Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #117 in Consumer Electronics
• Colour: Black
• Brand: Panasonic
• Model: TZ6 Black
• Released on: 2009-02-12
• Dimensions: 2.20 pounds
• Hard Disk: 40MB
• Display size: 2.7

Manufacturer's Description
The DMC-TZ6's 2.7-inch LCD has a total of 230,000 dots for high resolution. It features the Intelligent LCD function. The Auto Power LCD function increases the backlight brightness in 11 steps according to the ambient light intensity. At the highest of these 11 steps, the LCD backlight becomes approx. 1.4 times brighter than normal. This makes both shooting and viewing photos easier and more convenient.

Intelligent Auto Mode Features
Depending on the Panasonic Lumix model, iA mode uses up to six bundled technologies working perfectly together to provide the best possible shooting results every time.

AF Tracking
AF Tracking then follows the selected subject throughout the frame, keeping them in focus – an excellent way to follow children, pets and other moving objects!

Intelligent Exposure
No more under or over exposed shots! Intelligent Exposure corrects the parts of the image that are too dark or too bright, so images come out as naturally as you see them.

Mega OIS
Gyrosensors detect hand-shake and the Optical Image Stabiliser lens shifts to compensate, helping prevent hand-shake blur. This system is completely optical – it does not affect the CCD or image processing – so you get sharp, clear images without deterioration.

Choose from two modes: Mode 1 remains ON at all times for continuous compensation. Mode 2 starts working as soon as the shutter is released to achieve a greater effect.

Intelligent ISO Control
With Intelligent ISO Control, your Lumix camera can adjust the ISO sensitivity if the subject moves as the shot is taken thereby preventing blurriness of the photo.

Intelligent Scene Selector
The Intelligent Scene Selector automatically selects whichever of five scene modes - Macro, Portrait, Scenery, Night Portrait, and Night Scenery – best suits your shooting situation.

Lumix Digital Still Cameras take a WIDE view
Although the difference between 35mm and 25mm equivalent lenses may not sound like a lot, the 25mm wide angle lens can capture a subject or scene with more than a two times wider frame from the same perspective as a conventional 35mm camera can achieve.

This extra range is especially useful when you are indoors where you can be restricted in your movements by walls, corners, or furniture trying to take a photo of the family or friends, or when you want to capture a much wider landscape.

12x Optical Zoom
Since distant objects do not conveniently come to you, Panasonic has equipped its digital still cameras with a high Optical Zoom.

For example, the modern Lumix TZ Series features a 12x Optical Zoom Leica DC lens (equivalent to 25-300mm on a conventional 35mm film camera) and enables you to zoom in or out magnifying distant subjects with ease.

Extra Optical Zoom
Many cameras complement their optical zoom ratio with digital zoom, where a portion of an image is ‘blown-up’ digitally to give the effect of a higher zoom. However, images taken with digital zoom become highly pixilated as they are merely digitally processed images rather than images delivered by a true optical zoom.

Aware of this factor, Panasonic has now introduced ‘Extra Optical Zoom’ to its Lumix camera line-up. Extra Optical Zoom cleverly enables you to extend the optical zoom ratio with less image-quality deterioration compared to digital zoom. This function provides additional magnification, extending the zoom power by using the centre part of the CCD; compared with conventional digital zoom functions that directly enlarge the image data, it provides better image quality.

Box Contains

Customer Reviews

A classy little camera with a stunning Leica lens!
This really is a classy little camera. Sleek looking, quality lens and plenty of features.

I normally take my photos on a digital SLR - which cost over 3 times the price of this little beauty, but I like to carry a camera around with me whenever possible (on a walking or bike trip) so lugging a huge SLR with all of its lenses isn't really feasible. OK so this Lumix isn't as versatile as an SLR - there are no out-and-out manual settings on it, but it does allow you to have some forms of override and its compactness, small weight and quality of lens make up for this.

The quality of the pictures I have taken on it so far - whether at 25mm or 300mm have been quite stunning. The full range of the zoom (12x) has been used to take photos of flora and fauna. If you WANT to you can even get it to zoom in further (up to 21.4 times - that's the equivalent of over 500mm lens - though the quality does suffer).

The Leica lens is really crisp for a small camera such as this. Just over 10mega-pixels may be less than some of its rivals but the quality of the lens shines through and is plenty for really crisp shots. I've taken pictures of architecture, landscape, animals, flowers and portraits of people and been mightily impressed with all of these.

The first setting on the dial is "Intelligent Auto" which allows the camera to decide the best aperture/shutter-speed combination for each shot. I've set this and been more than happy with the results.

For those who like to have a little more control - the "Normal Picture Mode" allows you to take pictures while customizing the settings. You can change a large number of settings here including the format of the picture - from 4:3 to 3:2 or even 16:9; the ISO, quality etc. White balance and extra stop exposures are also available.

The third style is "Scene mode" - this allows you to choose the normal types of modes - portrait, landscape, small tulip (!) etc - but there are a myriad of them here - 25 in fact! - including "baby", "pet", "candle light", "party", "sunset" and "fireworks". These might all sound like gimmicks but they do actually work - though I haven't yet had the time or the inclination to try each of the 25 options yet! The booklet gives adequate details of all of these 25 different scene modes. The "My Scene mode" basically allows you to save your favourite scene for future use.

