Review Date: May 3, 2011
Category: Beginner Amateur
Photoxels Silver Award – Compact Superzoom
HANDLING & FEEL
The Panasonic ZS10 / TZ20 is compact at 104.9 x 57.6 x 33.4 mm (4.13 x 2.27 x 1.31 inch) and weighs 219 g (0.482 lb) with battery and SD Memory Card. In practical terms, it is pocketable (large pants pocket or coat pocket) with a nice heft. The construction is very good with a distinctive feeling of quality. Even though it incorporates a touch screen LCD, there are all the usual control buttons so you can use the latter if you so prefer. The ZS10 / TZ20 is available in red, black or blue — and some other colors, depending on your country. It is a beautifully designed camera with chrome accents.
The Lumix ZS10 / TZ20 has a Leica branded DC Vario-Elmar F3.3(W)-F5.9(T) lens that provides a 16x ultra wide-angle optical zoom. At 24mm (equiv.), the starting focal length is great for ultra wide-angle shots that will allow you to include a large group of friends or capture wide landscapes. The 384mm (equiv.) super tele allows you to bring far away subjects close. Of course, in between, you can select a medium tele focal length (e.g. 135 mm equiv.) to use as a perfect portrait lens allowing you to get close without getting “in your face.” Optical image stabilization helps reduce camera shake at the long focal lengths. Macro mode allows you to get as close as 3 cm (1.2 in.) of your subject at wide-angle. The incredible lens reach makes this camera an ideal compact travel camera and there is not much you can’t capture.
On the front of the camera, at top right of the lens is the AF-assist Light/Self-timer lamp. The flash is at top left and is powerful enough to reach 3.2m at wide-angle (ISO Auto). A curved projection acts as an effective enough handgrip, but we recommend using the wriststrap.
Startup is about 3 sec. (from Power ON to LCD ready for capture, i.e. time-to-first-shot) which is not bad, but I’ve seen faster. There is no practical shutter lag. Shot to shot times is fast at about 1 sec. (approx. 10 shots in 10 sec. in P mode, ISO Auto.) or pretty much as fast as you can press the shutter release button.
The AF is fast and precise in both good and low lighting, and this has become a hallmark of Panasonic digital cameras. The Panasonic ZS10 / TZ20 has Touch AF which allows you to simply point to the screen to focus on that spot. Simple and elegant. Touch AF Tracking locks onto your subject and tracks it as it and/or the camera moves. This works well enough if the movement is slow. Touch-control Shooting goes one step further than Touch AF and also takes the picture when you touch the screen.
It takes about 3 sec. to save a Fine JPEG to SD memory card. At Quality = Fine, a 14MP JPEG image is compressed down to anywhere between 5MB and 6MB.
Included in the box is a rechargeable Li-ion battery DMW-BCG10PP that can take about 260 shots (CIPA standard) on a fresh charge. A Battery Charger DE-A65 conveniently plugs directly into an electrical wall outlet and will recharge a depleted battery in approx. 130 min.
The top of the camera has, from right to left (viewing from the back), the Power switch, dedicated Motion Picture button, Shutter Release Button with the Zoom lever around it, Mode Dial, Stereo Microphones, GPS Antenna and Status Indicator, and the Speaker.
It takes about 3 seconds to zoom from wide to tele and I counted approx. 34 intermediate steps. You can disable digital zoom [Menu – Rec – Digital Zoom – OFF]. The Panasonic ZS10 / TZ20 has Continuous Shooting 10fps for a max. of 15 images.
The iA (Intelligent Auto) mode on the Mode Dial is probably where you’ll leave the camera on most of the time.
On the back of the Panasonic ZS10 / TZ20, you’ll find a generous 3.0-in. Touch Screen LCD panel with 460k-dot resolution. The control buttons are on the right side and from top to bottom, there is the Record/Playback switch, Exposure button, Cursor pad, Q.MENU button and DISP button.
The new Exposure button is only active in ASM (Aperture-Priority, Shutter-Priority and Manual) modes. In those three modes, press the Exposure button to change the shutter speed and aperture.
The Q.MENU (Quick Menu) button displays a menu on screen for fast settings changes. The REC/PLAY (Record/Playback) button allows you to switch from shooting mode into playback mode.
The LCD is a touch screen panel but it is not what you might expect. Panasonic has figured out that most photographers do not really like touch screen panels but the latter are becoming popular, e.g. in smart phones. So, to give you the best of both world, it has retained all the usual control buttons plus given you touch screen control of those functions that would more naturally equate to a touch that to navigating around using arrow buttons. In this, the touch screen implementation is a winner. For example, what would you rather do: press the arrow keys repeatedly to move the AF frame to the point on screen where you want the camera to focus — or simply touch that point on the screen? To ensure that the camera records where you touch, do calibrate it in SETUP.
You can record Full HD movies 1920 x 1080 in AVCHD mode with stereo sound until the card is full. You can zoom while filming videos and you can barely hear the zoom noise. You can however hear any noise you make with your finger as it handles the zoom lever, so recommendation is to film longer (before and after the desired scene) than you need and edit the noise sections out.
The plastic Terminal door opens up pretty wide to allow unimpeded access to the HDMI socket and A/V OUT/Digital socket (the USB cable plugs in here). There is a nice Battery/Card door and the battery has a latch to keep it from accidentally falling. The tripod socket at the bottom is metal; you won’t be able to change battery or memory card when the camera is on a tripod.
There is approx. 18MB of Internal Memory, which is not much, and I was able to save only two 14MP images into internal memory.
The GPS capability can be set to either turn ON/OFF automatically when you power ON/OFF the camera, or you can manually turn it ON and OFF. The former is preferable if you intend to record GPS info in every picture, but do note that it will use more battery power. The latter is preferable if you want to record GPS info only for select pictures — but then you need to remember to manually turn it OFF in Menu because it stays ON (draining the battery) even when you power OFF the camera. Why does it continue to stay ON? Perhaps to allow you to continuously acquire satellites info so you have an instant location fix the moment you turn the camera ON? Anyway, be aware of this setup and verify it if you find that your battery is draining faster than you expect.
The Panasonic ZS10 / TZ20 should make a great compact travel camera. As Panasonic digital cameras have gained the reputation for, it works very well and the overall experience is pleasant. It’s pocketable, handles well and the [purposefully] limited touch user interface works well.
Next: Panasonic ZS10 / TZ20 User’s Experience
