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

Product Information

Honestly, prior to using this camera we kind of felt the same. The amount of time our DSLR spent out of the house was becoming less and less, we liked to share our experiences in real time and so more often than not, our phone (Iphone 6) was deemed sufficient. However, as the TZ80 has wifi we are able to take photos of a much higher quality and still have them on our phones and ready to share almost instantly. Fitted with a UHS-3 card and set to AFS, I fired-off 45 Large Fine JPEGs in High mode in 4.18 seconds before it began to stutter. This corresponds to a speed of 10.76fps. Set to RAW, I captured 13 frames in 1.23 seconds for a speed of 10.57fps before the camera stopped shooting. Both essentially confirm the top speed, but if you want to shoot a burst of longer than around a second you’ll need to make do with JPEGs. The Lumix TZ80 / ZS60 has 1080p HD movie modes at 25 and 50 frames per second in PAL regions and 30 and 60 fps in NTSC regions. It also supports 4k UHD video at 25 or 30fps along with Panasonic’s 4k Photo mode – a fun way of exploiting the fact 4k video captures an 8 Megapixel image up to 30 times a second. The clever part is 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. Gordon’s gone into more detail about 4K Photo in his Lumix GX8 review and I’ve demonstrated it later in the review, along with the Post Focus feature. There are 8 ISO settings available on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ80. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting. JPEG We initially used our spare SD card from another camera, a basic 8GB card that struggled to keep up with the demands of the camera. All this meant was that once the recording in 4K photo mode had finished, it sometimes took a while before the images had been processed and the camera was ready to be used again. This could obviously be a problem if the action was to start again and you were unable to capture it.

The flash settings on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ80 are Auto, Auto/Red-eye Reduction, Forced On, Slow Sync./Red-eye Reduction, Forced Off. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m. On the Lumix TZ90 / ZS70 you can record in PASM exposure modes, selected either from the video menu or by tapping the exposure mode icon in the top left of the screen when the mode dial is in the movie position. During recording you can change the exposure setting including, depending on the mode, aperture, shutter speed, ISO sensitivity and exposure compensation. While you can use the camera’s physical controls to alter the settings the touch screen provides a slide out panel allowing you to do so silently. You can also tap the screen to pull focus during recording, or of course use the lens control ring. There’s also focus peaking and zebra patterns to help with focus and exposure.This is more of a crop than you get with the TZ80 / ZS60 where, with the same lens but a lower resolution 18 Megapixel sensor, the equivalent range is cropped to 33-990mm. The Lumix TZ80 / ZS60 charges its battery in the camera via the standard USB port. An a/c adaptor and a USB cable are included in the box, though you can use any USB Micro B cable and any suitable power source, you can’t externally power the camera while shooting. If you switch the Lumix TZ80 / ZS60 on while it’s charging an alert that tells you ‘To begin charging turn the camera off’ is displayed. You can still shoot, but the battery won’t start charging until you turn the camera off. The PowerShot SX720 HS battery can be charged in-camera over a USB connection, or externally using the supplied AC unit. Another feature which has been carried over from the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ80's predecessor include the 0.2-inch 1160k-dot LVF (Live Viewfinder) with eye sensor. The TZ80 can shoot in raw format and includes manual and semi-automatic exposure modes. 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. Touch Shutter, Touch Pad AF, MF Assist, Touch MF Assist, AF+MF, Focus Peaking, One Shot AF (Set the Fn button in custom menu to AF-ON), Low Light AF, Starlight AF

What this doesn’t illustrate though is how useful the stabilisation is when composing with the TZ80 / ZS60 at maximum zoom. Even when using faster shutter speeds where stabilisation might not be necessary, the stabilisation keeps things nice and steady, allowing you to compose and frame your shot, something that’s almost impossibly difficult at full zoom without it. The shot of the Robin above, for example, could have been achieved without stabilisation at a much higher sensitivity setting than the 80 ISO that stabilisation made possible, but I doubt I would have been able to frame it up. I should point out that the Canon PowerShot SX720 HS also has very capable stabilisation plus it benefits from Canon’s Frame Assist feature which helps locate your subject and keep it in the frame when zoomed in. the ZS50 has less megapixels, which usually means - with small sensor cameras - less noise in lower light.

Specifications

is interesting on the TZ90 / ZS70 for several reasons. When I tested 4k quality on the Lumix TZ80 / ZS60, I discovered that while its 18 megapixel sensor produced a higher resolution image with larger detail in 4k video modes compared with 1080, there wasn’t any more detail in the higher resolution image, but there was more noise. With the resolution of the TZ90 / ZS70’s sensor increased from 18 to 20 Megapixels, you wouldn’t expect the results to be much different, but lets take a look. Quite a few of veteran PSE users process JPG images in PSE via the "Open in Camera RAW" option for a little extra highlight/ shadow recovery with ACR. 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. Maximum time to record motion pictures continuously with [AVCHD] in [FHD/50fps] is 29 minutes 59 seconds.

Starting recording 30 seconds after the camera is turned on. (When the optical image stabilizer function is set to [ON].) Above left: Panasonic Lumix TZ90 / ZS70 4k video coverage. Above right: Panasonic Lumix TZ90 / ZS70 1080 video coverage.

Product Images

F3.3 - 6.4 / Multistage Iris Diaphragm/(Still Image: F3.3 - 8.0 (W), F6.4 - 8.0 (T), Motion Picture: F3.3 - 8.0 (W), F6.4 - 8.0 (T)) Other video features include snap movie, which records a short clip of between two and eight seconds in length. With snap movies you can set up a focus pull in advance tapping the screen to define the start and end focus positions, which is pretty neat. You can also add a monochrome to colour fade in our out effect, as well as a simple exposure fade. There’s are also Time Lapse and Stop Motion modes, accessed through the main menus rather than the movie options. Panasonic recommends using a UHS-I Speed Class 3 (U3) SD card for the 100Mbit 4K UHD and High Speed Video modes and a Speed Class 4 card for everything else. Note the TZ90 / ZS70 does not offer CineLike profiles for later grading, but then I can’t imagine many people wanting this capability on this type of camera.