Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 10.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3 inch LCD
- 10.1-megapixel resolution captures enough detail for poster-size prints
- 12x MEGA optical image-stablilized zoom; 25mm ultra-wide-angle lens
- Capture HD video in “AVCHD Lite” format
- Intelligent Auto (iA) mode; Face Recognition feature
- Capture images to SD/SDHC memory cards (not included)
Product Description
The ZS3 records HD motion images at a smooth 60 frames per second with 1280 x 720-pixel resolution. It uses the AVCHD (MPEG-4/H.264) format, via AVCHD lite, which stores less data than other formats and thus lets you shoot more minutes of HD motion images before running out of memory.Just set the camera to iA mode, aim and shoot. The camera does all the rest. It automatically determines the most suitable scene mode and helps correct blurring, focus, and brightness problems. With iA mode, it’s easy to get beautiful, clear results. In the ZS3, iA mode cannot be used when shooting motion images.The ZS3 packs a LEICA DC VARIO-ELMAR lens with 12x optical zoom into a compact body. This versatile photographic tool lets you shoot everything from sweeping vistas at the 25mm wide-angle setting to dynamic 300mm telephoto shots. And the lens system’s exquisite rendering ability lets you capture even the subtle nuances of the sights and scenes in your travels…. More >>
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 10.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3 inch LCD
I have owned two prior digital cameras- the first was a Canon that took good pictures, but was too bulky to pocket around and required AA batteries to power it. The second was a Sony CyberShot DSC-W150 that took crappy, blurry pictures in low light. Needless to say, I felt an upgrade was in order.
So I’m going on an east coast trip next month. My buddy and I are avid baseball fans. One problem: as we do not always have great seats, taking close-up pictures of ballplayers is a real pain with 99% of the compact point and shoots out there. This is because the camera’s size will only allow it 5X optical zoom. You can combine this with digital zooming, but I don’t need to tell you how terrible and pixilated this looks. Thus my conundrum. So I really wanted a compact, pocketable camera with a long range optical lens, without having to lug around an expensive digital SLR.
Enter the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3. When I read the specs on it, I was in awe. 10 megapixel, 12X OPTICAL zoom. Here’s the sweetest part about the zoom- if you planning to use smaller prints (i.e. 4X6), you can quickly adjust the camera’s Megapixel (MP) count from 10 to 7, 5, and 3 to yield maximum OPTICAL zooms of 14.3, 17.1, and 21.4 respectably, without much loss of detail on such prints. I wish Panasonic would have allowed the camera to adjust the MP count automatically as you zoom, but it’s not too much trouble to change the MP settings manually from the quick menu.
Another great feature: the camera’s screen is beautiful at 460,000 pixels, twice the count as the rival Canon Powershot SX200 IS (more on that camera later). From the moment you view your first picture, you’ll quickly notice how much sharper photos look on this camera. It’s a nice convenience to view photos on the camera in a manner closer to the quality that will actually be seen when you’re viewing them on the computer (and ultimately printing them).
I also want to give Panasonic kudos for the build quality and compactness of this camera. The ZS3 is a replacement for the popular TZ5 model, which was 9MP and 10X Optical Zoom. So they increased the resolution, and added a wider range lens, and REDUCED the size by .4 cubic inches. Specifications aside, I was more than pleased that this camera will comfortably fit inside my jeans pocket. It’s a bit bulkier than an ultracompact for sure, but not objectionably so. Note that the SX200 is a full 2.0 cubic inches thicker, another reason I passed on the Canon. Here’s a few more reasons the Canon falls short: the Canon has a cheesy looking popup flash that sticks out at the top of the camera, whether you’re using flash or not (bad design decision). It has less rated battery life than the Lumix. Also, when shooting video, the Canon does NOT allow you to use optical zooming.
Photo quality on the Lumix is excellent, although I’ve only snapped samples around my place so far. However, I’ve taken quite a few pictures at low light, and at maximum zoom levels to try to get a bad shot. So far, there’s none to be found. I’ll put this through its paces more when I travel next month, but I’m extremely pleased so far. As for video shooting, I’ve sampled it a bit, and it seems pretty solid. The camera gives you the choice of shooting video in its touted AVCHD Lite format (ideal for watching it on your TV in HD with an optional mini to standard HDMI cable), or JPEG if you prefer to email video clips to friends. This year’s model also added stereo sound on video playback versus last year’s monaural effort. One thing I found a bit strange, was the incredibly slow zooming when shooting video. I guess Panasonic was trying to give the user a more controlled, deliberate zoom, but unlike the snappy photo zooming, it’s a bit slow for my liking.
