Not just a Digital Camera with a 12x zoom but almost a Camcorder

Category: Review on Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7 Digital Camera

Posted by: 24-Jun-2009

Strengths: Very good picture quality, movie recorder, 3-inch LCD with 460k pixels

Weaknesses: Slowly responding auto focus while zooming in movie mode

The TZ7 adds another star for Panasonic’s popular travel-zoom (TZ) series. Panasonic calls its TZ7 as a ‘hybrid camera’ which can shoot both high quality stills and movies. Having the most impressive automatic mode, the TZ7 can capture vibrant and clear images even in challenging lighting conditions.

The TZ7 and TZ6 share almost the same properties but, the TZ7 stands alone with its high quality movie recording feature and the amazing LCD screen. On the back it holds a 76mm (3-inch) LCD with 460,000 pixels whereas its sister model TZ6 has a smaller and less detailed 2.7-inch/ 230,000.

The 25mm-equivalent super-wide-angle lens clubbed with 12x zoom makes the TZ7 versatile as a camcorder. The movie definition is good and is only available in 1,280x720-pixel resolution in AVCHD format. The AVCHD format allows you to record movies with stereo sound and high picture quality. As the AVHDC takes less space compared to the regular MPEG-4 format, it is possible to capture a lot of movies than usual. With the AVHDC format, it is not as easy as always it was, like dragging a movie file from the memory card and double clicking it to play it as the users would need compatible editors and playback devices. For some weird reason the zoom slows down to crawl in the movie mode and as the auto focus changes with the zoom, it takes ages to catch up.