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Connectivity
Software (6.25)
The Lumix TZ1 ships with Lumix Simple Viewer and ArcSoft's PhotoBase, PhotoImpression, and PanoramaMaker. Simple Viewer lives up to its name – it's useful for downloading images and looking at them, with pretty weak organizational features.
PhotoBase is a more powerful choice, with better organizational tools, a slideshow function, and minor adjustment tools, including brightness, color balance and cropping. PhotoImpressions is more of an editing tool, with enhancement and painting tools. For users who aren't ambitious, the ArcSoft package is worth exploring for occasional use. People who want to get serious about photo management and editing ought to look into Photoshop, starting with Photoshop Elements.
The TZ1 has USB 2.0 connectivity for both storage and printing, and the same jack doubles as an analog video out port. This video output can be set to NTSC or PAL standards so video can be watched anywhere in the world. There's an input for an external DC power source, which is not included with the camera. An external power source might be useful for running slide shows.
Direct Print Options (6.0)
The Panasonic TZ1 enables direct printing through DPOF and PictBridge. With DPOF, the TZ1 can create a print order on the SD memory card, which can be downloaded at a photo lab or printing kiosk. With PictBridge, the camera is connected directly to a home printer. It's possible to choose which images to print, how many copies to make, the print size, to print more than one copy on a single sheet of paper, and to print the date on the image. Not all printers are compatible with all of these options.
Battery (6.25)
A 3.7-volt lithium-ion battery powers the Lumix TZ1. The battery is rechargeable, and lasted a long time between charges in our tests. Panasonic's specs claim 250 shots per charge, which is fairly accurate. We find that lithium-ion batteries last longer and are more convenient than AA cells, which power some other compact cameras. This digital camera comes packaged with a wall-mount charger too.
Memory (4.0)
The TZ1 has about 14MB of internal memory, enough to hold four shots for snapshooters who use the camera as a brag book. The TZ1 also accepts SD media cards, the most common memory format for compact cameras. SD cards are widely available in a range of sizes and are relatively cheap. It's easy to copy images between the internal memory and an SD card. This Panasonic can also accept MMC cards, but this format won't save anything shot with the movie mode.
Other Features (6.25)
White Balance Fine Tune – The option of tweaking color balance should help users avoid post-processing, and can help handle tough lighting, such as fluorescent and mixed sources.
Vacation Day – This option allows users to track which day of a vacation each snapshot was taken, which might be handy for scrap booking and slide shows.
Aspect Ratio Change – The option of switching between 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 in-camera should help users avoid post-processing as well. The standard 4:3 movies can also be switched to a widescreen format.
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