Digital Cameras Reviews

Posts Tagged ‘Photographic Tool’

Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS3 10MP Digital Camera with 12x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3 inch LCD Black

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.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Very good camera, although I expected a little bit more…
As has been said, it’s a really good camera. With a powerful zoom, little bit uncomfortable to handle if you are used to super compacts, but you know that (or you should know) when you buy it.

The video is very good, I’d say that it’s the best that I have ever seen or I would expect from a still camera.

I haven’t noticed too much lose of focus when I zomm in and zoom out during video. But the AVCHD format isn’t very common. Other pro is that the slow speed of zoom during video make transitions very soft being more slow when you start and finish zooming than in the middle.

The part that I expected much better was the face recognition, which is like play to Lotto.

And although reviews say that it hasn’t manual focus, there’s an option to follow objects. You have to put the object on the center of the screen, click a button, and then the camera will automatically focus that object although it or you move, or zoom, etc. Not very accurate, but good enough!

The battery life deppends on some options. If autofocus is working all the time instead of just when you click the button to take the photo, then your battery will have a shorter life. But the performance average is normal for this type of camera.

5 Stars Easy to use digital Camera with great HD video!~But CAUTION when order replacement batteries!
I purchased this camera just before I left for a trip to the Galapagos Islands. I’m not a whiz kid when it comes to cameras, but I knew the Galapagos Islands would have once-in-a-life-time photo opportunities that I didn’t want to miss due to poor quality equipment or equipment that was too complicated for me to use. This camera DELIVERED on all my needs! (except battery incompatibilities, mentioned later!)I recommend spending an hour or two with the camera and instruction book. The 130 page instruction book was easy to navigate through, but it takes a while to familiarize yourself with everything this amazing little camera is capable of doing!!

The quality of my vacation photos and videos were amazing! I was able to record a video of the mating dance of two blue-footed boobies, iguanas fighting, and sea lions and penguins playing. My landscape photos have such detail that it’s hard to believe these were not taken with a more expensive SLR digital. When I returned home, I projected the video onto a giant classroom screen during a lecture and the quality was amazing. Everyone asked what type of camera I was using! I connected the camera to my Samsung 46 inch 1080i HDTV. The photos and videos looked so good I couldn’t believe they were really MY photos!

The large 3 inch LCD monitor on the SZ3 is large enough to review photos and videos so I could easily determine which photos and videos were worth keeping while I was still on vacation. The size and quality of the LCD was even good enough replay videos and scan through photos for fellow travelers.

The 12X optical zoom on this camera allowed me to zoom up on animals and landmarks otherwise too far away to photograph. I did not try out the 21X extended optical zoom. Thanks to the setting made for photos from airplane windows, my on-flight photos turned out better than any on-flight photos I’ve ever seen.

There is a setting on the camera that allows you to hold the shutter down. It will continue to take photos until you release the shutter. This allowed me to take photos of animals in motion and later choose to save which photo caught the animal in that “ideal” position! No more pushing the shutter only to have the subject move and you’ve missed the shot! If you don’t want to change settings on the camera, there is an “Intelligent Auto Mode” that adjusts automatically to light, movement, scenery (adjusts to take sharp pictures near and far landscapes), recognizes faces to adjust light to create optimal settings for portrait lighting, etc.

The FACE RECOGNITION setting isn’t always accurate. I tried to train it to recognize my dad, and several other faces were later incorrectly identified by my camera as “Dad.” Hopefully re-training it will resolve that glitch. I eventually had to turn off. It was even labeling photos of women as “Dad”!

The Travel feature allows you to set the dates of your vacation into the camera memory. It also allows you to change the time zone during your vacation and automatically returns to “home” clock at the end of the ‘Vacation mode dates’. This creates a time stamp that is not only accurate to your vacation time zone, but allows you to record when & WHERE each photo was taken! This is especially great if your travels include several cities or islands. The on-screen menu tells you what day of your trip you are on (Galapagos Day 1, Galapagos Day 2, etc.). It’s really nice for later when you are trying to sort through photos and remember what day and where they were taken. Especially when you have more than one SD card!

You can increase the size of the on screen menu to a larger font if you have problems with reading small print.

I have to say I was impressed with the different settings for taking photos of babies, sunsets, portraits, food, etc. It was amazing how many differnt settings were available and the instruction book gives great hints on how to maximize the use of each of those settings. I think this is one of the best instruction manuals I’ve seen for cameras.

