Customer Reviews:
 Five stars if you forgive the chipped battery May 7, 2009
A. Butterfield (UK)
125 out of 128 found this review helpful
To get the best photos, you obviously need an SLR and some great lenses. Hmm. Well, I have an SLR and some great lenses, but I tend to leave them at home when I go on a trip.
So I bought this TZ7 (which is what it's called in the UK where I got mine - the ZS3 is exactly the same camera) to take with me when I can't be bothered to take my SLR, which is nearly all the time. The TZ7 (ZS3) is small enough to go in a jacket pocket, or to hang unobtrusively from your belt. But is it good enough for anyone used to the quality of an SLR?
For me it is good enough, as long as you adjust your expectations. Which you have to do when you have such a small camera with a 25 to 300 zoom. Try getting a 25 to 300 zoom for an SLR! Even more amazing is that it's a very decently sharp lens. It's a little bit less than razor sharp at the extremes of the zoom range, but almost all my shots came out nice and sharp (but not too sharp, meaning the camera isn't over-processing things).
So the lens is good, and since the lens is the TZ7's party piece, that's a good thing.
Next on the list of killer features is HD video. This is 720p video, not `full' HD, but what do you expect? The great thing is that you can use the optical zoom while taking video, which is rare in these cameras. It zooms slowly so the noise of the zoom isn't picked up by the microphone but works very well. You get stereo sound too, and the quality of the sound is way ahead of any camera like this I've tried before. You might think that you wouldn't get proper stereo with microphones so close together, but it does a decent impersonation of it. Videos look pretty good, with the image stabiliser smoothing things out even at full zoom. Hold it carefully and it looks like you're using a tripod. You will need a decent computer and graphics card to play HD video though, or a compatible HD TV. You may need to buy an HDMI cable since you don't get one in the box.
The next great thing is the LCD. It has 460,000 pixels and looks fantastic. It even brightens and dims automatically depending on the ambient light.
If you know what you're doing you can use the good smattering of `manual' features to good effect. I'm not talking about changing the aperture or shutter speed, but you can adjust exposure compensation, bracketing, white balance, ISO etc. You can set auto ISO to not go higher than 400 or 800, which is useful since things look less than great above ISO400.
If you can't be bothered with all that, set the mode dial to iA (intelligent auto) and leave everything to the camera. It works remarkably well, and you'll see the symbol change in the top corner of the LCD to tell you what scene it thinks you're taking. It even automatically goes into macro mode when set to iA.
But I use mine mostly in standard mode, and I keep the ISO to 80 for the very best results.
One of the best things about the TZ7 is the superb auto exposure system that gets the exposure spot on in an amazing variety of challenging situations that would completely fool my other cameras. Reliable auto-exposure, top-notch image stabilisation, really quick and accurate autofocus, a great LCD... these are the things that give you the confidence to pack the TZ7 as your only camera on a trip.
There must be downsides though... mustn't there? Not many, to be honest, unless you expect the unreasonable, like good performance at ISO1600, or in very low light. The TZ7 doesn't overcome the laws of physics.
But minor niggles for me are that there's a physical switch between record and playback mode, so unlike some cameras, you can't just half-press the shutter to get to record mode if you're in playback mode. Also, I'd prefer to have the metering options in the quick menu, which is otherwise very useful for changing settings.
Actually, there is one other thing, and it's the battery. The TZ7 uses a battey with a Panasonic microchip in it. If you want a spare battery, and you probably will, since battery life is just average (HD video seems to sap battery life quite quickly), you'll have to buy a proper Panasonic one, and they're quite expensive. Third party batteries won't work, at least for now. I nearly knocked off the fifth star because of this.
But the bottom line is that the TZ7 captures sharp, well-exposed images pretty much all the time with the minimum of fuss. I like mine very much indeed.
Just do it!!!! May 2, 2009
Anna Palm (New York, NY USA)
25 out of 27 found this review helpful
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 10MP Digital Camera with 12x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3 inch LCD (Blue)
I am so in love with this camera, it's not even funny. I am NOT a pro, nor want to be, just wanted a camera which I could point and shoot and get a good quality photo and video.
I love that the video has zoom, that is what I was waiting for. Took some videos and pictures of my son and they came out excellent.
No more out of focus or too far of a image that you cannot identify the person in the picture.
Since it's small, you can have it in your purse or in your pocket. I have mine with me at all times now.
This is my 3rd Lumix and hope to be like that for a long while. It's expensive, no doubt, but I looked at it as an investment and I am confident I did the right thing.
I was debating between the ZS3 and the SX200 Canon, after lots of research I went with the ZS3. The 3 major reason were:
1) Canon has the flash were your finger goes.
2) The Lumix can produce a HD "light" video (which I can keep and show on TV with very high quality or convert it to a good youtube video and upload for others).
3) The zoom on the video. Ahhhh what a bless!!! Finally we can have a video with the zoom.
So for all the above reason I say, the ZS3 is the camera to have.
