Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom with 2.7-Inch LCD (Black)

3 Replies to “Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom with 2.7-Inch LCD (Black)”

1. Gadgester "No Time, No Money" says:

   July 10, 2011 at 3:54 am

   202 of 208 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Stylish little digicam that screams “take me outdoors!”, June 1, 2010

   By 

   Gadgester “No Time, No Money” (Mother Earth) –
   
     

   This review is from: Fujifilm FinePix XP10 12 MP Waterproof Digital Camera with 5x Optical Zoom and 2.7-Inch LCD (Green) (Electronics)

   

   Customer Video Review Length:: 0:33 Mins

   The Fujifilm Finepix XP10, newly available in April 2010, is a stylish little ultra-compact camera that invites you to have fun outdoors while taking pictures. It:

   – is waterproof to 10 ft. under water, perfect for swimming pools, beach, snorkeling (note: do not use in hot water!)
   – is shockproof up to 3 ft., great for jogging, cycling, or even letting your baby learn to take pictures
   – is freezeproof down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius)
   – is dustproof
   – has 12.2 effective megapixels
   – has 5x optical zoom and features a Fujinon lens for great clarity; lens focal length is 36-180mm in 35mm film camera terms
   – takes 720p widescreen, VGA or QVGA video
   – can zoom optically in video mode (but see note on audio recording below)
   – is really small and weighs just a little over 5 oz. with battery and SDHC card
   – uses SDHC memory card, no more xD that was championed by Fuji and Olympus

   I bought a green XP10 because I love spending time in the water. I find that, outdoors during the day, the XP10 takes pictures with excellent clarity and excellent color saturation and contrast. Using fill-in flash in daylight truly enhances the picture. Indoors, because the XP10 lacks Fuji’s legendary SuperCCD technology, picture quality is average for a compact or super-compact camera. It does have two natural-scene modes where it boosts the ISO (light sensitivity of the image sensor) at the expense of increased noise. I bought my XP10 to be used outdoors, in the pool and at the beach, so I haven’t taken many indoor pics.

   Video shooting at 720p yields smooth, clear HD video clips. BTW, video size is limited only by the 2GB FAT32 file size limit — this means even if you pop in a 16GB SDHC card, the longest video clip can only go up to 2GB in file size, due to the limit imposed by the FAT32 file system. Video is recorded as motion JPEG in an AVI container, so it can be played on many, many devices, at the expense of slightly larger file sizes than a more compact format like MPEG-2 or MPEG-4.

   While you can zoom optically — a feature that every digital camera should have — audio recording’s volume level is lowered during zooming. Instead, the camera picks up some noise from the lens mechanism and that noise overwhelms the ambient sounds you want to record, which can be annoying when played back on a large TV. My advise is to use zooming sparingly during video mode. If you want great video recording on a compact digital camera, you should get a Sony or Canon or Panasonic camera (be prepared to pay a lot more for the waterproof feature, though).

   Anyway, my sample video clip shows how the camera works under water. The video resolution was set to QVGA (320×240) for easy upload to Amazon, but you should be able to see the amazing clarity both in and out of water.

   In summary, the XP10 is a great waterproof, shockproof camera that every water enthusiast should bring along to record fun memories.

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2. Phalanx says:

   July 10, 2011 at 3:47 am

   77 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

   
   An astonishingly excellent camera on manual, a mediocre point-and-shoot otherwise., June 27, 2010

   By 

   Phalanx –

   Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom with 2.7-Inch LCD (Black) (Electronics)

   The Panasonic Lumix ZS5 a.k.a TZ8 is purportedly a point-and-shoot camera. However, if the auto setting is all you will ever use it on, you’ll probably be disappointed by its performance. This is not a camera which you can simply set on auto, aim, click the button and expect the pictures to come out excellent all the time.

   My experience with the intelligent auto has been hit or miss so far. To be blunt, the ‘intelligent auto’ does not seem exceedingly intelligent at all, and it loves bumping up the ISO (grainy pictures) and pulling out the flash in circumstances where using the said flash doesn’t seem to make much sense (wasting battery and resulting in ugly photos). To be fair, it performs excellently when taking pictures in bright outdoor conditions, but if you plan to take pictures indoor and it is the slightest bit dim, the auto doesn’t seem to do too well and I ended up with a lot of blurry photos that way. Even with the flash deployed.

   After spending about a couple of hours taking a bit of time to understand the manual modes and the appropriate settings of each, however, the mediocre point-and-shoot camera became an excellent little camera. The manual modes allow you a lot more leeway on how you want the photo taken, and thus override the choices the irritating auto mode makes, thus saving your indoor photos. You can also do a lot of experimental pictures. (In fact at the smallest aperture setting, the camera allows you to keep the shutter open for a staggering 60 seconds!). So if you know at least a little bit of basic photography and are willing to do your own settings, the camera manages to perform to its full potential and you can get some truly excellent photos.