Again, my only hesitation with this camera is with the battery, and it’s more of an idealogical complaint against Panasonic. I just don’t think they should create a camera with a battery that is so difficult to find and doesn’t have a compatable generic. SO………WARNING!!!!!!!!! THE ONLY battery that is compatable with this camera is the Panasonic Lumix DMW-BCG10PP. USE CAUTION when ordering batteries advertized on Amazon’s website that claim to be compatible with this camera. I ended up going on vacation without a second battery and due to the high volume of photos and videos I was taking each day I ran out of battery before the end of the day. Luckily most days I had a lunch period where I was able to recharge the battery. The instructions say you can get 300 photos from a battery charge, but I got more than twice that amount and somedays got almost three times that many. Still, If I didn’t recharge mid-day, I ran out of battery before I ran out of photo opportunities each day. I’m sure it’s because I took those shots so close together. One battery is probably good enough for almost every situation except special vacations where photos are a huge part of your day! ENJOY!

4 Stars I NEED HELP! How to get MAC Preview to render clear images of ZS3 10 MP shots
I am making some simple mistake – please help! I have a MAC G5/OS 10.5.8/2 GB dram running Preview 4.2 (all software up to date). Previously I had a 2 MP Fuji 2650 and its jpegs looked fine with this setup. Now with the ZS3 the 10 MP photos looked muddy and ill-focused, 5 MP and 3 MP of the same subject look much better. I think it must be some issue with how the Preview program is set to display the photos. When I change the jpegs to actual size, and zoom subjects in the 10 MP shot to the same size as the 5&3 MP shots they look almost identical (so I think the camera is focusing correctly) – but when I simply double-click on the jpegs the 10 MP shots look awful. Is this because the 10 MP shots are downsampled more? How can I get all the jpegs to render well? Am I supposed to use some Preference setting like “respect image and screen DPI for scale”? Could this be a setup issue (haven’t read the manual much)? Could this be because I haven’t imported into iPhoto with which I am not that familiar?

As for the ZS3 the dedicated movie button is awesome, the zoom is quite nice to have but uses so much juice that the battery shuts down pronto! I actually find the wideangle annoying, have to read to see if I can defeat that default state. Haven’t tried to view the AVCHD lite video yet, sounds like getting it to work will be a lot of work. I really like the package as seemingly the best you can get and still carry in your pocket but man the battery issues are a serious problem if you zoom much; not to mention the price and availability problems of the OEM battery and the 1.2 software shutdown of non-OEM batteries that sell for much less!

4 Stars SO far so good
It’s probably unfair to write a review after only one day’s ownership, especially a work day, but here are a few thoughts.

12x zoom in a pocket camera is an amazing thing. Whatever other camera(s) you own, this is the one you can take everywhere.

And while the 65x zoom available with combined optical/digital doesn’t produce pictures that you’d want to show anywhere, it’s certainly fun for spying on people. I was even able to see people at the top of the Empire State building taken from the street, 10 blocks away.

Polarized sunglasses can make the screen disappear in bright sunshine. (Do wish this camera had a viewfinder.)

27 scene modes cover most conditions, but they’re on 2 separate screens, and the first has modes such as “baby” and “pet” (which I don’t need) while “burst” and “flash burst” are on the second screen Wish one could move them around.

Tried flash burst in a pretty dark room and didn’t work very well, pictures were much darker than with normal flash, though the camera’s flash refreshes fairly quickly so you can take a series of pictures with full flash almost as fast as in burst mode. Didn’t try burst flash in a room with some lights on, yet. One of my reasons for wanting this camera is to be able to take candid pictures in a party situation and my old Sony H-5 just takes too long and I’d miss more pictures than I’d get.

I’ll add to this review after I use the camera a bit more.

5 Stars Love this camera
Camera arrived quickly and was easy to set up. Make sure you get a large memory card for this as a 10MP camera creates large files. I work on a MAC and the camera was recognized automatically. The zoom is incredible and the video works fine. Very impressed with this camera.