Some other minor quibbles: The dial that controls the shooting mode is extremely loose. If you lightly rub it against anything (a camera bag, your pocket), there’s a good chance it will shift. When you turn the camera on, it will digitally tell you what mode you’re in, but it’s still annoying when it happens by accident. Second, when making a quick zoom on an object, it will appear blurry on the camera’s screen until the shutter button is pressed. There are modes to continually focus the object when zooming, but this drains the camera’s battery life more rapidly. It would be nice if this feature was incorporated automatically without any such sacrifice.
Also, I’m not a huge fan of the included PhotofunStudio software bundled with this camera, as there are other, more compelling programs to view, edit, and print photos (I like Canon’s Zoombrowser program better). Finally, this is not the camera to buy if you’re into manual controls. There’s a ton of preset scenes that can be used (nighttime, portrait, baby, sunset, food, etc.), and you can adjust items like flash, white balance, and max ISO level, but this is meant to be a simple point and shoot for casual photographers. Note that the Lumix has an intelligent auto mode (IA) that will analyze the shooting conditions and pick the right scene, flash, and exposure without any adjustments by the user. This camera screams simplicity, but there’s enough tweaking on the Normal and Scene modes to keep the vast majority of amateur photographers happy.
Regardless of these nitpicks, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 is an awesome camera, unbeatable for those that want the best of both worlds- a great zoom lens and compact body. It’s a bit pricey at $399, but you’re getting quite a lot of camera for your hard earned dollars. I have no doubt that my third digital camera is a terrific buy and a long-term staple for my travels.
I have a pro friend who got a review copy of this for a couple of days. He let me use it for one of them, as he hasn’t shot with a point and shoot in a long time. I ordered my own within the first hour. What a camera. The zoom on this baby is amazing. It has a true wide angle and a long reach. Photos on both ends of the reach are sharp and have good color and saturation. I almost drooled when I printed out the samples. They are flat out the best point and shoot jpegs that I’ve had the pleasure of taking. Raw files would be nice but aren’t available, nor is much in the way of manual exposure control. As a bit of a control freak, I thought that would be a problem but honestly, Panasonic’s smart mode selection is brilliant at getting good, sharp exposures. Focusing is fast, even in low light. Flash seems fine, neither superior nor awful. I took 400 images and a short movie on my first outing and the battery still had some juice. It also has fast and accurate face detection. Holding the camera in my hand, pointing it in the general direction of people on the street without being obvious got consistently good focus. Oh, the image stabilization works very well, too.
The camera is just small enough to fit in a shirt pocket but unless you’re wearing heavy denim it’s just to heavy to be comfortable there. It slips fine in a vest pocket or jacket, though. Point and shoots have definitely improved in low light performance since I bought my last one. I got perfectly usable shots at 400 ISO. A little noise touch up and they print fine at 11×14. At 1600 ISO you can still get a usable Flickr sized image, again with a run through a noise processor like Noise Ninja.
It has a new video mode that uses half the memory of the normal mov files that it also supports. But finding where they are on the card is a bit of a treasure hunt the first time. They are also a pain to process. I ran a conversion program to turn them into H.264 format. That makes editing much easier. Do that first thing. You can even run the optical zoom while shooting movies, though focus can be a bit slow. Videos are much better than those from the Flip that is all I own for movies.
Great zoom, great photos, great lens, reasonable size, scary accurate automatic mode switching, wow!. If it had a bit more manual control it might be better, then again, I’ve got a few hundred really nice images. So no complaints.
Although I have a Nikon D80 DSLR, I needed a more compact point and shoot camera replacement for my aging Canon S60 with dying batteries. After reading a couple of reviews and a visit to a local camera store I decided to choose the ZS3 over the competing Canon SX200 IS with very similar features. Although the Canon is more familiar to me and has more manual features, the compact size of the Panasonic with better battery life, robust video functions and the fact that it’s still made in Japan (versus the Canon which is now manufactured in China) edged out the Canon for me personally (you may want to try both to decide for yourself). So far I have been very happy with this versatile camera – screen is big and bright, facial recognition is neat, zoom is remarkable for a camera of its size and the video quality is excellent for a camera. Only downside is that like the camera store employee said – the autofocus motors inside the Panasonics do seem to be quite loud – i.e. if you are aiming the camera around randomly you can hear the motors whirling away as it refocuses at different potential targets. I enjoyed this purchase and I would recommend this camera to anyone who is looking for a easy-to-use, high quality point and shoot with 12x optical zoom.