I LOVE this camera April 30, 2009
R. Hamilton
30 out of 32 found this review helpful
I am a point and shoot kind of guy. Don't want to touch any button or dial but the 'take the picture' button. I have had the TZ1, TZ3, TZ5 and now the TZ7/ZS3. After one days experience with the ZS3 I am in love with the Intelligent Assist computer in the ZS3. It makes my pictures look great - even under difficult lighting conditions.
And a bonus: I have never been tempted to even try video before but with it being so simple on this camera I found myself taking video of my father's 94th birthday and the video looks damn good, especially since I hand held the camera and shot inside under less than perfect lighting.
Another bonus: The 21.5x zoom. This is going to get a lot of use.
Color me VERY satisfied.
PS: I am using Total Video Converter program to convert the video files to WMV format.
 Good but not great. April 30, 2009
P. MCCLORY (Pittsburgh, PA USA)
25 out of 37 found this review helpful
This Panasonic is my 3rd digital camera. I am definitely not a camera expert, so this review is from a novice point of view. I will be comparing this camera to my previous camera, the Canon A610. That camera's LCD broke after 3 years, but in my mind, was a great camera.
What I like about this camera. It is well built, feels very solid in your hands. It is not tiny, but still fits in a larger pocket. Just the size I like. Not too big or too small. The LCD screen is excellent. It is responsive and very visible in most situations. In direct sunlight, you can't see what is displayed, but I imagine all other cameras are the same way. And when it is particularly dark, it doesn't gain as much as I'd like, but it's good enough. Just in case your are curious, you can still see the LCD if you use polarized sunglasses. Unless you turn it to the vertical position. Which if you know anything about that, it's really the best way it can be. I guess they could make it go dark on a 45 degree angle instead, but this is good anyway. The lens on the camera is amazing. I can zoom all the way out or all the way in, and I don't notice any barrel distortion.
The outdoor photos are amazing. Scenery shots and scenery macro shots are crystal clear.
The camera is fairly fast at focusing and taking the photos. Not as fast as I want, but probably no point and shoot camera would be.
The video is excellent. I haven't used the AVCHD lite format, because I heard it was a pain to deal with. All it really does is save space on the memory card. But with how cheap memory and hard drives are, who cares about that. The video looks good and being able to use the optical zoom while filming it great. The sound recording is good if you are close enough, but when the target is far away, you can't really hear what is going on.
What I don't like.
Double flash for redeye reduction. I always have to tell people to wait for the second flash. But it is instinctual to blink after a flash, so a lot of the times people will have their eyes closed for the second flash. I guess the best way to have no red-eye is to have your eyes closed :). Also, I have a 3 year old and a 1 year old. Most of the pictures they are looking at me strangely due to the double flash. I prefer the Canon method of putting out the orange light and keeping it on.
The color reproduction with the flash is not great. I took several identical photos with my Canon using the flash indoors. Then I compared the photos. In every case, the colors looked more realistic on the Canon. Every Panasonic shot was dull or muted compared to the Canon.
Also, the low-light photos have much more noise than the Canon. The Canon trumps the Panny in every indoor shot, flash or no flash.
The intelligent auto is hit or miss on this thing. I can take the same photo twice and get different results. Shots in well lit situations are always good, but when you have high-contrasting shots, sometimes the camera compensates much differently than other times. You never really know if you are going to get a good shot.
When you set the camera to continuous auto-focus, you can hear it constantly trying to gain focus. It can be annoying, and you just know it is killing the battery.
Which is a good segue into my next point. The battery life is not what I'm used to. My Canon's 4 rechargeable AA batteries seemed to last forever. I would take hundreds of pictures over a period of 5 months before they needed to be charged. This camera, I got about 100 pictures. I took about 10 minutes of video. I played back the videos and pictures about once or twice each. I had to charge the battery after 1 or 2 days. Obviously I was using the camera more than my old one, but the difference was a lot. Panny claims 300 shots, but it just doesn't seem to last that long. I would strongly recommend a backup battery, if you can find one. But they are $50 a pop, so consider that in the cost.
I haven't tried all of the features out on the camera, but I generally don't use anything else. I buy point and shoot cameras because I want to "point" and "shoot". I don't want to have to worry about settings and scene modes. So maybe I'd get some better results if I messed with the different modes, but I don't know. I'm using the camera exactly the same way as my Canon. The Canon wins in indoor and flash situations. The Canon is more consistent and has better battery life. The Panasonic wins outdoors photos and for video recording. Also, the lens is better, great range from wide angle to telephoto.
All in all the Panasonic is a good camera, but not great. I'm giving it 4 stars. I think 3 seems to harsh. Some people may think 4 is too harsh, but I was spoiled with my Canon. Which was cheaper and now is a 4 year old model. I was hoping things would get better. Some aspects did get better, but others got worse. And this camera is much more expensive. So I'm not thrilled with it, like I was my Canon.
The bottom line is, if you want a big zoom in a little camera (relatively) and hi-def video, I would recommend this camera. If you can live without some of that zoom, I'd look for something else. The Fuji F200EXR was my second choice. After using the Panasonic, I'm thinking the Fuji may have been a better choice. I haven't used that camera though, so I'm not sure.
