic systems. The image quality as well as the sophisticated and partly innovative range of functions (e.g. the intelligent ISO function) have been adapted to fast photography; the camera will certainly find many friends here.

Short Evaluation

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 Datasheet