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Panasonic Lumix TZ6 Digital Camera - Black (10.1MP, 12x Optical Zoom) 2.7 inch LCD
 
Manufacturer: Panasonic
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A classy little camera with a stunning Leica lens!
 
Review Date: April 7, 2009
Reviewer: uncle barbar, Essex, England
This really is a classy little camera. Sleek looking, quality lens and plenty of features.

I normally take my photos on a digital SLR - which cost over 3 times the price of this little beauty, but I like to carry a camera around with me whenever possible (on a walking or bike trip) so lugging a huge SLR with all of its lenses isn't really feasible. OK so this Lumix isn't as versatile as an SLR - there are no out-and-out manual settings on it, but it does allow you to have some forms of override and its compactness, small weight and quality of lens make up for this.

The quality of the pictures I have taken on it so far - whether at 25mm or 300mm have been quite stunning. The full range of the zoom (12x) has been used to take photos of flora and fauna. If you WANT to you can even get it to zoom in further (up to 21.4 times - that's the equivalent of over 500mm lens - though the quality does suffer).

The Leica lens is really crisp for a small camera such as this. Just over 10mega-pixels may be less than some of its rivals but the quality of the lens shines through and is plenty for really crisp shots. I've taken pictures of architecture, landscape, animals, flowers and portraits of people and been mightily impressed with all of these.

The first setting on the dial is "Intelligent Auto" which allows the camera to decide the best aperture/shutter-speed combination for each shot. I've set this and been more than happy with the results.

For those who like to have a little more control - the "Normal Picture Mode" allows you to take pictures while customizing the settings. You can change a large number of settings here including the format of the picture - from 4:3 to 3:2 or even 16:9; the ISO, quality etc. White balance and extra stop exposures are also available.

The third style is "Scene mode" - this allows you to choose the normal types of modes - portrait, landscape, small tulip (!) etc - but there are a myriad of them here - 25 in fact! - including "baby", "pet", "candle light", "party", "sunset" and "fireworks". These might all sound like gimmicks but they do actually work - though I haven't yet had the time or the inclination to try each of the 25 options yet! The booklet gives adequate details of all of these 25 different scene modes. The "My Scene mode" basically allows you to save your favourite scene for future use.

It allows features like a "black and white" or "sepia" setting if you prefer to do your image manipulation in camera rather than with photo software.

The 2.7 inch LCD is also really clear - although as always don't allow the sun to creep over your shoulder or the image will be hard to see.

Its shutter speeds go from 1/2000ths of a second to 8 seconds but it also has a "starry sky" setting which allows you to take photos in the dead at night of all the stars and moon (up to a whole minute if its necessary!) Try it out for really good results (you may have to experiment a bit for the best exposure).

The auto focus also works a treat - the "face-recognition" technology appeared to work in all of the situations I trialled it through - whether the "guinea-pig"* was central or to one side of the shot - near or far away. Likewise the "Optical Image Stabiliser" appears to work to stop that irritating camera shake.

As usual there are a number of flash options: Auto, Auto-red-eye, forced flash on, forced flash on-red-eye, slow sync, red-eye, forced flash off. All functions of the flash worked fine for me - the red eye reduction worked a treat.

If you want to use it very often for its "motion picture" facilities I'd probably advise you to go for the TZ7 instead (which is almost £100 more expensive) or a model in another range of compacts. I'm not saying it's bad - it's good enough for the odd moving sequence but don't expect camcorder quality.

One final thing I liked about this camera is that the booklet is on paper - no having to download all of it from a cd. You can actually carry around the little booklet with you wherever you go. And 90% of it isn't in a numerous other languages - this is the English version. And amazingly - it's a very good booklet. I don't have anything bad to say about it at all - it tells you exactly what you need to know!

If you are looking for a small compact camera with a super quality lens which goes through the whole range of wide-angle and telephoto which you can rely on time after time to give you excellent shots and allows a little manipulation of the exposure, then this is the baby to buy.

* No guinea-pigs were harmed in the writing of this review...
The best compact I've used
 
Review Date: June 5, 2009
Reviewer: Spatch, England, Oxfordshire
This definalely is the best compact camera I have ever used for a number of reasons. Can be used with an SDHC card and has a 25mm ultra wide angle lens.
It features a Leica lens which is capable of zooming 21 times - with most cameras this would be pointless because you'd get a blurred, useless image. The first time I zoomed to the max I was completely suprised when I looked back at the photo and saw it was in perfect focus. But obviously the quality is noticable when enlarged on a computer screen.

