Panasonic LUMIX DMC-TZ80EB-K Super Zoom Camera - Black

Product Information

Maximum time to record High Speed motion pictures continuously with [MP4] in [VGA] is 3 minutes 44 seconds. Shooting moving subjects with the focus mode set to continuous is a bit more of a hit and miss affair though. I found the best results were achieved with the TZ80 / ZS80 set to 49 Area AF mode using the central AF area grouping. In good light the TZ80 / ZS60’s contrast detect system, aided by Depth from Defocus, can acquire and maintain focus on a moderately paced subject moving towards the camera with a better than 50% success rate. Once the light starts to fade, however, it becomes much less reliable. And you can expect the hit rate to fall pretty dramatically with faster moving and less predictable subjects like animals or football players. So to help you manage those expectations, the long zoom may let you get closer to wildlife or sports subjects, but may struggle to keep them in focus if they’re moving, especially in lower light.

Most of the time, the camera's all-purpose metering system does a good job of accurately assessing the scene to produce balanced exposures. Automatic white balance also copes well most of the time, but it can be a little thrown by mixed lighting situations (for instance, an illuminated room which also has some natural light coming in from a window). In these cases, it's best to switch to a specific white balance setting, such as Fluorescent. Moving on, the Lumix TZ90 / ZS70 records 1080p at up to 28Mbit/s in AVCHD or MP4 modes. In addition to 1080p50/60, the MP4 modes are 1080p25/30 and 720p25/30. The earlier 640x480p25/30 modes are no longer available. Here's an example. Tried to get the milky flowing water effect, by lowering shutter speeds...my ZS60 has no ND filter...so overblown highlights are the result: So what does a range of 24-720mm let you capture? Above are two photos taken from the same position with the TZ80 / ZS60 using each end of the zoom range, illustrating the range at your disposal – at one moment capturing a wide field before getting very close to distant details the next. It’s extremely flexible, and while you need to take care for camera shake at the long end, especially with the much reduced aperture, the stabilisation is excellent and there’s the option to use the viewfinder for even greater stability. Yes, this is frequently said. But remember, it's possible to process JPEGs also. It is a rare photo on a small sensor camera where adjusting the JPEG is significantly inferior to adjusting a RAW. ..Use a card with SD Speed Class with "UHS-I Speed Class 3 (U3)" when recording motion pictures with [MP4] in [4K] or [4K PHOTO].

The remote control feature shows a live image on your phone or tablet’s screen allowing you to take a photo or start or stop a video recording. If the camera’s mode dial is set to Aperture or Shutter Priority, you can remotely adjust the aperture or shutter speed respectively, and in Manual you can change both. You can drag the AF area to position it just as you would on the camera screen; at least you can if the AF mode is set to Pinpoint or 1-Area. It’s not possible to position the Custom Multi AF area group using your phone – you have to do that on the camera screen, however, this is minor omission in what is otherwise a very feature-rich app. As before, Panasonic’s 4k Photo modes provide a fun way of exploiting the fact 4k video captures an 8 Megapixel image up to 30 times a second. Panasonic equips its 4k Photo cameras with menus that let you easily capture bursts of video before scrolling through the footage and extracting the perfect frame as a JPEG image, all in-camera. You could of course frame grab from video externally, but Panasonic has made it easy to perform the whole process in-camera. As dog owners we’re always trying to capture images of our puppy (you’ll either completely relate to this or see us as those annoying people always taking pictures of their dog). Usually, we are only able to get pictures of Lola while she is either sleeping or on the verge of dropping off, this isn’t the dog that we’re used to though and we’re always trying to capture the chaos and excitement we deal with for most of the day. The TZ90 / ZS70 also includes Panoramic Shooting mode which takes a sequence of shots as you rotate the camera to capture a panoramic scene and then assembles them in-camera to a single image. You can hold the camera in portrait or landscape mode, you have to specify which in advance. There are two modes – Standard, which records about 180 degrees and Wide which will do a complete 360 degrees. If you’re a little uneven, or the subject makes it difficult to record overlapping images it will stop part way through and produce a panorama from what it has managed to capture – or you can press the shutter a second time to finish at a particular point. In Wide mode with the camera in landscape orientation the finished panorama measures 7952 x 960 pixels. All in all it’s very simple to use and produces very good results.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ80 review – Introduction

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ80 offers a Macro setting that allows you to focus on a subject that is 3cms away from the camera when the lens is set to wide-angle. The first image shows how close you can get to the subject (in this case a compact flash card). The second image is a 100% crop. Maximum time to record motion pictures continuously with [AVCHD] in [FHD/50fps] is 29 minutes 59 seconds.