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

Product Information

The Lumix TZ90 / ZS70’s built-in flash is located on the front panel just above the grip – you need to take care not to obstruct it with your fingers. Its quoted maximum distance at the wide angle setting is 5.6m but in the absence of an ISO sensitivity setting or a Guide number that doesn’t mean a great deal. If, as is likely, it’s calculated at 1600, or worse, 3200 ISO that means it’ll be much more limited at lower ISO’s. At any rate, It’s useful for fill-flash and reasonably close subjects. It has Auto, Forced on, and Slow Sync modes, plus each of those three with a red-eye reduction option. Above left: Panasonic Lumix TZ90 / ZS70 4k video quality 100% crop. Above right: Panasonic Lumix TZ90 / ZS70 1080 video quality 100% crop. Fitted with a UHS Class 3 card and set to AFS, I fired-off 35 Large Fine JPEGs in High mode in 3.46 seconds before it began to stutter – a tad faster than 10fps. Set to RAW, I captured 12 frames in 1.18 seconds – again, just a bit faster than 10fps 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. It’s also worth noting that with the higher resolution 20 Megapixel sensor, the TZ90 /ZS70’s JPEG burst is 10 frames shorter than the 45 frames managed by the 18 Megapixel TZ80 / ZS60. At low ISO's and good even lighting agree that may not be significant difference with JPG vs RAW. But as lighting conditions become more adverse and ISO increased the clearer the benefits as to highlight/ shadow recovery and much better NR become.

On the top of the camera is a dial for choosing the exposure mode of the camera. Here you'll find P/A/S/M modes, as well as automatic, creative, scene, panoramic and a slot for a custom group of settings. Also on top of the camera is the shutter release, which is surrounded by the zoom switch. Zooming the lens to its full length is smooth and fluid, stopping for a brief pause before entering the digital zoom (if you have it switched on, and you're not shooting in raw format). Somewhere along the line that decision has been reversed, and as a result, it seems that image quality from the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ80 doesn't quite match the TZ70's high quality in some situations. In bright light, the TZ80 is very capable, but even at relatively low ISOs (such as 200), you can see image smoothing and loss of detail, which only gets worse the higher up the sensitivity scale you go. On the Lumix TZ80 / ZS60 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.

Conclusion

Plus of course there’s the lens ring and rear control wheel which can both also be reassigned. By default in Manual exposure mode the lens ring controls aperture and the rear dial controls shutter speed. In Aperture and shutter priority modes both controls adjust the same thing – either the aperture or shutter speed respectively and they both Program shift in P mode. As on the TZ100 / ZS100, it would be better if the controls that are redundant in some modes (i.e. PAS) were automatically reassigned, to exposure compensation for example. 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. Once your phone or tablet is connected to the TZ90 / ZS70, you can remote control it, browse the images direct from the memory card, copy them onto the handset and if desired send them onto various storage or sharing services. You can also set the app to make a GPS log for subsequent syncing and tagging, create a snap movie, or photo collage.

ZS50 for low lighting/ action shots?" HERE. Images posted are from RAW processed files, but also posted a couple out-of-camera JPG's to see the IQ differences between the RAW processed and JPG images. x 1080 pixels, 50p (FHD: 28Mbps / AVCHD) (Sensor Output is 50fps) (Dolby)/1920 x 1080 pixels, 50i (FHD: 24Mbps / AVCHD) (Sensor Output is 25fps) (Dolby)/1920 x 1080 pixels, 50i (FHD: 17Mbps / AVCHD) (Sensor Output is 50fps) (Dolby)/1920 x 1080 pixels, 50p (FHD: 28Mbps / MP4) (Sensor Output is 50fps) (AAC)/1920 x 1080 pixels, 25p (FHD: 20Mbps / MP4) (Sensor Output is 25fps) (AAC)/1280 x 720 pixels, 25p (HD: 10Mbps / MP4) (Sensor Output is 25fps) (AAC) 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.x 720 pixels, 25p (HD: MP4) (Sensor Output is 100fps)/640 x 480 pixels, 25p (VGA: MP4) (Sensor Output is 200fps) Axis HYBRID O.I.S. +*/* 5-Axis compensation works in video recording except for 4K video or high-speed video recording. I am very much just the family photographer and need a small compact for a family holiday to Disney World this summer. I really want to try to get off Auto mode and hope to go on a photography course next week to help with this. I have been looking at the TZ70 and TZ80 which are the sort of size I'm looking for. I'm trying to work out which would be best for me but I've spent so much time Googling that I now am completely confused. I shoot both RAW+ jpeg these days (thanks Jon) ...always have the RAW if needed...and SD cards are so cheap these days. The TZ80 has significantly better continuous shooting (burst) performance than the TZ70. So if you ever want to try your hand at snapping at few birds here and there on your travels the TZ80 is the clear choice.

Maybe, but is this image (from your JPEG) significantly different from your RAW file? There is some difference, to be sure, but is it significant? i also shoot raw plus jpg. if the jpg is fine, great. if the pic is one i really like but needs some help, the raw version is there for me to process. As before, Panasonic’s 4k Photo modes provide a fun way of exploiting the fact 4k video captures an 8 Megapixel image up to 30 times a second. 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. 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. 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 TZ80 / ZS60 does not offer CineLike profiles for later grading, but then I can’t imagine many people wanting this capability on this type of camera.

As you can see from the 100 percent crops below, with stabilisation enabled I was able to get shake-free shots with the TZ80 / ZS60 at shutter speeds down to 1/25 – nearly five stops slower than conventional wisdom dictates is safe. Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are a little soft at the default sharpening setting and benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. You can change the in-camera sharpening level via the Picture Adjust menu option.