THE PANASONIC LUMIX TZ5 is a 9.1 megapixel compact camera. It has a Leica lens with 10x optical zoom which extends from the equivalent of 28mm (f3.3) to 280mm (f4.9). It has built-in image stabalisation and the light metering system features face recognition. It is amongst the first compact digital cameras that can record HD video.

First impressions - Beautiful with a great lens

The first thing you notice when you turn on this camera, is the lens, which is right and good and how it should be. Any camera is only as good as its lens, and Panasonic has pulled out a big stop by having this one designed by masters of lens design, Leica.

For a compact, the camera is quite big and chunky. It might not live happily in a small purse, and will certainly occupy most of a man's shirt pocket, but it is not too big to be carried around with you on a long daytrip, and the size makes it a little easier to hold than smaller cameras.

The camera is beautiful to look at, and a pleasure to hold. The overall design is clean and clear, and it has the minimum amount of buttons and dials. The LCD is large and at 3' in diameter, matches the best in the industry.

Who this camera is for:

This is not a camera aimed at the professional or serious amateur market. It is firmly aimed at those who want to take their best possible snaps with the least amount of effort. It has great intuitive metering, and will deliver acceptable results under quite challenging circumstances. It is a great camera to take travelling, and its feature set will satisfy the avid vagabond, but if you take your pictures seriously, and love to have control over the final product, then this is not the camera for you.

The lens - 10x optical zoom

This is our favorite feature of this camera. The big zoom range, from the equivalent of 28mm to 280mm means that you have everything from a wide-angle landscape lens to a telephoto wildlife lens in one. This is especially handy at the wide end, as it is wider than most compacts, meaning that you will be able to capture more of a scene in a confined space.

The lens was manufactured not by Panasonic, but by Leica. The optics deliver impressive results once in focus, but the lens is a little slow at finding focus. Zoom, however, is quick, and the speed of the zoom is adjustable. There is also a button which allows you to zoom all the way in or all the way out with a single click.

The built-in image stabalisation delivers nice and sharp results for unsteady hands. This is especially useful at the longer focal lengths and, to be honest, is crucial on this camera, as it is a bit fidgety to hold, and camera shake would easily have crept in otherwise.

The aperture, at f3.3 at the wide end and f4.9 at the long end, is quite impressive for a compact of its size, and it delivers bright results in relatively low light.

The lens comprises 11 elements in 9 groups, including an ED (extra-low dispersion) lens and 3 aspherical lenses.

Chromatic Aberation (where colors come into focus at different distances, leaving an ugly colored halo around the fringes of objects, and which is common amongst zoom lenses with a wide focal range) is almost absent.

The sensor - 9.1 megapixel CCD

Though the CCD sensor has 10.8 million pixels, it only uses 9.1 million of these. This is more than enough for general use, and is very close to the specification of some higher end DSLRs. It will allow the photographer to blow pictures up to A4, or even A3 size without too much loss of quality.

The ISO range runs from 100 up to 1600, extendable to 6400. This delivers good results in low light, though noise becomes a visible disturbance after about 800 ISO.

Metering System - Intelligent Auto

The aim of this camera is to allow you to take beautiful pictures with ease, and the auto exposure meter certainly allows for that. It features face recognition, and will adjust the exposure so that the faces in the screen will be correctly exposed and correctly focused. It can recognise up to 15 faces simultaneously.

It will adjust the aperture and shutter speed and also the ISO and flash power output, so that the lighting in the scene will be more balanced, delivering better results.

Another great feature, which is unique to Panasonic, as far as we are aware, is that it can locally increase the ISO sensitivity of the sensor. It brightens darkened areas by only increasing the ISO in that area. If the background of an indoor portrait receives insufficient lighting from a flash and becomes dark, the ISO sensitivity is raised in only the low-lit area to make the image brighter without causing graininess in the subject's face resulting in a well balanced picture.

When we first read about the exposure system, we were, to say the least, a little skeptical. We have heard such claims before.

But then we put it to the test, and boy, did it deliver! Forget about faces which are underexposed due to very strong backlighting, Forget about under saturated highlights, this camera, gets it spot on every time. We even tried to trick it, by intentionally photographing a landscape as a silhouette, thinking it would turn on the flash, but lo and behold, it gave us exactly what we asked for.

HD video - a world in high defitintion

This camera is capable of recording a full 15 minutes of HD quality video straight to the memory card. This is very impressive, and I even know some professional press photographers who have bought the camera especially for this feature, and have it mounted on top of their SLRs to record the news while they are photographing it. It is so good that I have seen large broadcast channels like Sky and the BBC use footage shot on the TZ5.

The microphone is disappointing, however, and the sound quality is sub-standard. The placement of the microphone is also awkward and is very easy to cover with wayward fingers, leaving you with virtually no sound at all. There is no facility for plugging in an external mic.

Focusing is another problem when recording video, as it is way too slow for regular use. The scene constantly comes into and then out off focus as the lens struggles to find something to lock on to. This can ruin otherwise good footage.

Panasonic TZ5 - Final Verdict

With all these features combined, you will be hard pressed to find a better quality compact with more desirable features for the casual traveler.

The 10x optical zoom will allow you to get pictures which would normally be well out of reach of compacts. On other brands you would have to buy a hybrid to get the same type of zooming power.

The HD video will also come in handy on travels, and the fact that the camera takes the widely available SD format memory cards means that you will be able to buy more cards in the most remote of places.

The battery life is a little disappointing, and under heavy use will need to be charged daily.

Overall, we like this camera and find the feature range impressive, you would be hard pressed to find similar capabilities in cameras of the same price. We would, however, have liked to see more facilities for manual override.