Buy/More Info

The GF1 is essentially a G1 (with a couple of GH1 features and the loss of a handful of scene modes) squashed into a body that’s more or less the same size as the E-P1 – it occupies 35% less volume and is 26% lighter than the G1. It may lack the E-P1’s cute-as-a-button retro styling but it does effectively answer the three main criticisms faced by the Olympus: the lack of built in flash (check), the lack of a viewfinder (there’s an optional EVF) and the poor focus speed (it has the same impressive system as the other ‘G’ models). You don’t get the E-P1’s total compatibility (it currently won’t focus any Four Thirds lens that doesn’t currently offer live view AF on an Olympus SLR), but those lenses it will focus, it will focus a helluva lot faster.

Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS3 10MP Digital Camera with 12x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3 inch LCD Red

The ZS3 records HD motion images at a smooth 60 frames per second with 1280×720-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.The ZS3 is equipped with an HDMI output terminal for direct transmission of digital picture and sound signals. Just connect the camera to an HDTV using a single HDMI mini cable (purchased separately), and it’s easy to view beautiful HD photos and motion images. If you have a VIERA HDTV, you can control the camera’s playback functions with VIERA’s remote control unit.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.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Very good camera, although I expected a little bit more…
As has been said, it’s a really good camera. With a powerful zoom, little bit uncomfortable to handle if you are used to super compacts, but you know that (or you should know) when you buy it.

The video is very good, I’d say that it’s the best that I have ever seen or I would expect from a still camera.

I haven’t noticed too much lose of focus when I zomm in and zoom out during video. But the AVCHD format isn’t very common. Other pro is that the slow speed of zoom during video make transitions very soft being more slow when you start and finish zooming than in the middle.

The part that I expected much better was the face recognition, which is like play to Lotto.

And although reviews say that it hasn’t manual focus, there’s an option to follow objects. You have to put the object on the center of the screen, click a button, and then the camera will automatically focus that object although it or you move, or zoom, etc. Not very accurate, but good enough!

The battery life deppends on some options. If autofocus is working all the time instead of just when you click the button to take the photo, then your battery will have a shorter life. But the performance average is normal for this type of camera.

5 Stars Love this camera
Camera arrived quickly and was easy to set up. Make sure you get a large memory card for this as a 10MP camera creates large files. I work on a MAC and the camera was recognized automatically. The zoom is incredible and the video works fine. Very impressed with this camera.

4 Stars SO far so good
It’s probably unfair to write a review after only one day’s ownership, especially a work day, but here are a few thoughts.

12x zoom in a pocket camera is an amazing thing. Whatever other camera(s) you own, this is the one you can take everywhere.

And while the 65x zoom available with combined optical/digital doesn’t produce pictures that you’d want to show anywhere, it’s certainly fun for spying on people. I was even able to see people at the top of the Empire State building taken from the street, 10 blocks away.

Polarized sunglasses can make the screen disappear in bright sunshine. (Do wish this camera had a viewfinder.)

27 scene modes cover most conditions, but they’re on 2 separate screens, and the first has modes such as “baby” and “pet” (which I don’t need) while “burst” and “flash burst” are on the second screen Wish one could move them around.

Tried flash burst in a pretty dark room and didn’t work very well, pictures were much darker than with normal flash, though the camera’s flash refreshes fairly quickly so you can take a series of pictures with full flash almost as fast as in burst mode. Didn’t try burst flash in a room with some lights on, yet. One of my reasons for wanting this camera is to be able to take candid pictures in a party situation and my old Sony H-5 just takes too long and I’d miss more pictures than I’d get.

I’ll add to this review after I use the camera a bit more.

4 Stars I NEED HELP! How to get MAC Preview to render clear images of ZS3 10 MP shots
I am making some simple mistake – please help! I have a MAC G5/OS 10.5.8/2 GB dram running Preview 4.2 (all software up to date). Previously I had a 2 MP Fuji 2650 and its jpegs looked fine with this setup. Now with the ZS3 the 10 MP photos looked muddy and ill-focused, 5 MP and 3 MP of the same subject look much better. I think it must be some issue with how the Preview program is set to display the photos. When I change the jpegs to actual size, and zoom subjects in the 10 MP shot to the same size as the 5&3 MP shots they look almost identical (so I think the camera is focusing correctly) – but when I simply double-click on the jpegs the 10 MP shots look awful. Is this because the 10 MP shots are downsampled more? How can I get all the jpegs to render well? Am I supposed to use some Preference setting like “respect image and screen DPI for scale”? Could this be a setup issue (haven’t read the manual much)? Could this be because I haven’t imported into iPhoto with which I am not that familiar?

