 "Super-awesome camera for travelers" | 2009-11-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3NWYALZP15TCZ |
| I was skeptical when the girl in Best Buy strong-armed me into buying this camera. To me, Panasonic meant crappy electronics from the early '90s,however I took her word for it, and four years later, my first Lumix finally broke. Oh, this is after I dragged it all over SE Asia, fell into flooded rivers, got caught in downpours, had children spill grape soda in it, and it got squished while I was tumbling off of a small hill in Spain. I'm buying another one from Amazon - this is truly the best little point and shoot digital for it's price range. The metal body and low profile make it perfect for travelers, and for the size, you can't beat the photo quality. The manual controls leave a little to be desired, but not all of us need that fancy stuff :-) Plus, there's still something really sexy about Leica lenses... |
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 "Good camera... Should come with a case." | 2009-11-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: A34YCJ74QU73M7 |
| Overall this is a pretty good camera. Picture quality is good and it has good video quality. I would totally recommend this camera to anybody interested in a good, solid, good quality camera. My only recommendation is for the cost, it should come with a case. I've been looking for cases, but they're all too small. |
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| "Pretty decent ultra zoom pocket camera" | 2009-11-11 |
| - Reviewed By User: A257ITGQ041Y3Z |
I bought this camera for my recent two-weeks vacation trip. Previously I was using Canon A510 and I loved that camera, thinking, that I'd be Canon's fan for many future models. At the time I wanted to upgrade I made several-month-investigation looking forward to seeing Canon releasing a perfect camera for me. Perfect for my requirements would be small sized, a nice 10x+ zoom, around 10Mpx matrix, good picture quality and good video quality (preferably HD). Months were passing and nothing new apart of IS SX200 appeared on the market. The latter after summarizing all pros and cons lost the fight with Lumix ZS3.
I've chosen ZS3 for its compact size, nice zoom, optical zoom capabilities while filming, wide angle and HD movies. I have to admit, that lumix did a pretty good job with my pictures I was taking for the last month. I regret though that it tends to change colors completely where my old Canon very adequately transferred real-world colors into the digital pictures. During the day I think ZS3 did very well easily leaving A510 behind because of the zoom capabilities and ultra-wide angle (25mm) view. It's amazing how many objects can now fit into the picture compared to my previous photos. During the night however or at the sunrise I'd say I liked the Canon better. The reason for that is the sky, although looking pretty warm, had totally different color at the picture compared to what I saw with my eyes. Beach during the night in 'starry night' mode (15/30/60 s exposure time) ended up in being GREEN !!! That is not acceptable for me. Other pictures in night light also had mangled colors, which could only be fixed with manual 'white balance' set (you can set it with ZS3). I was expecting from Intelligent Auto present at ZS3 something more accurate. I also cannot understand why iA mode can't take pictures in 16:9 format in higher resolution than 2.5MB !??? Shooting a fullmoon was also hard to do. Using all possible tricks I finally managed to take its picture after doing 30+ pictures earlier. With my previous Canon it only took few to make a nice sharp photo (with worse zoom though of course). One advantage of the new ZS3 is ability to do pretty sharp night photos without using flash - Optical Image Stabilization is doing a great job, allowing to catch more of the background behind the object sharply.
Overall I would recommend this camera to people who want to do nice wide-angle pictures during the day and don't expect doing any artistic photography. Camera is small taking into consideration it's 12x zoom and has a nice large LCD screen with excellent resolution (460K pixels). When I look at movies on a regular TV (no-HD) motion picture looks much better on the small screen of the camera, than the big tube; On a HD-ready 16:9 screen - movies are excellent!
What I'm missing in the camera are manual settings I had in my simple Canon. I don't think that will come as a firmware upgrade though, cause they want to you to buy even more expensive model to have that. Weird thing is that cheaper models tend to have manual settings available.
As for battery - I thought my batteries would do a little better than what I have observed. I managed to do around 200 pictures mixed with video shooting + some reviewing. For that reason I have bought 2 additional batteries and degraded firmware to 1.1 to allow third-party manufacturer savings.
