With GPS, this camera's a snap

Digital Camera Review: Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ10

Don't you hate it when you forget where you captured that fabulous family portrait while browsing through your vacation pictures? Well, you don't have to worry about that with the Global Positioning System (GPS) feature in Panasonic's Lumix DMC-TZ10 ($649).

The TZ10 is a 12.1-megapixel digital compact camera with a three-inch display, SDXC card support and 12x optical zoom (25mm-300mm of 35mm equivalent) lens.

The GPS feature works well, allowing you to geo-tag your photos accurately. While it will take more than two minutes to get a fix on your location, the GPS will work seamlessly once the fix is done - at least until you get into buildings that block the GPS signals.

You can view the locations where you took your pictures with the included software, PHOTOfunSTUDIO HD Edition (Windows only). Those using Mac computers can use Preview or iPhoto.

Weighing 218g (with battery) and measuring 3.26cm thin, the TZ10 is light and compact. But it doesn't feel flimsy and offers a good grip.

The directional keys, playback/camera switch and dedicated video recording button are situated on the rear right while the lens zoom lever and on/off button are on the top right. The mode dial sits near the top right, allowing your right thumb to turn the dial easily.

The protruding mechanism of the lens delays the power-up time to around 2.5 seconds. Shutting down takes 2.1 seconds. Shutter lag is minimal and auto focusing is fast. It takes less than 0.5 seconds to lock on to focus in good lighting. In poor lighting conditions, it can take up to a second to focus.

Image quality is great, with accurate auto white balance, sharp rendition of pixels, vivid colour reproduction and smooth handling of contrasts. The 720p video quality is not as sharp, even though it can zoom and auto focus during video recording.

Panasonic's new Intelligent Zoom does what it claims to do by maintaining picture quality as it extends the zoom digitally by 1.3 times to effectively 16x zoom (399mm of 35mm equivalent). While there is some detail loss and purple fringing in the digital zoom range, it is not very visible.

The ISO performance is impressive, with no sight of noise artifacts till ISO 400. Only at ISO 1600 are noise levels evident. Trevor Tan

by Trevor Tan

05:55 AM Jun 25, 2010

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