As for the ZS3 the dedicated movie button is awesome, the zoom is quite nice to have but uses so much juice that the battery shuts down pronto! I actually find the wideangle annoying, have to read to see if I can defeat that default state. Haven’t tried to view the AVCHD lite video yet, sounds like getting it to work will be a lot of work. I really like the package as seemingly the best you can get and still carry in your pocket but man the battery issues are a serious problem if you zoom much; not to mention the price and availability problems of the OEM battery and the 1.2 software shutdown of non-OEM batteries that sell for much less!

5 Stars Easy to use digital Camera with great HD video!~But CAUTION when order replacement batteries!
I purchased this camera just before I left for a trip to the Galapagos Islands. I’m not a whiz kid when it comes to cameras, but I knew the Galapagos Islands would have once-in-a-life-time photo opportunities that I didn’t want to miss due to poor quality equipment or equipment that was too complicated for me to use. This camera DELIVERED on all my needs! (except battery incompatibilities, mentioned later!)I recommend spending an hour or two with the camera and instruction book. The 130 page instruction book was easy to navigate through, but it takes a while to familiarize yourself with everything this amazing little camera is capable of doing!!

The quality of my vacation photos and videos were amazing! I was able to record a video of the mating dance of two blue-footed boobies, iguanas fighting, and sea lions and penguins playing. My landscape photos have such detail that it’s hard to believe these were not taken with a more expensive SLR digital. When I returned home, I projected the video onto a giant classroom screen during a lecture and the quality was amazing. Everyone asked what type of camera I was using! I connected the camera to my Samsung 46 inch 1080i HDTV. The photos and videos looked so good I couldn’t believe they were really MY photos!

The large 3 inch LCD monitor on the SZ3 is large enough to review photos and videos so I could easily determine which photos and videos were worth keeping while I was still on vacation. The size and quality of the LCD was even good enough replay videos and scan through photos for fellow travelers.

The 12X optical zoom on this camera allowed me to zoom up on animals and landmarks otherwise too far away to photograph. I did not try out the 21X extended optical zoom. Thanks to the setting made for photos from airplane windows, my on-flight photos turned out better than any on-flight photos I’ve ever seen.

There is a setting on the camera that allows you to hold the shutter down. It will continue to take photos until you release the shutter. This allowed me to take photos of animals in motion and later choose to save which photo caught the animal in that “ideal” position! No more pushing the shutter only to have the subject move and you’ve missed the shot! If you don’t want to change settings on the camera, there is an “Intelligent Auto Mode” that adjusts automatically to light, movement, scenery (adjusts to take sharp pictures near and far landscapes), recognizes faces to adjust light to create optimal settings for portrait lighting, etc.

The FACE RECOGNITION setting isn’t always accurate. I tried to train it to recognize my dad, and several other faces were later incorrectly identified by my camera as “Dad.” Hopefully re-training it will resolve that glitch. I eventually had to turn off. It was even labeling photos of women as “Dad”!

The Travel feature allows you to set the dates of your vacation into the camera memory. It also allows you to change the time zone during your vacation and automatically returns to “home” clock at the end of the ‘Vacation mode dates’. This creates a time stamp that is not only accurate to your vacation time zone, but allows you to record when & WHERE each photo was taken! This is especially great if your travels include several cities or islands. The on-screen menu tells you what day of your trip you are on (Galapagos Day 1, Galapagos Day 2, etc.). It’s really nice for later when you are trying to sort through photos and remember what day and where they were taken. Especially when you have more than one SD card!

You can increase the size of the on screen menu to a larger font if you have problems with reading small print.

I have to say I was impressed with the different settings for taking photos of babies, sunsets, portraits, food, etc. It was amazing how many differnt settings were available and the instruction book gives great hints on how to maximize the use of each of those settings. I think this is one of the best instruction manuals I’ve seen for cameras.

Again, my only hesitation with this camera is with the battery, and it’s more of an idealogical complaint against Panasonic. I just don’t think they should create a camera with a battery that is so difficult to find and doesn’t have a compatable generic. SO………WARNING!!!!!!!!! THE ONLY battery that is compatable with this camera is the Panasonic Lumix DMW-BCG10PP. USE CAUTION when ordering batteries advertized on Amazon’s website that claim to be compatible with this camera. I ended up going on vacation without a second battery and due to the high volume of photos and videos I was taking each day I ran out of battery before the end of the day. Luckily most days I had a lunch period where I was able to recharge the battery. The instructions say you can get 300 photos from a battery charge, but I got more than twice that amount and somedays got almost three times that many. Still, If I didn’t recharge mid-day, I ran out of battery before I ran out of photo opportunities each day. I’m sure it’s because I took those shots so close together. One battery is probably good enough for almost every situation except special vacations where photos are a huge part of your day! ENJOY!

