Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1 Digital Camera Review

Auto Mode (7.75)
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1 has a heart icon on its mode dial indicating its most automatic mode. It also has its own menu, with only 4 entries. One entry sets file size to “Enlarge, 4x6, or Email.” The second activates auto review, the third controls the beep and the last sets date and time. All the user is left to do is set the zoom and press the shutter.  

The heart mode is as simple as it gets, and many users would be wise to choose it.  

Custom Image Presets (7.75)
The general notion of presets is that they set the camera about the way an experienced photographer would set a manual camera to get a particular sort of shot. The TZ1 has a typical selection. Following the practice on other Lumix cameras, the TZ1 has two scene mode positions on the mode dial. The user can choose a separate scene mode for each position and can switch between them without having to scroll through the whole list.  

Portrait	Blurs background
Soft skin	Like portrait, but softens skin texture
Scenery	Bright colors, sharp detail
Sports	Fast shutter speed
Night Scenery	Long exposure, which should require a tripod
Night Portrait	Adds flash to night scenery
Self Portrait	For pointing the camera at the user. Self-timer light acts as focus confirmation
Food	Correct color, macro focus
Part	Flash with long exposure to pick up background
Candlight	Low light without flash and warm color balance
Fireworks	Infinity focus and fixed exposure of 1 second if stabilization is off. If stabilization is on, exposure can extend to 1 second, if the camera is stable.
Starry sky	Exposures of up to 1 minute
Beach	Compensates for very bright backgrounds
Aerial photo	Compensates for shooting through airplane windows
Snow mode	Like beach, but adjusts white balance to keep the snow from looking blue
High Sensitivity	Boosts ISO to 800 or 1600, but cuts file size to lower resolution
Baby mode	Balances color for rosy cheeks, and can display baby's age on image, if birthday is input. TZ1 can be set up for 2 children
Underwater	Sets white balance for underwater. The camera isn't waterproof. This mode is for use in a special housing.

Drive / Burst Mode (7.5)
The Panasonic TZ1 has three burst mode settings: High, Low and Infinity. At 3 frames in less than a second, High is a bit faster than Low, which needs the full second to shoot 3. Neither mode can take more than 3 at a time in Fine mode and full resolution. Infinity mode does not violate any laws of physics that I know of – it's not infinitely fast or anything like that. It simply keeps on going, taking shots every 1.2 seconds or so until the user stops pressing the shutter release, the battery runs down, or the memory card fills up. That might get infinitely boring, otherwise, it adds up to a large, but finite number of images.  

Playback Mode (7.5)
Playback mode on the TZ1 is pared down. Its slide show lets the user choose to show each image from 1 to 5 seconds, and it offers the option of playing audio clips attached to images. It offers thumbnail modes showing either 9 or 25 images at a time, and it shows a convenient calendar mode, which lets users who rarely download look up their images by date, rather than having to scroll through their whole collection. The display magnifies images up to 16x, which is more than the JPEG's image quality can handle – the difference between 8x and 16x is that the blurs are bigger at 16x.  

The TZ1 user can set favorite images, crop images, resize images smaller, change image aspect ratios, rotate them and print.