Panasonic DMC-ZR3

Manual Controls

The ZR3 does not have a full manual mode; there is no way to directly set the aperture or shutter speed. 

Focus

There are five autofocus modes on this camera: face, AE tracking, multi, 1 point and spot. The face mode uses face detection to decide what to focus on, while the AE tracking and multi mode use 11 focus points, wih the camera choosing which ones to focus on. The 1 point mode allows you to choose any single focus point of the 11 to use, and the spot mode uses a single point in the center of the frame.

ISO

The ISO range of the ZR3 goes from 80 up to 1600 at the full resolution of the camera. You can extend this up to 6400 if you don't mind the resolution dropping down to 5 megapixels. The ISO can also be set to one of several automatic modes, including a mode called Intelligent ISO which sets it automatically within a certain range (80 to 800). This is useful if you want the camera to set the ISO, but want to avoid the noise the accompanies the higher ISO settings.

White Balance

White balance presets are available for daylight, cloudy, shade, halogen. There is also an automatic mode and an evaluative mode thatuses a white object to judge the white balance. The latter is unusual to see on a compact camera, but it is the best way to get the correct white balance.

Metering

This camera is unusual in only having one metering mode; an evaluative mode where the camera uses multiple zones to judge the correct exposure for the camera. There are no options to spot or center weighted metering, and no way to override the cameras decision. We'll have to wait until we get the camera in for review to see if it makes good choices or not.

Shutter Speed

The shutter speed range that this camera can manage goes from 8 seconds down to 1/2000 of a second. This can be extended out to 60 seconds in the starry sky mode, which is the longest shutter speed we've seen on a point & shoot. 

Aperture

The 8x zoom lens of this camera has a good aperture range, which starts at f/3.3 and goes out to f/10 at the widest point of the zoom range. At the telephoto end of the zoom range, theaperture range drops to f/5.9 to f/18.

Image Stabilization

The ZR3 uses Panasonic's Power O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilization) system, which moves an element of the lens to compensate for camera shake. We've found the previous version of this (called Mega O.I.S.) to be pretty effective on older models (such as the ZR3), but Panasonic claism to have improved it to the point where you can use shutter speed of up to half a second without shake. We'll have to wait until we can test this particular camera before we can see how much truthiness there is in these claims.

Picture Quality & Size Options

The ZR3 offers 12 different image sizes at three different aspect ratios. The 4:3 aspect ratio sizes range from 4320 by 3240 down to 640 by 480, while the 3:2 aspect ratio sizes range from 4320 by 2800 down to 640 by 424. Finally, the 16:9 aspect ratio image sizes range from 4320 by 2432 down to 640 by 360 pixels. There are also three options for the image quality, but no option to save images as RAW files.

Picture Effects

Several different color modes are on offer with this camera: images can be shot in standard, vivid, natural, black & white, sepia, cool, warm or the slightly scary sounding happy color mode, which apparently boosts color, saturation and brightness to produce a happier image.