Buy/More Info

Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS3 10MP Digital Camera with 12x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3 inch LCD Silver

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.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars SO far so good
It’s probably unfair to write a review after only one day’s ownership, especially a work day, but here are a few thoughts.

12x zoom in a pocket camera is an amazing thing. Whatever other camera(s) you own, this is the one you can take everywhere.

And while the 65x zoom available with combined optical/digital doesn’t produce pictures that you’d want to show anywhere, it’s certainly fun for spying on people. I was even able to see people at the top of the Empire State building taken from the street, 10 blocks away.

Polarized sunglasses can make the screen disappear in bright sunshine. (Do wish this camera had a viewfinder.)

27 scene modes cover most conditions, but they’re on 2 separate screens, and the first has modes such as “baby” and “pet” (which I don’t need) while “burst” and “flash burst” are on the second screen Wish one could move them around.

Tried flash burst in a pretty dark room and didn’t work very well, pictures were much darker than with normal flash, though the camera’s flash refreshes fairly quickly so you can take a series of pictures with full flash almost as fast as in burst mode. Didn’t try burst flash in a room with some lights on, yet. One of my reasons for wanting this camera is to be able to take candid pictures in a party situation and my old Sony H-5 just takes too long and I’d miss more pictures than I’d get.

I’ll add to this review after I use the camera a bit more.

4 Stars Very good camera, although I expected a little bit more…
As has been said, it’s a really good camera. With a powerful zoom, little bit uncomfortable to handle if you are used to super compacts, but you know that (or you should know) when you buy it.

The video is very good, I’d say that it’s the best that I have ever seen or I would expect from a still camera.

I haven’t noticed too much lose of focus when I zomm in and zoom out during video. But the AVCHD format isn’t very common. Other pro is that the slow speed of zoom during video make transitions very soft being more slow when you start and finish zooming than in the middle.

The part that I expected much better was the face recognition, which is like play to Lotto.

And although reviews say that it hasn’t manual focus, there’s an option to follow objects. You have to put the object on the center of the screen, click a button, and then the camera will automatically focus that object although it or you move, or zoom, etc. Not very accurate, but good enough!

The battery life deppends on some options. If autofocus is working all the time instead of just when you click the button to take the photo, then your battery will have a shorter life. But the performance average is normal for this type of camera.

5 Stars Easy to use digital Camera with great HD video!~But CAUTION when order replacement batteries!
I purchased this camera just before I left for a trip to the Galapagos Islands. I’m not a whiz kid when it comes to cameras, but I knew the Galapagos Islands would have once-in-a-life-time photo opportunities that I didn’t want to miss due to poor quality equipment or equipment that was too complicated for me to use. This camera DELIVERED on all my needs! (except battery incompatibilities, mentioned later!)I recommend spending an hour or two with the camera and instruction book. The 130 page instruction book was easy to navigate through, but it takes a while to familiarize yourself with everything this amazing little camera is capable of doing!!

The quality of my vacation photos and videos were amazing! I was able to record a video of the mating dance of two blue-footed boobies, iguanas fighting, and sea lions and penguins playing. My landscape photos have such detail that it’s hard to believe these were not taken with a more expensive SLR digital. When I returned home, I projected the video onto a giant classroom screen during a lecture and the quality was amazing. Everyone asked what type of camera I was using! I connected the camera to my Samsung 46 inch 1080i HDTV. The photos and videos looked so good I couldn’t believe they were really MY photos!

The large 3 inch LCD monitor on the SZ3 is large enough to review photos and videos so I could easily determine which photos and videos were worth keeping while I was still on vacation. The size and quality of the LCD was even good enough replay videos and scan through photos for fellow travelers.

The 12X optical zoom on this camera allowed me to zoom up on animals and landmarks otherwise too far away to photograph. I did not try out the 21X extended optical zoom. Thanks to the setting made for photos from airplane windows, my on-flight photos turned out better than any on-flight photos I’ve ever seen.

