Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1S 5MP Compact Digital Camera with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Silver) | 
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| Brand: Panasonic
Category: Photography
List Price: $299.95
Buy New: $199.99
You Save: $99.96 (33%)
New (4) Used (6) from $125.00
Rating:  159 reviews
Sales Rank: 16390
Color: Silver
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Optical Zoom: 10
Display Size: 2.5
Maximum Focal Length: 52
Minimum Focal Length: 5.2
Maximum Resolution: 5
Has Red Eye Reduction: Yes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.5 x 3.5
MPN: DMC-TZ1S
Model: DMC-TZ1S
UPC: 037988985517
EAN: 0037988985517
ASIN: B000EIVKPW
Release Date: April 13, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Slim & compact 10x optical zoom (equivalent to 35mm to 350mm lens on 35mm film camera) with optical image satbilization | | • | World's first "high-angle" LCD mode from 2.5" LCD screen with power boost button for 40% brighter display. | | • | Venu Engine III allows satrt up time to just 0.5 seconds with a release time lag as low as 0.006 seconds. | | • | Leica DC Vario-element lens with a unique prism lens allows horizontal zooming within camera in such a small body. | | • | Crisp clear shots of moving subjects with ISO 800 setting/high sensitivity mode |
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Product Description
The world's first integration of retractive lens with folded optics technology allows the zooming to occur horizontally within the camera. This makes it possible to pack a powerful 10x optical zoom (equivalent to a big 35 to 350mm lens on a 35mm camera) into a compact camera. The Extended Optical Zoom function, which magnifies the image with minimal deterioration by using the center part of the high-resolution CCD, boosts the zoom power to a maximum 12.5x2.The Venus Engine III provides a high sensitivity ISO 800 setting that captures images with minimal noise at full resolution. The higher ISO setting lets you use higher shutter speeds to minimize the motion blur that can occur when you're shooting a moving subject, particularly in dim lighting. Even indoors, you can get crisp, clear, beautiful shots of children, pets and other subjects that won't hold still.Choose from several auto focus modes - spot, 1-point (normal or high-speed), 3-point high-speed, and 9-point - to suit the scene you're shooting. The DMC-TZ1 also introduces a new Linear AF system, which has resulted in the achievement of an industry-leading fast auto focusing time. Not only the speed but also the noise of the motor is reduced and even the zooming while recording motion image is possible. Combined with a startup time of merely 0.95 seconds, this fast focusing lets you catch every shooting opportunity. Plus, the AF Assist Lamp helps when focusing in dimly lit places.Thanks to the Venus Engine III, the DMC-TZ1 has a release time lag as low as 0.006 seconds. The DMC-TZ1 can also fire off consecutive shots at a swift 3 frames per second, and offers Unlimited Consecutive Shooting, so you can keep shooting until the SD Memory Card or built-in memory is full.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 154 more reviews...
 WOW, Bang for the Buck May 5, 2006
83 out of 86 found this review helpful
I've spent the last year reading and looking at the Canon Powershot S2, Sony H1 and Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7. Looking at the new Canon Powershot S3 and the Sony H5 I found myself drawn to the new Panasonic TZ1K camera because of the new Venius III engine, fast response times and the best Lens in the business. For a Family person that takes pictures of children playing sports and takes over a hundred pictures a month but never develop pictures bigger than an 8 X 10, this is the perfect camera. Sure some people criticize Panasonic's cameras for picture noise above ISO 200 but it doesn't matter if you are doing less than 8 X10 photos. The sharpness of the photos is amazing for a camera that's under $350. After all, if noise is a concern then spend a lot more money and get a DSLR. This camera is not totally perfect and requires a little learning curve of the features but it worth the half hour of time to read the manual. The best feature of this camera is that is a megazoom that is lightweight, can easily fit in your pocket and is $150 cheaper than a Canon Powershot S3 and Sony H5. Sure the Canon and Sony have more manual features and higher megapixels but they can't fit in your pocket. I think 5-megapixels with a Leica lens will be more than satisfying for most people that take spontaneous family pictures. This TZ1K feels well made and the screen is very sharp. Good job Panasonic for making the perfect pocket do-all zoom camera!
Taking a great pictures -- first step July 4, 2006
41 out of 41 found this review helpful
I used to have a old Leica camera that gave me really nice pictures. After playing with many different film and digital cameras in last few years, I am glad to re-discover the beauty of Leica lens on this great pocket sized camera.
We have purcahsed a few different digital cameras from other brands, including Canon, Sony, and Nikon. For larger size, I really liked Nikon D70s, which takes great pictures, if you don't mind the weight and size. But my wife really likes a smaller one for taking with her in her hand bag.
Many people selecting the camera with how many mega pixel first. From our experience, mega pixel is not the first critiria for selecting a good picture. For many instances, with other brand of small camera (I don't want to bash other brand, so no name mentioned here), when my wife tried to shot photos for our children, camera would not be ready until they already gone from the scene. Many times, the other small camera would not be able to get good focus. Another problem we have with other brand small camera was no enough optical zoom so that the person very small in the picture. You can see mega pixels will not help in any of those cases. From our experience, if you have taken a good picture even with 3Mega pixel, that would be able to produce a nice 8x11 inch print out.
