Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #218 in Consumer Electronics
• Colour: Black
• Brand: Panasonic
• Model: TZ7 Black
• Released on: 2009-02-12
• Dimensions: 1.84 pounds
• Hard Disk: 40MB

Features

• 10.1 Mega pixels
• 3
• Picture Bridge
• Movie/voice recording
• 12x / Max. 48.0 x combined with Optical Zoom optical/digital zoom

Manufacturer's Description
TZ7 records HD movies (1280 x 720-pixels) in AVCHD Lite, which lets you shoot beautiful HD video with almost twice the recording time compared to the conventional Motion JPEG. Optical zoom can be used when shooting motion images. TZ7 is also the world's first compact camera to feature Dolby® Digital Stereo Creator, which records dynamic, true-to-life audio that brings out the power of the HD video. The wind cut function minimises distracting sound from the background during audio recording.TZ7 is also the world's first compact camera to feature Dolby® Digital Stereo Creator, which records dynamic, true-to-life audio that brings out the power of the HD video. The wind cut function minimises distracting sound from the background during audio recording.

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.

Face Recognition
Face Recognition registers your favourite friends and family members and will optimize the focus and exposure on your favourite persons. You also have the ability to playback photos by person, and add date, name, age along with adding descriptions to your photos.

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.

Be easily connected with Lumix
Showing your photos and movies has never been as easy as with the new line of Panasonic Lumix cameras. All Lumix models record wide-screen, 16:9, Full HD images. These images are breathtaking when displayed on an HDTV, like a Panasonic Viera, which manages about four times the data of a standard definition TV. With a Lumix digital still camera, you can enjoy a whole new style of HDTV viewing with family and friends, bringing your pictures and movies to life on an impressive large Viera flat screen Full HD TV. Slideshows and home movie viewings are sure to impress everyone via HDMI and SD card technologies, which offer a quick and convenient means of connecting a Lumix camera with other compatible Panasonic devices.

Easy HDMI connection
HDMI allows you to connect a Lumix camera to a Full HD flat screen TV, like a Panasonic Viera TV, to display your photos and videos in full vibrant detail. Viera Link gives you access and control of a Lumix camera, customising the playback of your photos and movie clips, in HD stereo sound.

Connect without cables
SD Memory Cards offer the simplest way to experience HD photos and movie clips. Simply take the SD Memory Card out of the Lumix camera and slip it into the TV SD card slot of a Viera TV, and you are ready to view bright, vivid images that perfectly fit the 16:9 screen of a Panasonic flat screen HDTV, for example. SD Memory Cards provide you with an easy and flexible way to transfer your images so you can spend more time enjoying your recorded memories than dealing with cables and connection devices.

Venus Engine IV Image Processor
Venus Engine IV is the latest advanced multi-task image-processing engine processor for LUMIX cameras. They provide significantly increased performance of the camera while consuming less power than the previous Venus Engine. Venus IV suppresses noise without lowering resolution, to produce beautiful images. This engine also features low energy consumption despite its high performance.

Quick Reaction and Start Up Time - faster than the blink of an eye
Improvements to Venus Engine IV and various camera components have led to a considerable reduction in shutter release time lags down to a super-short 0.005 seconds and continuous shooting speeds up to 8 frames per second.

High Sensitivity Mode
When using the High Sensitivity mode, you can capture clear images even in dim lighting, as the built-in flash reaches as far as 24 meters. The Venus Engine IV lets you set the maximum sensitivity in seven steps from ISO 80 to ISO 3200 for 10.1 megapixels full-resolution shooting. In addition to providing active shots blur-free with indoor lighting, you get great photos in nearly total darkness.

Venus Engine IV
The Venus Engine IV gives even higher-quality images through using even more advanced signal processing. This new engine also offers a number of other improvements, including more accurate detection, better correction and Intelligent ISO Control functions. This new engine supports today's new camera and imaging technologies, and works with the large, 1/1.72-inch high-resolution CCD. It responds quickly and saves power even at full 14.7 megapixels resolution, providing an image rich in colour and depth.

Venus IV further raises image quality by refining the signal processing process through adding two more circuits. These circuits effectively reduce only the low-frequency noise which turns out to be noticeable as chromatic noise, because resolution decreases if the high-frequency noise is reduced as well.

Enhanced Subject-Motion Detection Circuitry
In Lumix models equipped with the Venus Engine IV, the motion detection in the Intelligent ISO Control function has been further enhanced to suppress motion blur even more effectively, so you still get sharp and clear photos of your family on the move, even in dim indoor light.