There is a setting on the camera that allows you to hold the shutter down. It will continue to take photos until you release the shutter. This allowed me to take photos of animals in motion and later choose to save which photo caught the animal in that “ideal” position! No more pushing the shutter only to have the subject move and you’ve missed the shot! If you don’t want to change settings on the camera, there is an “Intelligent Auto Mode” that adjusts automatically to light, movement, scenery (adjusts to take sharp pictures near and far landscapes), recognizes faces to adjust light to create optimal settings for portrait lighting, etc.

The FACE RECOGNITION setting isn’t always accurate. I tried to train it to recognize my dad, and several other faces were later incorrectly identified by my camera as “Dad.” Hopefully re-training it will resolve that glitch. I eventually had to turn off. It was even labeling photos of women as “Dad”!

The Travel feature allows you to set the dates of your vacation into the camera memory. It also allows you to change the time zone during your vacation and automatically returns to “home” clock at the end of the ‘Vacation mode dates’. This creates a time stamp that is not only accurate to your vacation time zone, but allows you to record when & WHERE each photo was taken! This is especially great if your travels include several cities or islands. The on-screen menu tells you what day of your trip you are on (Galapagos Day 1, Galapagos Day 2, etc.). It’s really nice for later when you are trying to sort through photos and remember what day and where they were taken. Especially when you have more than one SD card!

You can increase the size of the on screen menu to a larger font if you have problems with reading small print.

I have to say I was impressed with the different settings for taking photos of babies, sunsets, portraits, food, etc. It was amazing how many differnt settings were available and the instruction book gives great hints on how to maximize the use of each of those settings. I think this is one of the best instruction manuals I’ve seen for cameras.

Again, my only hesitation with this camera is with the battery, and it’s more of an idealogical complaint against Panasonic. I just don’t think they should create a camera with a battery that is so difficult to find and doesn’t have a compatable generic. SO………WARNING!!!!!!!!! THE ONLY battery that is compatable with this camera is the Panasonic Lumix DMW-BCG10PP. USE CAUTION when ordering batteries advertized on Amazon’s website that claim to be compatible with this camera. I ended up going on vacation without a second battery and due to the high volume of photos and videos I was taking each day I ran out of battery before the end of the day. Luckily most days I had a lunch period where I was able to recharge the battery. The instructions say you can get 300 photos from a battery charge, but I got more than twice that amount and somedays got almost three times that many. Still, If I didn’t recharge mid-day, I ran out of battery before I ran out of photo opportunities each day. I’m sure it’s because I took those shots so close together. One battery is probably good enough for almost every situation except special vacations where photos are a huge part of your day! ENJOY!

5 Stars Love this camera
Camera arrived quickly and was easy to set up. Make sure you get a large memory card for this as a 10MP camera creates large files. I work on a MAC and the camera was recognized automatically. The zoom is incredible and the video works fine. Very impressed with this camera.

4 Stars I NEED HELP! How to get MAC Preview to render clear images of ZS3 10 MP shots
I am making some simple mistake – please help! I have a MAC G5/OS 10.5.8/2 GB dram running Preview 4.2 (all software up to date). Previously I had a 2 MP Fuji 2650 and its jpegs looked fine with this setup. Now with the ZS3 the 10 MP photos looked muddy and ill-focused, 5 MP and 3 MP of the same subject look much better. I think it must be some issue with how the Preview program is set to display the photos. When I change the jpegs to actual size, and zoom subjects in the 10 MP shot to the same size as the 5&3 MP shots they look almost identical (so I think the camera is focusing correctly) – but when I simply double-click on the jpegs the 10 MP shots look awful. Is this because the 10 MP shots are downsampled more? How can I get all the jpegs to render well? Am I supposed to use some Preference setting like “respect image and screen DPI for scale”? Could this be a setup issue (haven’t read the manual much)? Could this be because I haven’t imported into iPhoto with which I am not that familiar?

As for the ZS3 the dedicated movie button is awesome, the zoom is quite nice to have but uses so much juice that the battery shuts down pronto! I actually find the wideangle annoying, have to read to see if I can defeat that default state. Haven’t tried to view the AVCHD lite video yet, sounds like getting it to work will be a lot of work. I really like the package as seemingly the best you can get and still carry in your pocket but man the battery issues are a serious problem if you zoom much; not to mention the price and availability problems of the OEM battery and the 1.2 software shutdown of non-OEM batteries that sell for much less!

