Brukertest /Anmeldelse: Panasonic Lumix TZ70 (ZS50)

[EskeRahn]

Review, Panasonic Lumix TZ70 (ZS50 in the US)
Upgrade of TZ60 with larger/fewer pixels, RAW and better viewfinder, but removed GPS.

 
Excuse me for writing this in English here, but this will hopefully broaden the usability.

This post is likely to be enhanced/edited over the next days and weeks
Eske Rahn 2015-04-25

For an updated version of the below, see here : http://eskerahn.dk/wordpress/?p=23

Overall: Really satisfied. 5/5
The only real competition is the upcoming HX90V from Sony, that haven't got RAW, and have pixels as small as the TZ60

Overview
The TZ60 took much beating due to the small pixels, And Panasonic answered that by increasing the pixelsize by a factor 150%, and thus reducing the pixelcount by the same to 12MP.
This is an obvious upgrade from Fujifilm F900EXR, that are beaten or on par in all areas, less details.
See my review of the F900EXR here. On which this review to some extend will be based.
Practically the whole plus-list could be repeated, and most of the cons are not there!!
 
Rather than repeating what others have already written, that I agree upon, I recommend to start with this 6 page review here
Note that he done some user errors initially, that he bash the camera for, but retracts in part 6

The PROs
+ Very good signal to noise ratio in lo light for a superzoom. On par with F900EXR, and even better than my CX3, that was better than the F200 (http://www.diskusjon...owtopic=1245531)
+ The AF is SO SO much better than the F900EXR, TZ70 does better WITHOUT assist lamp, than F900EXR did with!!!
+ Reasonably fast camera. Not even using continuous mode but simply using the shutter, you can easily get 1.5 shots per second! (AF, good lighting)
+ 30x zoom in reasonable slim body. About 37.3mm (INcluding protruding parts to both sides, distance between two parallel plates), 34.4 mm for 95%
+ F3.3 at 24mm focal length (35mm eq.)
+ F6.4 at 720mm focal length (35mm eq.)
+ Panasonic have stepped back in the megapixel craze, and has given it 12Mpixels.
+ Active control rings, assignable.
+ Manual focus!
+ (S)hutter priority mode.
+ (A)perture priority mode. (IRIS, not just ND filters)
+ (M)anual control mode
+ Astonishing good image stabilizer. It is not hard to take non-blurred pictures at 1/4s and full 30x zoom, holding the camera at arm's length between two fingers and firing the shutter with a third!!!
+ Three axis Level indicator  (The CX3 only offered two)
+ Raw-file format offered
+ Really intuitive display of 'allowed' selections. Especially nice in A and S modes
+ Some functions can be assigned to two single one-click buttons fn1 & fn2
+ A bunch of features/filters/effects I haven't dug into, and most likely will never even try...
+ Reasonable sun light legibility of display
+ Viewfinder, with optional autoselect
+ Good non-slip grip
+ General feeling of good hardware, though the bottom feels thin.
+ Good one and two hand grip for non-flash-usage.
+ Metal tripod mount
+ Lens protection build in
+ Quiet zooming - close to noiseless
+ Zooming during video allowed, and done slower and even more quiet than when taking stills.
+ OIS during video also.
+ FullHD and HD 60fps or 25P video offered
+ SDXC supported
+ High speed videos with reduced resolution HD 100fps or VGA 200fps
+ The Macro offers down to 30mm wide motive, 1/3387"=7.5micrometer motive per pixel. Better than expected - though far from the CX3.
+ Decent moon pictures at 30x zoom. Even in automatic mode - though some EV needed since the .moon is currently a 'nail' only.
+ Re-pressing the shutter cancel a preview. So preview-ON does NOT slow down consecutive shots
+ four personal sets of settings can be saved for later usages. Last used setting remembered.
+ File-naming allows the usage of 6 digits, P###0###.*.
+ 24h setting, not only AM/PM
+ NFC for pairing with android device
 
 

The CONs, Software (Most are trifles. All easy to fix/improve)
- The Assist lamp, can not be kept off in IA / IA+ modes!!! At the least this should be an option in IA+ This bug leaves the fully automatic mode practically useless to my typical usage...
- It would be nice if the manual focus stopped at infinity(!) Currently we got "To infinity and beyond" from Toy Story
- It would be really nice if the large control ring reacted on the SPEED it was turned, so you could make coarse adjustments quickly, and fine adjustment slowly. It would make it MUCH better for MF.
- With all the controls this camera offers if wanted, it would be nice to allow the user to select the level of noise-reduction/sharpening. But as RAW is offered, this is not a huge issue, but a bit silly it has been omitted.
- The focal length are stored as integers in the metadata, giving several the same values, stupid, but very common, though decimals IS possible in standard EXIF.
- It is not stored in the EXIF what 'program' was used iA/P/A/S/M... I guess that is what the setting we see in Win8 as "Exposure program" is for.
- Six digits should suffice, but rather confusing with the forced zero in the middle of the filename: P###0###.*
- Even using the large control ring for zooming (I recommend that), it is still a bit hard to get a specific zoom, there are about 44 steps of zoom over the entire 30x range (54 on the 10.7x zoom CX3).
- The measured brightness are not stored in the exif-metadata, like the F900EXR did.