This little Panasonic DMC-TZ1K solved many of our problems. It produces fabulous pictures. Its pictures have vivid color. It reminds me my old Leica film camera in its picture quality. Its amazing 10x optical zoom with optical stablization produce really nice picture. 10x optical zoom is similar to a 200mm zoom lens in DSLR or SLR camera. This small camera also can take three pictures per seconds, instead of take three seond per picture of our old smaller digital one. Its size is not smallest for men's shirt pocket all the time, but small enough for fit in wonmen's bag without noticed.
This camera has no manual focus, due to its small size. For taking picture in different situation, it has two sets of scene sittings, one set for different objects, another one for different sceneray. If you are shooting for dark situation, please make sure select the night scene setting -- this camera will emit extra light for help focus in the dark night. The camera has a built-in light meter sort of thing that showing you if the light is enough before taking the picture.
If we plan to take a lot of night picture in dark places, we probably will take our Nikon D70s with a big external flash. Without flash shoe and manual focus, like all other small camera, it is hard to take good picture in dark places.
With enough room light or outdoor light, getting this camera is the first step for shooting a good picture. You will be delighted that you get this camera.
A new revolution in camera design from Panasonic April 26, 2006
72 out of 76 found this review helpful
PLUS - Attractive design, clean layout. Conforms to hand well. Blk/Blue/Silver colors. Easy menu system. Crisp 2.5" LCD. Compact 10x zoom with IS. Fast operation! Excellent value!
MINUS - Weak audio recording (8 bit, 8 Khz, Mono). Limited manual controls. Only F4.2 Aperture at full zoom. Warranty - 90 days labor. Has to boost ISO in low light to compensate for flash.
SUMMARY - While it seemed innovation in digital cameras was slowing down, Panasonic keeps driving forward. With a volume of 16 cu. inches, it surpasses the Coolpix S4 (16.6) as the smallest ultra zoom camera. Held before by the Olympus C-770 (26.6) which I also own. Even at full zoom the lens extends out only 0.55" (14 mm). I'd recommend visiting the Panasonic product website as they have good details on the features of the camera. Such as, quick startup (less than a second to power on), quick focusing, long battery life (despite a small 3.7V 1000 mAh battery), and high sensitivity modes, mostly all improved with new Venus III engine. The battery charges up in only ~2 hours with a very small charger that has a fold down AC plug.
Very nice LCD display: 2.5" with 207K pixels. Wide horizontal viewing angle. Has a High Angle mode which works well to see the display above your head. Easy to access boost mode which helps outdoors and it does "gain" up for low-light. No reflective coating, however this does not cause a problem since the display is viewed straight on. May want to invest in a clear protective sheet to limit scratches.
A few gripes: Given the fact it records good video, why do they have it record sound in low quality? The built-in microphone does have good sensitivity, however you do notice a difference in sound quality compared to cameras such as the Canon S2 and Olympus C-770, which record in 16 bit, 44.1 Khz, stereo. With a 2 GB card you can record only ~20 minutes of high quality video. It would have been nice if Panasonic had built-in a better video codec, like MPEG4 to keep the file size down. If you're inclined, save the video to your computer and run it through an encoder such as Windows Media Encoder or QuickTime 7. You can shrink down the 20 minute video to ~150 MB without much loss in video quality. Granted this does require a CPU with some horsepower.
The lens has a focal range of 35 - 350mm. It focuses fast and zooms with a smooth, quiet operation. The tradeoff with the design is that it does not have a wide range of aperture settings (F2.8 - F4.2), which may cause some limitations in light gathering and depth of field ability. Other long zooms can open up to F3.7 at full tele. It will only adjust to it's minimum setting of F7.1 in very bright scenes. Although when compared to other cameras in this compact size class, the apertures range is more than acceptable. In regards to noise, there is minimal occurence at ISO 80/100. It increases as you move up of course, however it never seems to balloon out of control. The flexibility is there though to take a low light, fast moving subject shot at up to ISO 1600 with it's High Sensitivity mode. The resulting images have a sort of watercolor effect, however the image is definitely usable. The file size is smaller in this mode, maybe because it "blends" out unusable pixels. Other cameras simply can not capture photos in these low light, fast moving subject situations. You can open up the shutter for night shots to 1, 8, 15, 30, or even 60 seconds. The few night shots I've taken have been quite impressive. The overall image quality is very good to excellent with photos pushing towards more vibrant and colorful, albeit slightly softer.
The flash is physically small and adequate in output. Seems to have decent coverage (not quite as good as the Oly C-770 which had a dual range pop-flash). To compensate for the limited output it will often boost the ISO to 200 which can result in a more grainy picture (a well-lit room will keep the gain down to ~100-125). There also could be red-eye problems here (if you don't use the red-eye reducing flash mode). With Image Stabilization, you can utilize more natural light shots w/o having to resort to the flash as often. The camera can be hand held down to 1/8 shutter speed and still take crisp pictures, which is pretty amazing. When the flash is used it will sync at 1/30 second.
