Remarkable image quality for a pocket camera, March 24, 2011

I purchased the ZS8 as an “upgrade” to my ZS7. For my purposes, I wanted a decent quality pocketable camera with some reach. The ZS8 fits the prescription nicely. I wasn’t overly concerned with video performance as that’s something I rarely use, and neither was I too concerned about continuous frame rate. To meet the price point, the ZS8 video is “downgraded” from the ZS7′s full HD to 720p and it doesn’t share the blinding speed of it’s big brother ZS10 which uses a totally different MOS sensor versus the ZS8′s CCD. But the image quality is quite good and the zoom capability is remarkable for a pocket camera. So far, it is performing very well. One hint is that when you are shooting very fine detail in good light, you may wish to disable the iResolution. In regular use iResolution does improve the overall contrast, but at the expense of fine detail such as fine hairs or fibers things you’ll only notice at a 100% crop. The macro capability is astonishing on this camera. I’ve come to refer to it as my “pocket microscope”. All in all, I’m very pleased with operating performance and image quality.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comments (5)

]]> http://digitals-cameras.com/2011/06/05/panasonic-lumix-dmc-zs8-14-1-mp-digital-camera-with-16x-wide-angle-optical-image-stabilized-zoom-and-3-0-inch-lcd-black/comment-page-1/#comment-70 Captain Zoom Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:12:41 +0000 http://digitals-cameras.com/2011/06/05/panasonic-lumix-dmc-zs8-14-1-mp-digital-camera-with-16x-wide-angle-optical-image-stabilized-zoom-and-3-0-inch-lcd-black/#comment-70

I love this camera – it’s ACE !, April 14, 2011

For the majority of people looking for a “pocket” camera – they can stop looking. This will honestly do for pretty much everything you really need. It’s the newly released little brother to the more expensive ZS10/TZ20.

It is not perfect, of course, but even if you take a “money no object” approach to picking an upper premium compact camera – there is currently nothing on the market that is head and shoulders better than this – although there can always be a case made for different qualities.

Big Zoom – check

Good “glass” on the front – yep, Leica

Optical Image Stabilisation – uh huh, works quietly and efficiently in the background making your shots less blurry.

Good quality photos – sure – but with the caveat that a “full on” digital SLR will always do better. The photos come out are a nice colour (not too vivid – but also not too washed out) and they don’t come out a funny colour under artificial lighting (some cameras can struggle and give you a funny tint under striplights or old fashioned tungsten bulbs).

Noise levels – the “speckly” bits on photos that you sometimes get in dark conditions – is definitely there – especially at higher ISO’s – but you get this problem in dim lighting conditions even with all compact cameras to a greater or lesser degree. Even if you get an SLR camera – even up to a year or so ago – you’ll find that they aren’t infallible to this either.

HD Video – check, but in MPEG format. I think that this takes up more space than the newer AVCHD format on the SZ10/TZ18 – but I would be wary of getting a camera that uses this format if you have an older PC or laptop and especially if you have a netbook – in case the hardware can’t cope. I guess Windows XP/NT/2000 users should definitely be careful – and to a lesser extent even if you have a Windows Vista machines you might think twice – especially if you are on a laptop where the hardware will always be slower than the equivalent price PC.

I have a mixture of laptops and netbooks running Windows 7 through to XP so didn’t want to take the chance – especially as other family members and the kids will probably want to view some of the footage (family and my kids have the older machines whilst dad gets the upgrade LOL).

I do wonder if the AVCHD format on the more expensive ZS10/TZ20 is going to be a bit of an evolutionary dead end – just as BLU RAY hasn’t really taken off – even though it’s technically better than DVD – most people even if they have a big widescreen TV find that their DVD is fine (probably because the modern DVD players and TV’s will upscale the DVD resolution to give a semi-HD picture quality). The ZS10/TZ20 I think gives you the option to record in both (I think I read that somewhere but if this a deal breaker you should check to be sure).

If you only want a great point and shoot camera this is brilliant and has loads of options. Not only that but the options are really well laid out and easy to understand – by which I mean the dials and menus are set out in a common sense fashion and also instead of just little symbols/icons to indicate that you are in portrait mode or landscape mode – there is a little text underneath which tells you what it will do.

I’ve had a number of Nikon’s and Canon’s – and for some reason they can still make cameras with menus and buttons that were laid out by Martians – they can be so unintuitive even for people who are really experienced photographers – and you have to keep referring to the instruction book to work out what to press or what menu icon you are looking for – and even then it doesn’t stick in the memory because it’s all so counter-intuitive.

If you think you might – in a little while – like to step up in your photography later and get a bit more creative – or you are thinking of this a second camera to augment your SLR – then you’ll want to know that this has A LOT of manual control thrown in which is pretty unusual in the compact camera class and it has Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Full Manual modes which is quite a rarity in the pocket camera class.

If you are an experienced SLR user, I can tell you that the PASM options are pretty nicely implemented. Sensibly placed access buttons (the small round exposure button and Q Menu buttons to the right of the screen do this) and the menus are nicely set up to easily access the bits you want for Aperture / Shutter priority / full manual control. It’ll never be as good as your SLR but you can’t carry that around with you this easily and it won’t shoot HD video either (or probably not unless you have the latest generation).

The 16x optical zoom is class leading. You can get really good close ups if you want to.

You should only compare OPTICAL zoom when you are looking at different cameras and ignore the Panasonic advertising…

Read more

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comments (9)

]]>