Buy/More Info

Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS3 10MP Digital Camera with 12x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3 inch LCD Blue

The ZS3 records HD motion images at a smooth 60 frames per second with 1280×720-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.The ZS3 is equipped with an HDMI output terminal for direct transmission of digital picture and sound signals. Just connect the camera to an HDTV using a single HDMI mini cable (purchased separately), and it’s easy to view beautiful HD photos and motion images. If you have a VIERA HDTV, you can control the camera’s playback functions with VIERA’s remote control unit.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.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Love this camera
Camera arrived quickly and was easy to set up. Make sure you get a large memory card for this as a 10MP camera creates large files. I work on a MAC and the camera was recognized automatically. The zoom is incredible and the video works fine. Very impressed with this camera.

5 Stars Easy to use digital Camera with great HD video!~But CAUTION when order replacement batteries!
I purchased this camera just before I left for a trip to the Galapagos Islands. I’m not a whiz kid when it comes to cameras, but I knew the Galapagos Islands would have once-in-a-life-time photo opportunities that I didn’t want to miss due to poor quality equipment or equipment that was too complicated for me to use. This camera DELIVERED on all my needs! (except battery incompatibilities, mentioned later!)I recommend spending an hour or two with the camera and instruction book. The 130 page instruction book was easy to navigate through, but it takes a while to familiarize yourself with everything this amazing little camera is capable of doing!!

The quality of my vacation photos and videos were amazing! I was able to record a video of the mating dance of two blue-footed boobies, iguanas fighting, and sea lions and penguins playing. My landscape photos have such detail that it’s hard to believe these were not taken with a more expensive SLR digital. When I returned home, I projected the video onto a giant classroom screen during a lecture and the quality was amazing. Everyone asked what type of camera I was using! I connected the camera to my Samsung 46 inch 1080i HDTV. The photos and videos looked so good I couldn’t believe they were really MY photos!

The large 3 inch LCD monitor on the SZ3 is large enough to review photos and videos so I could easily determine which photos and videos were worth keeping while I was still on vacation. The size and quality of the LCD was even good enough replay videos and scan through photos for fellow travelers.

The 12X optical zoom on this camera allowed me to zoom up on animals and landmarks otherwise too far away to photograph. I did not try out the 21X extended optical zoom. Thanks to the setting made for photos from airplane windows, my on-flight photos turned out better than any on-flight photos I’ve ever seen.

There is a setting on the camera that allows you to hold the shutter down. It will continue to take photos until you release the shutter. This allowed me to take photos of animals in motion and later choose to save which photo caught the animal in that “ideal” position! No more pushing the shutter only to have the subject move and you’ve missed the shot! If you don’t want to change settings on the camera, there is an “Intelligent Auto Mode” that adjusts automatically to light, movement, scenery (adjusts to take sharp pictures near and far landscapes), recognizes faces to adjust light to create optimal settings for portrait lighting, etc.

The FACE RECOGNITION setting isn’t always accurate. I tried to train it to recognize my dad, and several other faces were later incorrectly identified by my camera as “Dad.” Hopefully re-training it will resolve that glitch. I eventually had to turn off. It was even labeling photos of women as “Dad”!

The Travel feature allows you to set the dates of your vacation into the camera memory. It also allows you to change the time zone during your vacation and automatically returns to “home” clock at the end of the ‘Vacation mode dates’. This creates a time stamp that is not only accurate to your vacation time zone, but allows you to record when & WHERE each photo was taken! This is especially great if your travels include several cities or islands. The on-screen menu tells you what day of your trip you are on (Galapagos Day 1, Galapagos Day 2, etc.). It’s really nice for later when you are trying to sort through photos and remember what day and where they were taken. Especially when you have more than one SD card!

You can increase the size of the on screen menu to a larger font if you have problems with reading small print.

I have to say I was impressed with the different settings for taking photos of babies, sunsets, portraits, food, etc. It was amazing how many differnt settings were available and the instruction book gives great hints on how to maximize the use of each of those settings. I think this is one of the best instruction manuals I’ve seen for cameras.

