Panasonic Lumix TZ20 - A Handy All-in-One for Home & Travel

Introduction

The Panasonic Lumix TZ20 is billed as great for traveling, and it's easy to see why. It's not the slimmest compact camera in town, but it brings a long 16x optical zoom which can be further extended to 21x via Panasonic's Intelligent Zoom system. A wide 24mm lens comes in handy for landscape shots, and 1080i video recording lets you record your precious memories in HD as well as in 14MP still photographs. To round it up, a built-in GPS receiver tags location information to your photographs, so you can remember where in the world you were when you took that photograph.

Design & Handling

While the TZ20 is a chunky compact, it's still a compact which you can comfortably carry. No great surprises in its design; it follows the design of most recent Panasonic compacts, with controls comfortably laid out and easy to use. Of particular favorite is the staple Quick Menu, which gives you an overlay of essential settings that you can quickly adjust.

The TZ20 offers some advanced functionality with Shutter and Aperture priority modes, as well as full Manual. But the difficulty involved in tweaking the settings via the Exposure button and the d-pad has us preferring the ease of use with the excellent iA (intelligent Auto) mode. The TZ20 is limited to an aperture range of f/3.3-5.9, which doesn't inspire one to do much with Aperture Priority. The TZ20 also comes with a touch-screen, which is complementary and not compulsory. It offers some of the same easy features as Panasonic's G-series, with useful features like touch to focus functions.

Image Performance

Auto-focus is exceptionally fast and accurate, and the TZ20 offers an impressive 16x optical zoom, making this compact lens the equivalent of a 24-384mm lens in 35mm measurements. That 16x can be further pushed to 21x digitally with Intelligent Zoom. Despite the claims for a better quality digital crop, a crop is a crop. While we found the TZ20's normal resolution to be a decent 1400 x 1400LPH on our resolution chart all the way to 16x optical zoom, resolution drops to 1000 x 1000LPH at 21x. ISO performance is average and could have been better, with noise starting to show even at ISO400, with an upper limit of ISO800 and ISO1600 best to be avoided.

One thing that's impressive is that at the furthest zooms it's obvious that there's some serious image stabilization going on. That's essential, because the further you zoom the more sensitive the camera becomes to the smallest hand shake and the larger your chances of blur. Thanks to the optical stabilization built into the TZ20 (what Panasonic calls Power Optical Image Stabilizer) we found that most of our zoom shots turned out steady and sharp.

Images also come tagged with their latitudes and longitudes, if you're lucky. The service doesn't always work, but a lot of times the GPS module managed to lock onto us and deliver an accurate description of where we are. The camera then displays a read-out of your location when you get a lock, and there's an impressive database of over one million landmarks stored in the TZ20 so you don't just get co-ordinates but actually names of places.

A 3D mode lets you capture images in MPO format, but it's tricky and takes a little skill.

Sample Photographs

These are sample photographs shot with the Panasonic Lumix TZ20. The photos have not been post-processed and are copyright to SPH Magazines. They are provided for your reference only and we ask that you do not reproduce them elsewhere. Click for the full-resolution images.

Conclusion

The Panasonic Lumix TZ20 packs a lot of power into one small package. The long 16x optical zoom is an impressive feature, but what makes it even more impressive is the image stabilization the TZ20 provides; having a long zoom isn't enough if you can't get a steady shot out of it. Holding a camera racked out at that focal length easily introduces camera shake and produces blurry images, but the TZ20's image stabilization helps get a steady shot most often than not.

We found the built-in GPS to be a fun, if not, an essential feature. It doesn't get a lock all the time, but it works well enough to be fun. Panasonic's signature iA mode is, again, fast, accurate and makes taking photos easy as pie. The touchscreen makes touch to focus and shoot an easy way to nail the right subject.

If there's a downside to the camera, it's that its ISO performance could have been improved. We're disappointed to see apparent noise starting to creep in at ISO400 resulting in smudgier images, and a noisy image at ISO800. It's a trade-off in terms of great features and zoom for higher noise performance. So just bear in mind that its performance isn't as great with low lighting conditions.

Even though the camera lets you take over aperture and shutter controls, we found the handling to be less than convenient, and would gladly not use those modes in lieu of iA mode. And while Panasonic touts the 21x Intelligent Zoom to maintain the same image sharpness and detail as the 16x optical zoom, we didn't find that to be the case, with reduced resolution at 21x zoom. In any case, we think the 16x optical zoom with full resolution shots should be more than adequate for this class of compact users.

To sum, we found the TZ20 a competent camera; the wide and long lens will deal with most situations, and coupled with the intelligent AF and good image stabilization the TZ20 will be a handy all-in-one compact camera for most. Just be prepared to shoot at low ISO settings for the best results and ensure you've good lighting for your shots.

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