 
 
The CONs, Hardware (No show-stoppers. But would be nice to fix for next version)
- All the camera body's edges would benefit from being smoothed/slanted making it more pocketable
- The buffer for Continuous/Burst modes could have been larger.
- The tripod mount isn't centred, off by about 20mm, potentially blocking the battery/SDcard door.
- The battery/SD cover is locked by a tiny latch, I'm sure will be really hard to operate with cold fingers or gloves. To make it worse there is no spring, so you need to manually lock after close!!
- The eye-detector for automatic turning the viewfinder on/off is placed wrong, so might fail to detect the head due to false light, unless you use the left eye and squeeze the nose into the display...
- A touch screen is an elegant way to focus, this is allowed through WiFi and smartphone/tablet interface only.
- The USB-connector is an outdated type, only seen on cameras, please swirch to USB-C or at the least micro-USB, so standard cables could be used.
 

Details

No camera is perfect, but if you need a lot of zoom in a compact body and want RAW, I think this is the best you can get.
 
General notes on Compact SuperZoom Cameras
There are no free diners in the universe. This goes for Compact Superzoom Cameras (CSZCs) as well.
This means you will need to use a CSZCs a little different from what you are used to from other CCs.
Rather than cropping the taken image, you should generally try to zoom in and take another shot (where possible).

Here is the whys
It is (currently?) not possible to make a compact lens with a large zoom range, that also has a wide aperture.
And if the camera needs to stay reasonable small (less than about 35mm thick), it can (currently?) not be done with a large sensor area.
If you have a small aperture and a small sensor area, you can not have a large number of pixels, both due to Rayleigh diffraction and the signal/noise ratio in poor light.
And with a modest number of megapixels, you can not make extensive cropping (a.k.a. "digital zoom")


 
The TZ70 has a much more 'normal' Zoom versus Aperture than the F900EXR and the CX3&CX5

For all images in here, click to enlarge
But as can be seen, this means that the TZ70 has an Aperture that is inferior to the F900 by 3 to 12% at 450 to 500mm equivalent, Otherwise better or on par within 2%

The TZ70 offers a very neat way of displaying the selected settings, that will be familiar to traditional photographers. Here from the manual:

And also a nice pair of rings to select among 'allowed' values within the automation:

 
I can only recommend to set the large control ring to ZOOM, and NOT the MF as you might initially think.
There are two reasons for this
1) You get a much better control of the zoom-level, than with the standard +/- control.
2) The MF with the large control ring requires a really large number of turns, making it very impractical in usage. The small control ring works fine with this, as you can easily make multiple turns whit a finger.

So what is 30x zoom really? The 1/900th of an image is so much it is hard to grasp, but here is an example of a nearby scenery walking the dog.
Sorry diskusjon.no got a bug, not supporting the EXIF-rotation flag of uploaded files. The images are shown correctly if you click to enlarge.
[EXIF:  24mm.eq, F3.3, 1/250s, Iso80], [EXIF: 720mm.eq., F6.4, 1/125s, Iso80]

Note that it was quite windy (and slightly rainy), so it struggles a bit with the edges of the moving wings. (It was on automatic, I ought to have the shutter time down)
 
Here some examples from a rainy day in my garden. (Did not even notice the bird before after posting it)
[EXIF:  24mm.eq, F3.3, 1/100s, Iso80], [EXIF: 720mm.eq., F6.4, 1/60s, Iso400]

And with what looks like random beams of wood, is actually a simple way to keep the Automower out of some of the flowers.in the lawn.
[EXIF:  24mm.eq, F3.3, 1/60s, Iso80], [EXIF: 720mm.eq., F6.4 1/100s, Iso400]

As the motives are rather fixed, it would perhaps have been clever to select a lower iso.
 
A sunny day, with an aeroplane a little over 11Km away, almost straight up. Plus Info taken from flightradar24.com in collage with a crop:
[EXIF:  800mm.eq, F6.4, 1/250s, Iso80]

Approximately 6 pixels per metre motive.
 
Initial testing with some moon pictures. Automatic
[EXIF: 720mm.eq., F6.4 1/6s, Iso400]
crop:
-2EV
[EXIF: 720mm.eq., F6.4 1/25s, Iso800, -2EV]
crop:
Forced to faster shutter
[EXIF: 720mm.eq., F6.4 1/250s, Iso1600]
crop:
This should (of course) had been at a lower iso, and slower shutter. I'm sure I'll find the optimal before the full moon
 
Six days later, and a little more acquainted with the camera. On P automatic, but Spot AF and metering, plus manually -1EV. Much better result:
[EXIF: 720mm.eq., F6.4 1/80s, Iso80, -1EV]
crop:
 
And close to full moon. Original, Crop and after harsh contrast and sharpening of RAW
[EXIF: 720mm.eq., F6.4 1/160s, Iso80, -1EV]

 
Dog drinking water, four zooms:
(And no, the dog is not hunting the bird)
[EXIF: 24mm.eq., F3.3 1/125s, Iso80], [EXIF: 107mm.eq., F5.0 1/60s, Iso160]

 
[EXIF: 444mm.eq., F6.0 1/100s, Iso200], [EXIF: 720mm.eq.  F6.4 1/125s, Iso320]


 
Macro examples.
Note that best macro is NOT on full wide, both for Automatic and MF, zoom to first 2x (still says "0.03m to ∞" in range). There is a second stop also shown as 50mm, but it has a limit of 0.05m.
[EXIF: 47mm.eq., F4.0 1/80s, Iso80], [EXIF: 47mm.eq.  F8.0 1/60s, Iso320]

Note the difference between the two, the first in on automatic, the other I have used the Shift to get a minor Aperture, and thus larger DOF, more suitable for this motive.
 
