You may or may not have noticed, but my photos took a step up in quality in that post about our vacation. Prior to setting off for that trip I bought a new camera, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5.
I’m decidedly not a D-SRL guy; I far prefer something I can stick in my pocket on any occasion. But I was growing tired of the limitations of the Casio Exilim that I’ve been using for several years. The Exilim was extremely pocketable and the photos were usually very good, but it’s 3.2 megapixel resolution was growing old and its movie mode (which I use quite a lot) is frustratingly limited to 30 second clips. I finally decided that if I was in the market for an upgrade, doing so before the trip made sense.
After my usual barrage of research I gravitated to the Lumix line, and specifically the 9 megapixel TZ5. Besides the high quality Leica lens unit, the TZ series standout with their 10x optical zoom. I was never too unhappy with the 3x zoom on the Exilim, but after trying the 10x it was too hard to go back. Having a long(ish) lens is not something you might use all the time, but it’s sure nice when you need it. I’m looking forward to my next set of concert shots! On the other end of the spectrum, the wide angle goes down to 28mm, which is better than I’m used to as well. The TZ5 also has all kinds of (now typical) features that the Exilim doesn’t, such as optical stabilization (low light and motion pictures will be much clearer) and face recognition (a fancy auto-focus method). It also has a really detailed and bright 3″ LCD.
The real exciting improvement though is the ability to shoot video clips of any length and all the way up to 16:9 HD movies (1280×720 @ 30fps). The high quality movies look absolutely great, but they eat up about 184MB a minute so it’s nice that there’s several lower resolution and frame rate options.
All in all the only downside to the camera is that it’s got a bit more bulk than what I’m used to. I’m accustomed to my gadgets growing smaller with each upgrade, but in this case the features of the ultra-compacts just didn’t stand up. The TZ5 still easily tucks away in a pants or jacket pocket so it’s not bad.