Box Contains

Customer Reviews

Good but with some reservations
I won't write War and Peace about this item like some contributors.

Good Points:
1. Focus in INSTANT and RELIABLE
2. Video quality is OUTSTANDING
3. Lens is great - very WIDE (with unavoidable distortion) with a huge range of focal lengths
4. Anti-shake is fantastic (though it kills the battery - see below).
5. The screen is VERY BRIGHT (but again, kills the battery)

Bad Points:
1. Battery life is APPALLING - if you are going out and taking a days photos, take a spare battery with you - I had to buy another. I can't put into words how shockingly bad it is.
2. The MODE dial at the top of the camera is constantly being knocked leaving you in the wrong preset.
3. Flash exposures are POOR and the flash mode button requires you to cycle through the flash modes and then press another button to select each one - crazy, slow and out of the ark. The fill-flash mode isn't as good as my 5 year old Canon which I had to use to get nice flash shots of my daughter's birthday party.
4. The zoom control is a bit hit and miss and coarse in operation.
5. There is a simple push control on the back of the camera to cycle between Photo and Video Mode - this also gets knocked and puts you in the wrong setting - REALLY IRRITATING. Considering how relatively rare will be your use of video, this button should be out of the way.

All in all, this is an outstanding camera, in many respects but it does have flaws.

The quality of results it can produce are excellent but I can tell you that's it's little foibles do get to you from the moment you first use it and don't become any more appealing over time.

I'm keeping mine because of the spec which is quite simply unequalled on any other camera but I can't say I love it because of the drawbacks that reduce its appeal more than you would think.

Fantastic purchase - ideal for travelling
Fantasic camera that packs in many features into a small body with a 12x Optical Zoom that can be up to 48x with Digital Zoom added in 'Normal Mode'.

The Digital Zoom feature is not available in the Intelligent Auto mode but the 'Normal Mode' (available on the mode selector dial) has many customisable features such as Quality, Sensitivity, White Balance, AF More, Metering Mode, Intelligent Exposure, and Min. Shutter Speed amongst others.

After having used the camera for a number of days I cannot fault it. It has received many excellent reviews on the Internet from many sites and it seems to live up to all of these so far.

Video recording can be performed with either the AVCHD Lite mode or Motion JPEG (which produces Quicktime .mov files). After trying taking movies in both modes I can say so far that the AVCHD Lite produces better quality footage. You can shoot up to 15 mins at a time and the manual recommends that you have a Class 6 SDHC card so that there are no errors when writing to the memory card. There is a dedicated record button on the rear of the camera so you can take footage very quickly.

Using the camera is very easy and the built-in menus are very simple to use. There are 27 individual modes to choose from including Fireworks, Aerial, Baby, Food, Beach, Snow, Starry Sky (with shutter speed selection of up to 60 sec), Sunset, Candle Light, Sports, Scenery, Night Scenery and Underwater (when used with the optional underwater case) and others.

The buttons feel very well built and the mode dial on the top is easy to use. Some Internet reviews did state that the wheel can be dislodged easily so that it can move out of the current mode - this has happened a few times when it is a case or pocket but is not a serious problem at all since you can just turn the dial back to the required mode. When you turn the dial you feel it 'click' slightly when it moves into another mode so that you can be sure which mode you are in. The LCD screen also shows which mode you are in when you turn the dial.

The camera comes very well packaged in a small, neat box which contains all the usual accessories (battery, wrist strap, battery case, charger, AV cable, USB cable, printed instruction manual for camera and supplied software as well as a software CD). The camera does not come with a case, screen protector, SDHC card or the HDMI AV cable but these can be purchased separately.

Overall I would give this camera 5 out of 5 and the powerful, compact zoom makes this a fantastic travelling camera and the 25mm wide angle lens makes a massive difference when taking landscape shots.

There are many images that I and other TZ7 owners have taken that are currently available on Flckr including a Group dedicated to TZ7 photos so they can give you a very good idea of the power of this camera.

Beware expensive batteries
Apologies as this is more a warning than a review - full review to come once I've had the camera for longer.

This camera now ships with firmware version 1.2. In this version Panasonic have prevented users from using 3rd party batteries. This means you will have to spend £40 on Panasonic branded batteries, as opposed to £20 for what used to be compatible batteries. A very bad move by Panasonic I feel!