Product Listing

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ30 - Long Range View

By Hafeez Sim - 16 Jun 2012

Conclusion

Conclusion

Despite its very small size, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ30 features a very useful 20x optical zoom lens, making it an ideal camera to bring on your travels. Controls are generally well-thought out, though we feel the mode dial is too small, and should probably have been shifted more to the right instead of being placed slightly off-center. We also feel that the buttons and d-pad on the TZ30 are too small in general, and would have provided a better user experience if only they were larger. That said, there aren't too many buttons on the TZ30 to begin with, and we reckon you'd be using the touchscreen for most of the time.

The image stabilization does its job well enough that it’s possible to get non-blurry images at the longest end of the TZ30’s zoom range. Autofocus is very quick, and the TZ30 sports PASM modes which will appeal to those who prefer to experiment with aperture values and shutter speeds to get the perfect shot. While noise only starts to become obvious at ISO 400, things get downhill pretty fast from there. While there aren't a lot of dots and speckles at low ISO settings, we found the images to still be slightly soft. A possible explanation is that noise reduction is still being applied at this level. While this may be an issue for pixel peepers, we think most casual users won't even notice it. Another gripe we have is that the 460K-dot LCD screen isn't as sharp as we'd like - this becomes more apparent when we compared it to more recent compacts that are touting 610K-dot screens.

Overall, we have no qualms recommending the TZ30 as a travel companion. It's small, packed full of features (GPS, 10fps, 1080p video recording, etc.), and is yet fairly easy to use. Yes, it's photo quality could have been better, but it's on the whole good enough for the type of users this camera is targeted at.

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8.0
  • Performance 8
  • Design 7.5
  • Features 8
  • User-Friendliness 8
  • Value 8
The Good
20x Leica optical zoom lens
Good image stabilization performance even at telephoto end
Has PASM modes
Built-in GPS receiver
3-inch touchscreen
The Bad
LCD screen quality isn't the best
Images a bit soft even at low ISOs
Noise is a problem from ISO 400
Small buttons
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