You really have to work hard to take a bad shot with this camera. Also the 720p HD video is amazing. Very happy overall.
Below I’ve put together a few notes on getting the most out of the camera and avoiding some of it’s minor foibles..
It’s not as obvious as it should be when video is recording.. I liked my old camera’s blinking led.. The ZS3’s on screen record indicator(especially when you have the display set to view histogram and a bunch of other info).. is not distinctive enough. The record button is also not as easy to press as it should be. I may add one of those small little self-adhesive rubbery sticky dots on the button and see if that helps.
Highlights can end up clipped in videos(and pictures to a much lesser extent).. This can be fixed by putting camera in “normal mode” on the dial and pressing “up” on the D-pad. This is the ONLY place you have access to exposure control that works for both video and pictures. I would recommend -1/3 for pictures and even -2/3 for video. For some reason the camera is very aggressive at brightening video.. I’ve taken video of my son playing lacrosse at night on a lighted Football field.. looks almost like broad daylight using default exposure and still clipped the whites even in that low light.
One other note on video.. and I was burned by this. When you hit the record/stop button at the end of shooting a video, it does NOT continue to process video left in the buffer.. it just dumps it. That means the actual end of the video is about a half second before when you hit the “record/stop” button. I lost one of my son’s goals that way.. Hit the button to stop recording right after he scored, and the video ended up clipped right as he was shooting.
My old camera had very limited recording length per card(no SDHC support), so I am still a little trigger happy.. will have to adjust for this minor flaw.
Video does stutter slightly on panning.. I think this is a function of the imager only recording at 30fps while video is converted to 60fps for AVHDC.. it is either duplicating frames, or averaging one in between which causes it to not be as smooth as I might like in that situation. Seems most noticeable in very bright light with something like bricks in the background. Might try MJPEG mode(30fps only) and see if that changes anything.
I was surprised by the camera’s focal depth while shooting video. People in the stands right in front of me seemed as clear as the players on the field 50+ yards away even in fairly low light.
I also use “Intelligent ISO800″ in picture mode.. nice feature that boosts ISO automatically when it detects motion in the frame.
As for the flash.. which BTW is perhaps the camera’s weakest feature. I find a much cleaner way to deal with turning it on or off, is by using the quick menu and turning Unlimited burst mode on and off.. In burst mode, the flash is forced off. I leave burst mode on most of the time.. you can click and just get one shot, or hold shutter down and snap off a series of quick shots.. Great for group and individual candid photos.
Software that comes with the camera is not great..
I am using my old Cannon Zoombrowser software for pictures. I am forced for now to use Panasonic’s provided software only for video. The Software provided is also far worse at playing back video clips on my slow computer than a couple of other players I use. Video trimming feature, while nice to have, is counter intuitive.. you select the part of the video you want to delete, and not the part you want to keep.. that threw me for a while. Also frustrating that there is no easy way to rename videos and there’s also no way to set a “star” or “favorite” rating for videos(on or off the camera).
Good news is the AVCHD(mt2s) video files can be directly uploaded to YouTube(which will convert them to their HD format for you)
Flash burst mode(in scenes) while limited in resolution(3mpix at 3:2) works well for capturing quick snaps of kids playing around in poorly lit rooms.
Wide angle really is nice.. so much easier to compose shots than with my old Powershot S2..
Can’t believe I have so much more resolution, effortless shooting with snappy focus and amazing HD video quality, All in a camera 1/3rd the size and weight and it still has the 12x Zoom. Stuff it in my pocket and take it anywhere. Good ridance to extra batteries and the “man purse” I had to carry with that S2 clunker! The big bright high res screen on the back is a wonderful addition as well.
It is really hard to rate this item, without discussing customer service / warranty issues as well. For the first week the camera worked well, but after two usages the LCD screen became pixilated and the camera was sent to Panasonic for warranty repair. The warranty department stated that NO EXTERNAL DAMAGE IS COVERED AT ALL. Regardless of the fact that my camera was clearly brand new, and that this was obviously some defect in the camera or screen, Panasonic was unwilling to stand by their product. Instead Panasonic stated “We can replace your unit with a factory reconditioned unit. This product, its operation and its appearance is like that of a new unit and it carries a 90 day warranty.” The cost would be an additional $135.50 for this reconditioned unit. So basically I would pay $535.50 for a reconditioned camera with a 90 day warranty. I have asked for my unrepaired, defective camera back and have been waiting for a week for the tracking number. Panasonic has not responded to my email requests and their 800 number is busy for hours at a time. I am very disappointed with Panasonic and their ownership towards their products. I caution others towards buying Panasonic products.