   If you’re not too keen on reading up on fstops and shutter speeds and whatnot, I should mention the camera does get along quite respectably on its preset scenery modes. There’s a pretty nice selection of them, covering outdoors, night scenes, food shots, macro etc. An important thing about getting good shots while using these modes is to give the IA a lot of time to “make up its mind” how it wants to take the photo by halfway depressing the button before you take a photo. Do watch for the indicator on the LCD to turn green before committing the shot. There’s also a high-speed burst option, which scales down your pictures to about 4 megapixels but allows to you take a lot of pictures in succession very very quickly. (Note: You can also shortcut to this mode under the MS setting on the mode dial)

   As you all know, the huge Leica lens on this camera is the main attraction and it lives up to its hype. It’s advertised as 16x zoom, but only 12x of it is optical, the rest of it done by “intelligent zoom”, which is basically a surprisingly almost-indistinguishable-from-optical digital zoom. The zoom also works (limited however) in macro zoom mode, which can result in some amazing macro shots. The camera also has conventional digital zoom (which went up to a staggering 90+ times zoom) , but you have to navigate the camera’s controls to turn it on because by default it’s turned off. The non-intelligent digital zoom however, does produce grainy pictures, but this is expected of digital zoom anyway.

   When you have a strong zoom, the image stabilization capabilities of a camera become extremely important, and the ZS5 seems to have that covered. I did some testing shooting out of a moving car, sometimes with maximum optical zoom and the camera managed to deliver surprisingly clear pictures despite that.

   I actually liked the slightly larger size of the camera, since it made it far easier to hold, but the thing that tipped the balance in this camera’s favour for me were the controls, which shy away from pressing buttons as much as possible (Sorry Canon, but you lost out to the Lumix in the end because of this). Dials and switches are less prone to accidental pressings, and a nice little feature is that the camera will still recognize situations where the power switch has been left on by accident and will shut itself down to save the battery.

   The battery life is ok, but not particularly amazing. I would recommend getting a spare battery to keep on hand. Do keep in mind however the battery is a proprietary Panasonic one, and the firmware on the camera will recognize imitation batteries and refuse to use them.

   The HD video is very nice, although the sound recording is only in mono. The upshot of this camera is that the zoom can be used with the video, and I was very pleased with that because it really does make a lot of difference when you’re taking videos of something far away so that you can actually see the thing instead of it being a black silhouette. It does not use the same recording format as the other cameras in the ZS3 or ZS5 however, so if I am not mistaken, the video recordings will take up more space on your SD card.

   Overall, I am…

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3. KHA says:

   July 10, 2011 at 3:04 am

   216 of 220 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Pretty amazing point-and shoot camera., May 10, 2010

   By 

   KHA (St. Louis, MO) –

   This review is from: Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom with 2.7-Inch LCD (Black) (Electronics)

   Purchased this to replace my Canon A1000, which I bought last year for a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. Had to really struggle to get a good pic with the Canon — I was very aggravated with it (though I finally came up with some program combinations that worked okay for the low light under the trees). But I decided for this summer’s trip to the beach to try a new camera, with more zoom, and pass my Canon down to my 12-year-old son — who’s not nearly as picky as I am ;-)

   Did a bit of research (which is always overwhelming because there’s such a huge selection to choose from, and such a diversity of opinions on what makes a “good” camera). And I still wanted a pocket camera for convenience when hiking, fishing, float tripping, etc., so the Canon SX20 and Nikon P100 and the like were still too large for my needs. And then I came across well over 100 user reviews raving about the Panasonic ZS3 — the predecessor of the ZS5/7 models — on various websites, and it’s reviews were also very good on “official” review sites. What especially impressed me was a review by a couple who guide trips to Yellowstone, were experienced SLR users, and had tried the ZS3 as a compact alternative — and they loved it for outdoor shots. So I decided to try out the newer version of the ZS3, the ZS5.

   (The main differences I saw between the ZS5 and ZS7 were that the ZS5’s screen is 2.7″ instead of 3.0″, the ZS7 has two custom “My Scene’s” instead of one, the ZS7 has a built-in GPS, and the ZS7 also has stereo video instead of mono, with more advanced video technology. None of those features were important to me for the additional money.)

   I’ve had the camera only a couple of days, and have done various side-by-side camera comparisons between the ZS5 and the Canon A1000, and I’m pretty floored by the capabilities and photo quality of the ZS5. I’m especially impressed with the macro (I like to take wildflower pics). While no camera is perfect (from what I’ve seen), for me the ZS5 is going to be just what I needed for outdoor pictures. I’ll update this review once I’ve had more time to experiment.

   Update 05/11/10: Some cons — (1) Battery door latch seems a little flimsy; wonder if it will get where it doesn’t latch tight after alot of use? Only time will tell. (Other than that, this camera feels solidly built.) (2) Proprietary battery that has an ID chip built in, and the software in the camera looks for that (on their website, Panasonic says this change was made to ensure battery quality/safety). However, it appears you can finally get a 3rd-party battery thru Amazon (meaning a whole lot cheaper), and other vendors — just be sure to look for “ID Secured” batteries (e-mail and ask the vendor first if you’re not sure). I knew this before I bought the camera, but figured it should be pointed out. (3) I’ve had several indoor shots, in not very low light, that looked fuzzy, especially when you zoomed in on a PC. Not always the case, though. I think the “iA” mode is not always as intelligent as it should be. Also, reducing to 4 stars, so as not to mislead anyone that the camera is “perfect” — though it’s still “pretty amazing”, and I’m really happy with it.

   Update 05/14/10: The best pics seem to come with my own settings, and not with the “iA” mode where the computer is trying to make all the decisions for me. So you’ll want to learn what the various settings do (and there’s quite a few of them — lots of flexibility). The ZS5 has three “Custom” memory slots in which to save your own configurations (which is great — my Canon had no memory slots, and I was constantly fiddling with the settings).

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