A few tweaks: I'd recommend adjusting the picture quality from "Fine" (default) to "Normal". This will compress the image down to around 1.1 MB, however there is minimal loss in quality. There are three picture modes: Natural, Standard, & Vivid. Each mode progressively increases the sharpness and saturation of the image, sometimes at the expense of noise. Natural will display a smooth image with more neutral colors; Vivid will make the image sharper and colors will stand out. I was using Vivid, however it may saturate colors more than I like. I would liked to have seen separate controls for Saturation, Sharpness, and Noise - rather than seemingly blending them together in one control. There is an economy mode that will turn off the display after 15 seconds of inactivity and during flash recharge. This works well since the display instantly powers on with a touch of any button. It will also go in to a power save mode after 2 minutes (this can be changed or disabled), which basically powers it down. To get it out of this mode, just press the shutter button of flip the on/off switch.
In regards to memory cards, a 512 MB SD card is very inexpensive now and even the supported maximum 2 GB card is a drop in the hat (limited to 2 GB due to FAT16 file system).
With a current street price of $300, Panasonic expects to sell a lot of these. In fact, given the features and performance, it will likely take sales away from it's other models. I'd highly recommend this to both beginner and expert users. It's a camera that seems to fill all the niches.
RECOMMENDED BAG - Search for the "LowePro Rezo 50". It's a great fit for this camera.
I'm amazed. May 7, 2006
67 out of 71 found this review helpful
I got the camera this Tuesday. In the last 4 days, I've take over three hundred photos and numerous video clips. From this short experience, I have to say the camera is simply amazing.
I was a Canon fan. I had powershot G2 for four years. I liked it, though at the end the software malfunctioned. We had twins for two months. The G2 wasn't up to the job to record the babies life. The lag from pushing the button to taking the photo is too long. The video clip it makes is too small and too short... I read many review from dpreview and amazon since last month. Mainly considered Canon S3 IS and TZ1. At the end, my wife made the call to pick TZ1 since she wants a compact camera.
What I like the camera so far:
1.The action is super quick. Turn on the camera, shoot the photos, focus, zoom... You don't feel the lag too much. Perfect for shooting babies.
2.The quality of the photo is very good. At the beginning, I was a bit worried for the critics of TZ1's noise. What nonsense! Photos are nice, sharp, well exposed and I don't feel the noise bother me at all even at iso 400 level. Photos printed are equally good. For anyone who doubts its photo quality, if you don't work for national geographic, leave your doubt aside.
3.The video works great. I put 1-GB SD card there and use it like a regular camcorder. It takes minutes good video clip. I'm about to buy a 2GB sd card and sell my digital camcorder all together. I don't feel I miss out much.
4.Did I mention the 10x zoom and its compact size? What a bless! The camera is well designed, engineered and crafted.
5.The menu is intuitive and easy to operate during action. Much better than my G2 experience.
6.Price? $308 from circuit. What a steal.
Things can be improved.
1.The software bundle has nothing I like, just normal stuff. It installed 6/7 different software, most useless.
2.You have to use the external battery charger to charge the battery. Hi, designers at Panasonic. What a stupid idea is that? If I'm carrying a compact camera around, do I really want to carry an external battery charger...
Overall the experience is good. 5 stars all the way.
I love my camera!! June 26, 2006
29 out of 29 found this review helpful
I had been researching digital cameras for a while and had been trying to decide if a better zoom was more important than one of those teeny tiny cameras. This camera not only has a fantastic zoom but it is still smaller than many of the non-compact cameras with limited zoom. The camera is incredibly easy to use. It has a macro setting, which is fantastic for close ups and has adjustable flash settings. The flash itself is a teeny slit just above the lens but it is amazingly bright. You can review your pictures quickly and easily on the generously sized screen and downloading was a snap. The pictures come out amazingly clear and crisp. They're just terrific. It also has color settings right on the menu so if you wanted to make color look warmer or cooler (or in black and white or sepia) you can select it from the menu. The only thing I don't love about it is that it has an external lens cap that you have to actually take off yourself. It comes with a string to attach the cap to the side of the camera so you don't loose it though. I've found that most if not all cameras with an extended zoom tend to have external caps though. I also don't love that you have to take the battery out of the camera in order to charge it. I'm a little afraid that I'll forget to put it back in. I've seen that it's recommended to use high-speed SD cards with the camera but I don't find it very necessary. I used a normal 1GB SanDisk card and it still records the picture faster than many other digital cameras. One thing you have to know though is that the TZ1 does not have a viewfinder. You just use the LCD screen on the back. I actually like this more because then you're seeing exactly what you get and there is no more squinting through that teeny hole. Basically I think that it is the best camera that you can get - certainly in such a tiny package.
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