Mardena Blog

So I finally broke down and bought the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 digital camera (like two months ago). I haven’t used a lot of digital cameras in my time, I’ve owned a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P52, Canon SD700 IS and Canon SD1100 and that is all. Sure I have used others but not long enough to compare the results of my newest addition, the Panasonic. Mostly I will be comparing it to my last Canon camera The SD700 as this camera was probably one of the best compacts I have ever used.
If the Canon was so good why didn’t I go with Canon again? I found that the canon line is getting way too confusing. It seems like they have taken all of their great features from one camera and broken each feature into it’s own separate camera. To top it off they seem to all be pushed out of China now. I think their build quality has gone down the tubes, sure they may still take a good picture but my expensive SD700 camera only lasted two years before it had a fatal lens error and my wife’s SD1100 only a year before the same error. Basically I am mad at them!

First Impression

First off lets get this clear, I’m definitely not a professional photographer, nor am I trying to be one. This review is only my, a casual photo takers, opinion with no outside influences. My first impression of the Panasonic are that it seems to be simple to use. You can pull it out of the box, set it to it’s intelligent auto setting and take some very nice pictures. However if you wish to do any somewhat manual setting, they seem to be buried deep in the menus. For the most part, I have found that the huge scene selection covers most of my needs, though I find it a little time consuming to pick out the correct setting which may just be a learning curve. For daylight pictures I find this camera creates nice pictures with great vibrant color but as for indoor pictures I find that it likes to use higher ISO setting which it is not so great at. Some pictures which I don’t think should be high ISO are taken at 640 or 800 ISO resulting in a grainy picture.

Some Photo Details

The 12 X optical zoom is great, but you really need a steady hand, which I don’t have. I do have a compact tripod that I use every now and then but I’m really not going to pull it out for every zoomed photo I take. Even though this camera has a great lens made by Leica, I find the camera processes the pictures poorly resulting in a great loss of detail. I find it very difficult to produce nice crisp pictures, even out doors at 80 ISO I still find that the pictures seem a bit noisy. I paid $350 for my camera and I just expected more crisp pictures. Now if you are using this camera to print off 4 x 6 photos, you should have no problem most of the time. However if you expect to be using it for anything bigger, don’t expect a great deal of detail. This camera seems to loose details even when the camera is focused on the object. I don’t know if it just me, because before I bought this camera I looked at numerous photos that were apparently taken from this model and they all looked fairly crisp, but when I take a picture I seem to loose the detail. I believe this is something that Panasonic cameras are known for and I somehow missed that memo before I bought mine.

Sample Photos

Indoor Photos

indoor photo, kitchen

indor photo, basement

indor photo, basement

indoor photo, dinning rm

indoor photo

outdoor, shade

outdoor

outdoor

outdoor

self portrait, me!

self portrait, Jeff

portrait

baby portrait mode

baby portrait mode

long exposure

macro, poor lighting

full zoom

pinhole mode

film grain mode

stretch mode

Stretch mode

Some Video Details

I really haven’t used the video feature all that much, but for a camera, it does take pretty damn good video. Of course if you are using the HD setting, It does take up quite a bit of space. For example, I took a small video of the Star Field I created in my bathroom to upload to this sight but found that 250M for a 1 minutes video was a little on the large side for web viewing. Of course you can take lower quality videos and of course it shows. This camera has no dedicated movie setting like on most digital cameras I’ve used. This camera has a separate REC button which you’d normally find on camcorders. You can press REC in any mode (I think) and it will record you a movie. The thing I don’t like about this is you have to set movie setting for each manual mode and auto mode (In manual mode you have slightly more settings to choose from). So if you are expecting movie settings that you set in the manual mode and you press record when you are in auto, you will end up with completely different results than expected, and you won’t realize this until you have downloaded the video to your computer and your small movie takes up half of your hard drive instead of the 10M you thought it would. Obviously this is a learning curve and you only do this once, or 10 times if you are like me.
I will update with a video I promise!

My Conclusion

Now that I own this camera, I don’t think I would actually recommend this camera to any of my friends. For the picture quality that you receive from this camera I find it to be a little on the costly side, most likely you are paying for the 12x optical lens and not so much the picture processing capabilities of this camera. I think now that it is out (wasn’t out when I bought the Panasonic) I would have opted for the Fujifilm F80EXR Which had all the features I wanted (apparently great at high ISO), HD (720p) video and a 10x zoom lens plus it’s about $100 cheaper. Had I waited a month I would have went for the Fuji.

With that said if you wish to purchase a lightly used Panasonic DMC-ZS3 camera, I’ll let it go for $299.

Links

My sample pictures from the DMC-ZS3.

Other Reviews of the DMC-ZS3

DigitalCameraReview.com <-- Wish I had seen this one earlier
DPReview.com <-- Review of super zoom cameras
Cnet.com <-- I didn't find this overly useful
DCResource.com <–Another positive review