I hope this helps.
3rd time's a charm- a standing "O" for the ZS3! April 28, 2009
Michael J. Christensen (Elk Grove Village, IL United States)
852 out of 879 found this review helpful
I have owned two prior digital cameras- the first was a Canon that took good pictures, but was too bulky to pocket around and required AA batteries to power it. The second was a Sony CyberShot DSC-W150 that took crappy, blurry pictures in low light. Needless to say, I felt an upgrade was in order.
So I'm going on an east coast trip next month. My buddy and I are avid baseball fans. One problem: as we do not always have great seats, taking close-up pictures of ballplayers is a real pain with 99% of the compact point and shoots out there. This is because the camera's size will only allow it 5X optical zoom. You can combine this with digital zooming, but I don't need to tell you how terrible and pixilated this looks. Thus my conundrum. So I really wanted a compact, pocketable camera with a long range optical lens, without having to lug around an expensive digital SLR.
Enter the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3. When I read the specs on it, I was in awe. 10 megapixel, 12X OPTICAL zoom. Here's the sweetest part about the zoom- if you planning to use smaller prints (i.e. 4X6), you can quickly adjust the camera's Megapixel (MP) count from 10 to 7, 5, and 3 to yield maximum OPTICAL zooms of 14.3, 17.1, and 21.4 respectably, without much loss of detail on such prints. I wish Panasonic would have allowed the camera to adjust the MP count automatically as you zoom, but it's not too much trouble to change the MP settings manually from the quick menu.
Another great feature: the camera's screen is beautiful at 460,000 pixels, twice the count as the rival Canon Powershot SX200 IS (more on that camera later). From the moment you view your first picture, you'll quickly notice how much sharper photos look on this camera. It's a nice convenience to view photos on the camera in a manner closer to the quality that will actually be seen when you're viewing them on the computer (and ultimately printing them).
I also want to give Panasonic kudos for the build quality and compactness of this camera. The ZS3 is a replacement for the popular TZ5 model, which was 9MP and 10X Optical Zoom. So they increased the resolution, and added a wider range lens, and REDUCED the size by .4 cubic inches. Specifications aside, I was more than pleased that this camera will comfortably fit inside my jeans pocket. It's a bit bulkier than an ultracompact for sure, but not objectionably so. Note that the SX200 is a full 2.0 cubic inches thicker, another reason I passed on the Canon. Here's a few more reasons the Canon falls short: the Canon has a cheesy looking popup flash that sticks out at the top of the camera, whether you're using flash or not (bad design decision). It has less rated battery life than the Lumix. Also, when shooting video, the Canon does NOT allow you to use optical zooming.
Photo quality on the Lumix is excellent, although I've only snapped samples around my place so far. However, I've taken quite a few pictures at low light, and at maximum zoom levels to try to get a bad shot. So far, there's none to be found. I'll put this through its paces more when I travel next month, but I'm extremely pleased so far. As for video shooting, I've sampled it a bit, and it seems pretty solid. The camera gives you the choice of shooting video in its touted AVCHD Lite format (ideal for watching it on your TV in HD with an optional mini to standard HDMI cable), or JPEG if you prefer to email video clips to friends. This year's model also added stereo sound on video playback versus last year's monaural effort. One thing I found a bit strange, was the incredibly slow zooming when shooting video. I guess Panasonic was trying to give the user a more controlled, deliberate zoom, but unlike the snappy photo zooming, it's a bit slow for my liking.
Some other minor quibbles: The dial that controls the shooting mode is extremely loose. If you lightly rub it against anything (a camera bag, your pocket), there's a good chance it will shift. When you turn the camera on, it will digitally tell you what mode you're in, but it's still annoying when it happens by accident. Second, when making a quick zoom on an object, it will appear blurry on the camera's screen until the shutter button is pressed. There are modes to continually focus the object when zooming, but this drains the camera's battery life more rapidly. It would be nice if this feature was incorporated automatically without any such sacrifice.
Also, I'm not a huge fan of the included PhotofunStudio software bundled with this camera, as there are other, more compelling programs to view, edit, and print photos (I like Canon's Zoombrowser program better). Finally, this is not the camera to buy if you're into manual controls. There's a ton of preset scenes that can be used (nighttime, portrait, baby, sunset, food, etc.), and you can adjust items like flash, white balance, and max ISO level, but this is meant to be a simple point and shoot for casual photographers. Note that the Lumix has an intelligent auto mode (IA) that will analyze the shooting conditions and pick the right scene, flash, and exposure without any adjustments by the user. This camera screams simplicity, but there's enough tweaking on the Normal and Scene modes to keep the vast majority of amateur photographers happy.
Regardless of these nitpicks, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 is an awesome camera, unbeatable for those that want the best of both worlds- a great zoom lens and compact body. It's a bit pricey at $399, but you're getting quite a lot of camera for your hard earned dollars. I have no doubt that my third digital camera is a terrific buy and a long-term staple for my travels.
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