Video example, and image during video
Here is an example of a video shot in fully automatic iA+, full wide, MP4 25fps https://www.youtube.com/embed/yeQKQpqbwQc?rel=0
You can take images during the video, and although they are almost as big as a nomal picture, they are not only in 16:9 (almost, lass 2 pixels, see below), but in a quite worse quality.
Compare these two, especially notice the foliage, I guess due to the narrow aperture used on the image during video.
[EXIF: 28mm.eq., F5.6 1/125s, Iso80], [EXIF: 25mm.eq.  F3.3 1/500s, Iso80]

So as can be seen, even in the 9MP mode, this function is not very good, you could (almost) just as well create it from the video (function build in during playback).
The quality is only slightly worse, and you don't risk shaking the camera or adding handling noise (and the images are ½MB not 4MB), But the EXIF is gone (except the time-stamp),
[EXIF: 28mm.eq., F5.6 1/125s, Iso80], [EXIF: **EMPTY**]

But as can be seen there IS a difference, the extract from the MP4 is slightly more bleak, and with slightly less details.
And there is a few extra pixels around the still in video (extra room for VIDEO-OIS I guess?), and a tiny vertical stretch of the video.
I did some extra tests on some technical paper, and stills as well as stills during video have correct 1:1 pixel aspect ratio, But inside the video the subject is stretched to 101% vertically, so normally not noticeable.
The images during video are for some odd (technical?) reasons saved two pixels short as 4000x2248, or 16:8.992 (16:9 would be 2250)
 
 
Battery
I took over 500 stills in Fine+Raw plus a short 1min FHD video, Quick-AF and OIS active and power save to 10 minutes, At least 30 power On/Off cycles and the battery still displays as "Full"... I practically never uses Flash nor AF-Assist-Lamp, so they where not active in this.
 
 
Remote control
The TZ70 can be remotely controlled by a phone/tablet through WiFi.
It is far from an ideal solution (and the software is a bit messy IMHO), but it offers some interesting functionality.
Primarily the ability to do touch-based AF-point selection, that is a really nice feature, that any modern camera ought to have build-in these days.
But could also be handy as a substitute for old days wired shutter release, for long exposures, where the self-timer might not catch the right moment, or 10 sec is too short.
 
It requires you to connect your phone/phablet to the camera (and thus disconnect any WiFi net you were using)
 
Password protection of the connection is offered, but they should have found a simpler and more elegant solution than the QR or manually entering currently offered.
As they default to password OFF anyway, it would have been SO much simpler to by a single tap by the user in the app using the unprotected connection send over an encrypted password, and then make the necessary changes on both sides, breaking the connection and reconnecting on the protected connection....
 
As a phone by default assumes it can access the internet over an established WiFi connection, you loose all internet access while connected, thus making the Help in the program unavailable(!)
Of course you can most likely change your phones settings to NOT use WiFi for internet while you control the camera, and then remember to switch back the setting afterwards.... That is very very far from ideal nor elegant...
 
 
FIRMWARE Suggestions

1) Allow AF assist OFF also in "IA+" (OK to still force it in "IA") - this is almost a bug, and not a suggestion...

2) Add a setting so when the AF fails, a single click on some key, could switch to MF-mode.
Yes you can access it thought the quick menu, but that could be extra clicks.

3) Clever usage of existing information.
 If I take a picture of something where the AF had worked just fine, and I then immediately zoom in, beyond what the AF can handle (e.g. poor light).
Then a very good guess would be that the focus distance is the same as the previous zoom. So a little simple calculus could come up with a good suggestion or starting point for MF.

4) The control ring is inactive in Playback - if zoom is selected in record-mode it feels natural to use it for zoom in playback
 
An utterly strange decision, that simply does not make sense in any way, stated in the user guide:
"When the power is supplied from an electrical outlet using the supplied AC adaptor, [Time Lapse Shot] is disabled"
This is EXACTLY the scenario when you would like to supply the camera when it is on ?!?!?!?
This ought to be fixed in a firmware upgrade....
 
I would have loved if all the automation had the logic sort of turned up side down.
Rather than "Automation limit options" why not turn it up side down to "My selections limits the available automation". If I INSISTS on some setting or other, let the automation try to make the best of it assisting me.
 
 
___________________________________________________________________________________________
 
This is beginning to take shape after some editing from the initial version. Though more might still come...

Endret 15. mai 2015 av EskeRahn

[EskeRahn]

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