Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1

Viewfinder (0.0)
Panasonic left the optical viewfinder off the TZ1. There are two schools of thought about optical viewfinders. Some users love them because they don't take any battery power, and they work even in bright sunlight. Other users hate them because they are tiny, hard to look through, and completely inaccurate. Both schools are correct. In lieu of an optical viewfinder, the TZ1 provides live feed on the large LCD screen.

LCD Screen (7.0) 
The 2.5-inch polycrystalline LCD is not as sharp as we'd hope for a 207,000 pixel display, and it has a relatively narrow angle of view. It didn't solarize – a phenomenon where black areas and white areas reverse tones – but it got very dark when viewed from an angle. Panasonic addresses this problem with a High Angle LCD setting that boosts the brightness enormously, so that the LCD is readable when held overhead. Panasonic claims that this digital camera is the first to include such a mode, although there are other cameras on the market that provide a wider view without pushing any special buttons. The TZ1 also has an extra-bright mode called Power LCD for daylight shooting; Panasonic states that this mode brightens the screen by 40 percent.  

We'd use both features if we owned the camera, but as critics, we're moved to say we'd rather just see a sharper LCD with a wider angle of view.

Flash (5.75) 
Small flashes, like the one on the Lumix TZ1, cast particularly harsh light and shadows. Lit by the flash, blemishes and wrinkles on subjects' skin will be accentuated.

The flash mode can be set to automatic, automatic with red-eye reduction, slow shutter, slow shutter with red-eye reduction, or the flash can be turned off completely. The slow shutter setting allows the user to take pictures that mix flash and available light, even when the available light requires a long exposure.

With the ISO set to Auto, the flash is rated to about 12 feet at wide angle and less than 8 feet at telephoto. At high ISO, wide-angle ranges nearly 19 feet and telephoto reaches past 12 feet. The high ISO settings boost contrast. Since the flash light is so harsh, the results combining the two are not attractive.

Zoom Lens (8.5)
The Panasonic DMC-TZ1 has a Leica-branded DC Vario Elmarit 5.2-52mm zoom with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 at 5.2mm and f/4.2 at 52mm.  The lens acts like a 35-350mm zoom on a 35mm camera. The 10x optical zoom lens puts the Panasonic TZ1 in a unique market niche with several other compact digital cameras that have lots of zoom. Several other manufacturers such as Casio, Nikon, and Kodak have made attempts to squeeze a lot of zoom in a little package. Casio takes a similar design approach to Panasonic in that it uses an extending lens from a thin body. Nikon uses a thin body that twists into an awkward shape, and Kodak uses an interesting internal dual lens system that combines to pack in more zoom. Indeed, Panasonic folds its optics into a lens with 12 elements in 10 groups, with 3 aspherical lenses.

The TZ1 has Panasonic's MEGA Optical Image Stabilization. The implementation on the TZ1 is as effective as OIS has been on previous Lumix models, and that's very good. It can be set to run continuously, which helps with aiming and composing shots. Or it can be set to function only when the shot is taken, which saves power. The button is located near the shutter release button, although this feature should be turned on as much as possible to keep pictures blur-free and movies shake-free.

In our casual shots, we noted remarkably little color fringing and only slight barrel distortion at wide angle. The lens zooms quickly, and it is difficult to set it to a particular focal length. All in all, though, the lens is one of the TZ1's strong points.

The camera offers two digital zoom options. First, there is a standard 4x digital zoom, which resamples the image for increased magnification. Second, there is an "extended zoom" feature, which is available only for smaller file sizes of 3 megapixels or less. It uses only the center part of the sensor and doesn't resample.