Digital Camera Reviews

The DMC-TZ3 is ultra-compact and has been given a luxurious touch with its stylish design and metallic, stainless-steel exterior. The integrated lens barrier takes the place of the lens cap, to ensure that it never gets lost again. With the wide-angle lens, you can get all your friends in the picture or capture an expansive landscape in a single shot. And with the high-power 10x optical zoom, you can get clear, beautiful shots even when you can’t get close to your subject. The lens unit comprises eleven elements in nine groups, with three aspherical lenses, including dual-sided aspherical meniscus lens, to achieve high optical performance while preserving compactness. The dual-sided aspherical memiscus lens represents a major achievement in mass-produced lens elements, and enables the remarkable 20 to 280mm range of focal lengths in this compact body. Inheriting the fine rendering and outstanding quality of the LEICA ELMAR lens, this easy-to-carry camera delivers beautiful pictures any time, any place.

The TZ3 fixes and improves almost everything about the TZ1 and adds some new, very useful features. The noise has been drastically reduced, the lens is better, the sensor is bigger, and the processor is not only faster, but produces better pictures. The TZ3 adds a very handy “function” button - or I should say function capability - the number of buttons is the same - which gives immediate access to five or so “most used” settings without having to go into the menues - of which there are several.

Technical Details from Amazon

• 7.2-megapixel CCD captures enough detail for photo-quality 15 x 20-inch prints

• 10x image-stabilized optical zoom; 3.0-inch LCD display

• Intelligent ISO Control (I.I.C.) reduces image blur from subject movement and low light

• Records full-size movies in wide-aspect VGA (848 x 480) at 30 frames per second

• Stores images on SD/SDHC/MMC memory cards

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3S Reviews from Cnet

The good: Wide, powerful lens with little distortion; quick performance.

The bad: No manual exposure controls; tiny buttons; no stop-motion movie mode.

The bottom line: Though it leaves out one fun, little shooting mode, the Panasonic DMC-TZ3 improves upon its predecessor in nearly every way.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3S reviews from Digital Camera Review

Pros

• Nice image stabilization
• Quick performance
• Three inch LCD is nice and large

Cons

• Slightly heavy camera
• It can be easy to block the flash with your finger