At the end I wish Amazon hasn't changed their price a couple of days after I ordered my product, which would save me around 25$. Customer service didn't want to hear about that refund :////
To sum up here are Pros:
- 12x optical zoom (also while filming)
- 460K pixels LCD bright screen
- stereo microphone
- ultra wide angle (25mm)
- pretty decent small size compared to functions
- AVCHD (makes great quality movies with less storage needed)
Cons:
- No manual controls
- Some colors tend to be changed during evening/sunrise
- I think I had smoother pictures with Canon earlier
- menu changes depending on the mode you're shooting in, which tends to be confusing (like economy options not available in iA) |
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| "Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 - A Great Find!" | 2009-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2NGEB7TNYUF7J |
| This camera has it all! To start with, there is a 12X optical zoom lens along with 10.1 megapixels. There is also a 25mm wide angle lens that is great for taking group shots. The camera is compact, easy to use, and takes high quality photos and great video. There are other worthwhile options on this model including Intelligent Auto Mode and Face Recognition. There is a lot of bang for the buck with this compact and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a small camera that can accommodate many different settings and purposes! |
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 "Not bad, but could be better OR cheaper" | 2009-11-03 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1HD7VD9EV42CI |
Pros:
1. Made in Japan (NOT in China) !!!
2. Zoom range.
3. 3" High resolution screen.
4. HD videos with zoom.
Cons:
1. The sensor is too small for such a camera -> granulation in low light. Less expensive Fujifilm Finepix F70EXR has bigger sensor and better quality photos in low light.
2. Buggy software in the camera - sometimes some modes get frozen.
3. Bundled Software on included CD - a piece of junk, as usual for digital cameras, a bunch of useless extras. DOESN'T OPEN OWN AVCHD VIDEOS from a camera (.MTS format) for editing. A BUMMER! It's a must for such an expensive top-line camera to have full editing package included. So use/buy 3rd party video editing software.
4. Original battery goes down pretty fast, buy spare one (not cheap - $50).
5. Default Intelligent Auto (iA) mode sometimes is not intelligent enough, doesn't provide best quality.
6. Be careful with wide angle lenses - bent lines, etc. Other cameras make better pics from the same point/distance with the same frame.
Overall not bad camera, but price should be about $200 (not 300) because of a small sensor, quality and installed/included software. Disappointed. Overpaid.
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| "Unbelievable capability in a small package" | 2009-11-03 |
| - Reviewed By User: A322CCNYIFFB05 |
I am an old 35mm and 6x6cm shooter, plus did my own darkroom work years ago. In 2002 I entered the digital age and purchased an Olympus C2020?, then last year a Canon A570. The Olympus gave very good images, however, the Canon has become my favorite 'carry everywhere' camera due to it's small size, many features and relatively low cost. However, I have never been completely happy with the image quality of the Canon and feel the old Olympus yielded better images.
My youngest son was married in October and I wanted to do a video of the wedding, as his grandmother was unable to attend. The video capabilities of the Canon are resolution limited so I decided to look for a camera with HD capability. I also decided a camera with flash memory would be the most rugged and after some searching found that the Lumix DMC-ZS3 has 720P HD video capability and well as full zoom capability in video mode (this is the only regular digital camera in this price range to offer full zoom capability in the video mode).
Many regular flash memory video cameras have a file size limit in HD mode (2GB). This limits recordings to less than 15 minutes. To continue recording one must then start another file. Not so with the Lumix. Using AVCHDlite recording mode allows uninterrupted video recording (until the SD card is full). So a 16GB card yields 2hours of continuous 720P HD recording using the AVCHD lite mode. The latest version of iMovie (Mac app) can read AVCHDlite files so I'm in business.
The Lumix does an excellent job with video, yielding superb images (even from the back of a large church) and stereo sound. Plus the still images are absolutely superb! Over the last several weeks I have taken quite a few available light shots with the Lumix and the images are noticeably sharper than most other digital images that I've seen. Plus the color balance is excellent. I'm guessing that this is primarily a function of the Leica optics and the image processing algorithms.
My only negative is the lack of a viewfinder. I find a viewfinder necessary for fast framing. I may attempt to design a framing device to attach to the tripod socket. |
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Expedited Available