Again, my only hesitation with this camera is with the battery, and it’s more of an idealogical complaint against Panasonic. I just don’t think they should create a camera with a battery that is so difficult to find and doesn’t have a compatable generic. SO………WARNING!!!!!!!!! THE ONLY battery that is compatable with this camera is the Panasonic Lumix DMW-BCG10PP. USE CAUTION when ordering batteries advertized on Amazon’s website that claim to be compatible with this camera. I ended up going on vacation without a second battery and due to the high volume of photos and videos I was taking each day I ran out of battery before the end of the day. Luckily most days I had a lunch period where I was able to recharge the battery. The instructions say you can get 300 photos from a battery charge, but I got more than twice that amount and somedays got almost three times that many. Still, If I didn’t recharge mid-day, I ran out of battery before I ran out of photo opportunities each day. I’m sure it’s because I took those shots so close together. One battery is probably good enough for almost every situation except special vacations where photos are a huge part of your day! ENJOY!

4 Stars Very good camera, although I expected a little bit more…
As has been said, it’s a really good camera. With a powerful zoom, little bit uncomfortable to handle if you are used to super compacts, but you know that (or you should know) when you buy it.

The video is very good, I’d say that it’s the best that I have ever seen or I would expect from a still camera.

I haven’t noticed too much lose of focus when I zomm in and zoom out during video. But the AVCHD format isn’t very common. Other pro is that the slow speed of zoom during video make transitions very soft being more slow when you start and finish zooming than in the middle.

The part that I expected much better was the face recognition, which is like play to Lotto.

And although reviews say that it hasn’t manual focus, there’s an option to follow objects. You have to put the object on the center of the screen, click a button, and then the camera will automatically focus that object although it or you move, or zoom, etc. Not very accurate, but good enough!

The battery life deppends on some options. If autofocus is working all the time instead of just when you click the button to take the photo, then your battery will have a shorter life. But the performance average is normal for this type of camera.

4 Stars I NEED HELP! How to get MAC Preview to render clear images of ZS3 10 MP shots
I am making some simple mistake – please help! I have a MAC G5/OS 10.5.8/2 GB dram running Preview 4.2 (all software up to date). Previously I had a 2 MP Fuji 2650 and its jpegs looked fine with this setup. Now with the ZS3 the 10 MP photos looked muddy and ill-focused, 5 MP and 3 MP of the same subject look much better. I think it must be some issue with how the Preview program is set to display the photos. When I change the jpegs to actual size, and zoom subjects in the 10 MP shot to the same size as the 5&3 MP shots they look almost identical (so I think the camera is focusing correctly) – but when I simply double-click on the jpegs the 10 MP shots look awful. Is this because the 10 MP shots are downsampled more? How can I get all the jpegs to render well? Am I supposed to use some Preference setting like “respect image and screen DPI for scale”? Could this be a setup issue (haven’t read the manual much)? Could this be because I haven’t imported into iPhoto with which I am not that familiar?

As for the ZS3 the dedicated movie button is awesome, the zoom is quite nice to have but uses so much juice that the battery shuts down pronto! I actually find the wideangle annoying, have to read to see if I can defeat that default state. Haven’t tried to view the AVCHD lite video yet, sounds like getting it to work will be a lot of work. I really like the package as seemingly the best you can get and still carry in your pocket but man the battery issues are a serious problem if you zoom much; not to mention the price and availability problems of the OEM battery and the 1.2 software shutdown of non-OEM batteries that sell for much less!

4 Stars SO far so good
It’s probably unfair to write a review after only one day’s ownership, especially a work day, but here are a few thoughts.

12x zoom in a pocket camera is an amazing thing. Whatever other camera(s) you own, this is the one you can take everywhere.

And while the 65x zoom available with combined optical/digital doesn’t produce pictures that you’d want to show anywhere, it’s certainly fun for spying on people. I was even able to see people at the top of the Empire State building taken from the street, 10 blocks away.

Polarized sunglasses can make the screen disappear in bright sunshine. (Do wish this camera had a viewfinder.)

27 scene modes cover most conditions, but they’re on 2 separate screens, and the first has modes such as “baby” and “pet” (which I don’t need) while “burst” and “flash burst” are on the second screen Wish one could move them around.

Tried flash burst in a pretty dark room and didn’t work very well, pictures were much darker than with normal flash, though the camera’s flash refreshes fairly quickly so you can take a series of pictures with full flash almost as fast as in burst mode. Didn’t try burst flash in a room with some lights on, yet. One of my reasons for wanting this camera is to be able to take candid pictures in a party situation and my old Sony H-5 just takes too long and I’d miss more pictures than I’d get.

I’ll add to this review after I use the camera a bit more.

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