The Intelligent auto is a very innovative feature that is constantly adjusting to whatever you are pointing the camera at and making re adjustments in focus, choosing what scene mode would best fit the shot, compensating for any camera shake and deciding whether to turn the macro mode on depending on how close you are to the object. The only things you can change in iA mode is whether you want the auto flash or no flash at all, the self timer and a very good AF tracking feature, where you can lock it on a moving subject like a dog and keep it in focus till you are ready to take the shot.

The other options on the click wheel are a manual mode - where you can choose the exposure compensation, macro/macro zoom on or off, self timers and what kind of flash you want.

Also you can access a menu with more options than the iA one. Including the shutter speed you want (1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250), the picture size, quality and intelligent ISO on/off with the option on enabling or disabling the digital zoom. Also the standard options of black and white, sepia.

The MS option on the click wheel just uses your most used setting from the manual mode and is very good although I haven't used it much.

The SCN mode lets you choose up to 27 different scenes which is all you need from sunset to underwater and included a very good starry sky scene where you can choose to have the shutter speed 15, 30 or 50 seconds (obviously only works at night, the picture quality is astounding when set to over 30 secs and can pick up individual stars). The night portrait and night scenery modes are brilliant; you can just set the camera on a tripod, put it on a couple of seconds self timer and it will judge how much light is in the photo and change the shutter speed automatically, so far these speeds for me have ranged from 2 seconds to 7 seconds, you get great quality night time shots from this.
I dont really use the clip board option on the wheel but it is very useful for taking pictures of time tables or maps and will always store them in a seperate folder in the internal memory.

The last option is the video mode which offers a very good quality picture and sound without the jumps or clicking sounds you sometimes get with older cameras, they say the sound is not as good as the TZ7 which features a bigger screen and HD quality vids (for lots more cash). But I did use this to record part of a gig with suprising results, I also recorded guitar ideas to then rip the audio so I was very suprised at how good the sound was.

Some people complain that the iA gets very annoying because you never really know what it's doing but I couldn't disagree more because it has the basic manual options you will need, if you want a completely manual camera get an SLR or a different compact, also people say the wheel doesn't click hard enough to stop it from moving while in your pocket but this is nonsense it is good and just check the position before you turn on the camera.

All in all I think this is the best non SLR camera I have owned and stands up to any of my SLR photos come to think of it, the picture quality is top notch (its 10.1MP standing equal to other higher MP cameras), with a very good macro and excellent Leica lens. This is a great camera for anyone really, but if you want one with more manual modes or a complete manual over ride I would get a different camera, but for what it is - essentially a point and shoot camera it's awesome!
Poetry in motion
 
Review Date: June 5, 2009
Reviewer: Michael A. Phillips, Birmingham
I bought this camera to go on safari because of the zoom, but it has exceeded all my expectations. Low light, dawn and dusk, from a moving vehicle, intelligent auto plus anti shake produced almost perfect pictures every time. What more could I ask? Brilliant.
Awesome compact
 
Review Date: April 21, 2009
Reviewer: j.v,
This is not the smallest or lightest compact camera on the market but I could be so bold as to say it is possibly the best.

Look, all you need to know is that the leica lens performs very well and produces fantastic pictures everytime. Keep the dial on iA and this clever thing chooses the best settings. I bought a 6gb sdhc card which holds approx 1000 pictures. The battery charges in 90 mins and will take approx 300 pictures.

I have played about in ms mode with the panorama assist, its fantastic you can take full 360 panoramas and the software included (panorama maker 4) will stitch them together.

Great camera

Buy one
First-rate compact
 
Review Date: July 11, 2009
Reviewer: I Clark,
I recently decided that it was time to upgrade my old Olympus digital camera to a newer model. Although the Olympus had served me well (bought back in 2004 when 6mp was a rarity), it was starting to literally fray around the edges. After much reading around, I decided to go for this one and what a beauty it is too.

Initially I wasn't too sure as I like to have a little bit of manual control over my photography, but after taking a few shots this was a minimal concern. It really does take great quality photos. The wide-angle lens is a real bonus and I was really impressed with the low-light photography (my old Olympus didn't have OIS) - I took a photo of my garden at 10pm and you could see everything reasonabley clearly (impossible with my old camera). In short, I would seriously recommend this camera. I was tempted by the TZ7, but I think the only real difference is if you want HD video. I wasn't that bothered so went for the TZ6.

Oh yeah, and there were some comments re battery in earlier reviews - ignore them, my local indie camera shop sells them.