It allows features like a "black and white" or "sepia" setting if you prefer to do your image manipulation in camera rather than with photo software.

The 2.7 inch LCD is also really clear - although as always don't allow the sun to creep over your shoulder or the image will be hard to see.

Its shutter speeds go from 1/2000ths of a second to 8 seconds but it also has a "starry sky" setting which allows you to take photos in the dead at night of all the stars and moon (up to a whole minute if its necessary!) Try it out for really good results (you may have to experiment a bit for the best exposure).

The auto focus also works a treat - the "face-recognition" technology appeared to work in all of the situations I trialled it through - whether the "guinea-pig"* was central or to one side of the shot - near or far away. Likewise the "Optical Image Stabiliser" appears to work to stop that irritating camera shake.

As usual there are a number of flash options: Auto, Auto-red-eye, forced flash on, forced flash on-red-eye, slow sync, red-eye, forced flash off. All functions of the flash worked fine for me - the red eye reduction worked a treat.

If you want to use it very often for its "motion picture" facilities I'd probably advise you to go for the TZ7 instead (which is almost £100 more expensive) or a model in another range of compacts. I'm not saying it's bad - it's good enough for the odd moving sequence but don't expect camcorder quality.

One final thing I liked about this camera is that the booklet is on paper - no having to download all of it from a cd. You can actually carry around the little booklet with you wherever you go. And 90% of it isn't in a numerous other languages - this is the English version. And amazingly - it's a very good booklet. I don't have anything bad to say about it at all - it tells you exactly what you need to know!

If you are looking for a small compact camera with a super quality lens which goes through the whole range of wide-angle and telephoto which you can rely on time after time to give you excellent shots and allows a little manipulation of the exposure, then this is the baby to buy.

* No guinea-pigs were harmed in the writing of this review...

Awesome compact
This is not the smallest or lightest compact camera on the market but I could be so bold as to say it is possibly the best.

Look, all you need to know is that the leica lens performs very well and produces fantastic pictures everytime. Keep the dial on iA and this clever thing chooses the best settings. I bought a 6gb sdhc card which holds approx 1000 pictures. The battery charges in 90 mins and will take approx 300 pictures.

I have played about in ms mode with the panorama assist, its fantastic you can take full 360 panoramas and the software included (panorama maker 4) will stitch them together.

Great camera

Buy one

The best compact I've used
This definalely is the best compact camera I have ever used for a number of reasons. Can be used with an SDHC card and has a 25mm ultra wide angle lens.
It features a Leica lens which is capable of zooming 21 times - with most cameras this would be pointless because you'd get a blurred, useless image. The first time I zoomed to the max I was completely suprised when I looked back at the photo and saw it was in perfect focus. But obviously the quality is noticable when enlarged on a computer screen.

The Intelligent auto is a very innovative feature that is constantly adjusting to whatever you are pointing the camera at and making re adjustments in focus, choosing what scene mode would best fit the shot, compensating for any camera shake and deciding whether to turn the macro mode on depending on how close you are to the object. The only things you can change in iA mode is whether you want the auto flash or no flash at all, the self timer and a very good AF tracking feature, where you can lock it on a moving subject like a dog and keep it in focus till you are ready to take the shot.

The other options on the click wheel are a manual mode - where you can choose the exposure compensation, macro/macro zoom on or off, self timers and what kind of flash you want.

Also you can access a menu with more options than the iA one. Including the shutter speed you want (1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250), the picture size, quality and intelligent ISO on/off with the option on enabling or disabling the digital zoom. Also the standard options of black and white, sepia.

The MS option on the click wheel just uses your most used setting from the manual mode and is very good although I haven't used it much.

The SCN mode lets you choose up to 27 different scenes which is all you need from sunset to underwater and included a very good starry sky scene where you can choose to have the shutter speed 15, 30 or 50 seconds (obviously only works at night, the picture quality is astounding when set to over 30 secs and can pick up individual stars)
I dont really use the clip board option on the wheel but it is very useful for taking pictures of time tables or maps and will always store them in a seperate folder in the internal memory.

The last option is the video mode which offers a very good quality picture and sound without the jumps or clicking sounds you sometimes get with older cameras, the sound is not as good as the TZ7 which features a bigger screen and HD quality vids (for lots more cash). But I did use this to record part of a gig with cool results, I also recorded guitar ideas to then rip the audio so I was very suprised at how good the sound was!

Some people complain that the iA gets very annoying because you never really know what it's doing but I couldn't disagree more because it has the basic manual options you will need, if you want a completely manual camera get an SLR or a different compact, also people say the wheel doesn't click hard enough to stop it from moving while in your pocket but this is nonsense it is good and just check the position before you turn on the camera.

All in all I think this is the best non SLR camera I have owned and stands up to any of my SLR photos come to think of it, the picture quality is top notch (its 10.1MP standing equal to other higher MP cameras), with a very good macro and excellent Leica lens. This is a great camera for anyone really, but if you want one with more manual modes or a complete manual over ride I would get a different camera, but for what it is - essentially a point and shoot camera it's awesome!