12.1-megapixel resolution
25mm wide-angle Leica DC Vario-Elmar lens; 8x zoom, Power O.I.S.
Capture HD video at 1280x720, 30fps
2.7-inch TFT LCD screen
Capture images to SD/SDHC memory cards (not included)
This review is from: Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZR1 12.1MP Digital Camera with 8x POWER Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.7 inch LCD (Silver)I've purchased my Panasonic DMC-ZR1 still camera via Amazon just a few days ago because I needed an ultra-compact backup for may Nikon D90. When you travel there might be some situations when you are not in the mood or just can not use your DSLR. So I was looking for a small camera, which could produce high quality outdoor pictures and HD video. I'm an advanced amateur photographer. I take pictures mostly on weekends and vacations when I prefer to have in my pocket a small but sophisticated camera which I can forget about during the day but which can take great shots when it is needed. That is why my best cameras were Sony DSC-T1, T30, and recently - T100. The latter one was nominated as the best ultra-compact in 2007, and it indeed was. But time flies and a new 16:9 wide format came to still cameras and video, which T100 did not support. So about a year ago I purchased Panasonic DMC-TZ5 and a little bit later - FZ18. I bought FZ18 because of its incredibly bright 18x super zoom lens. I believe that each of above mentioned cameras was an absolute champion in their class at that time, but now I wanted something almost as good as that but in a small package. After doing a lot of research on Amazon.com and dpreview I've chosen ZR1. My first impression - it's a very good camera. I like a solid build quality of its metall body. There are no flimsy elements or grinding sounds while zooming or focussing. Zoom itself is very smooth both optically and mechanically. While taking stills it is very fast, however it has some inertia. While shooting video it's relatively slow, which allowes autofocus to do its job well. What I like very much about my Sony T100 - when shooting video of a moving subject the autofocus keeps it in focus all the time by doing a very small adjustments which you can hardly admit. Many other P&S cameras either do not allow zooming on video or hunting focus most of the time. That was the issue with the original TZ5, which was significantly improved in software update ver. 1.2. From my prospective the new ZR1 has as the same great autofocus mechanism as my T100 - when you follow a moving subject or apply zoom ZR1 keeps it in focus nicely (and without producing any noticeable sound). But when you do a panorama without a central moving object - do it slowly to allow the camera to decide, which next part of your picture should be in focus. On still pictures the autofocus is very quick and precise. The 8x zoom Leica lens is just great: very good colors fidelity, contrast, and color saturation in the entire zoom range from wide to tele. The wide 25mm (equivalent) is great, but it comes at some cost: for the distant subjects the barrel distortions and the decrease of sharpness of the peripheral areas are pretty visible, however when you shoot from a relatively close distance around 1.5-3 m it seems some special processing is involved because there is almost no any visible barrel distortions or loss of sharpness. I have to admit all three my Panasonic cameras behave the same way but for ZR1 it's more noticable because of its incredibly wide 25mm lens. If you apply a little bit zoom the resolution becomes pretty even accross the picture and with no barrel distortions. I did not perform any special stress testing but on all the pictures I've got I did not see any chromatic aberrations or vignetting in the entire zoom range. Physically you can zoom in the only 8x range but it is possible to increase it up to 15.6x for the lower 3MP picture resolution. Normally you might want that if you're taking pictures of some specific subjects like kids, birds, or animals. Just imagine - having 400mm equivalent telephoto lens in your pocket - it's just amazing, and IMHO those 3MP shots look pretty good on my 24" monitor (if you do not crop them more). A new ZR1 has the impressive 12MP comparing to 9MP of TZ5 but on the same sensor size, and as a result - more noise. On the [...]site you could read that Panasonic did a great job by separating the entire noise into its low-frequency and high-frequency wavebands and also splitting the color and luminance noise and handling them separately. My comparative edge-to-edge testing of both ZR1 and TZ5 shots showed that ZR1 does exactly what was stated and does it pretty good. On the ZR1 picturese taken at dim light conditions the noise was remarkable less than on the TZ5's ones! However at a very-very dark conditions when the pictures become very grainy you can see that the level of noise from ZR1 is somewhat bigger, than from TZ5. Another good news is that the white balance in ZR1 is almost perfect: the night pictures taken...
Detail Products
Detail Reviews
Click here for more information
»»»Visit Store NOW...
Best price click here