Customer Reviews:
 Versatile, sophisticated, compact; but a few points to improve June 16, 2008
Zoom x10 with image stabilizer - great! (even x13.5 with 5M resolution)
Resolution 9M - sounds good, but quite meaningless with the noise level.
"Intelligent auto" mode actually works very good, saves much time.
Sound is noisy, maybe due to the upward location of the microphone.
Compactness makes a big difference, you just carry it with you any time.
Video size is huge due to the awkward MJPEG format, I convert to MPEG4.
Lack of reclining screen is quite inconvenient in difficult positions.
Overall, a great camera for any condition, just don't use high ISO values.
very pleased with the purchase June 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This camera shipped to me 24 hrs after buying it her on Amazon in perfect condition. I opened the box and immediately put the battery in the charger. After a day of fully reading the manual and having the camera right next to me to see what the manual was describing - I was ready to go. I've been out now shooting pictures with this camera for 3 straight weeks with my tripod and have had excellent results. I'm a tad bummed however that you cannot set the aperture when taking 15sec, 30sec or even 60sec exposures :( this means that you can only really take open exposures of night time scenarios. Also, the colors this camera captures are great for $300 - but nothing compared to an SLR so don't fool yourself. Lightweight, convenient, beautiful, and quick/responsive AND a FANTASTIC ZOOM is all I can really say for this 4 star camera. E N J O Y !
 Best camera I've owned June 15, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I'll keep it short.
I've gone through 5 digital cameras in as many years (Broken, lost, stolen, upgraded)
The only complaint I and many have about this camera is the auto-focus in movie mode. It constantly refocuses making for bad video, so my recomendation is to simply turn it off, then when ready to take a video, set the zoom to about where you want it and start recording. I've zoomed to about 30 feet away while shooting my kids, and they came up close to a foot or two and the video still looks pretty sharp. No problem!
Oh yeah I dropped the camera from about 4-5 feet a week after I got it and... nothing happened. Great.
Enjoy this camera.
Very good, but some minor flaws that keep it from great June 13, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I bought this camera a couple of months ago primarily because it was one of the very few still cameras that also recorded movies at 720p resolution. (A couple more have been released since.) My previous camera, a Fuji F700 had just died after a long and fruitful life and I was looking to upgrade. This camera seemed to be just the ticket. I wanted a camera with great stills, of course, but also good quality video, because I don't want to carry two pieces of equipment around. This camera delivers on both ends.
Let's start with the pros. The pictures are very good, I don't see any problems with them. The 3" screen is very sharp and really nice. The 10x zoom is terrific. The camera is a nice comfortable size.
Battery life is pretty amazing. Although I bought two backup batteries, I find that I don't have to use them at all. Also, the charger, with foldup electrical prongs, is tiny and does a great job recharging in 90 minutes or so. Easy enough to throw the charger in the suitcase as well.
The cons are not too bad, but annoying and simple to fix. After shooting a still picture, the camera, of course, shows you a still of what you've just shot. However, when you turn the camera sideways to shoot, say, a picture of the Eiffel Tower, the playback will flip the shot so that you don't have to turn the camera. Why have that gorgeous 3" screen if you're not going to use it? I'll readily admit this is a minor annoyance, to be sure. This is the default mode, and after some searching in the camera's memory, it can be changed to that the playback mode doesn't flip the picture.
When shooting video, the camera's default is to have continuous focus. Even if you're not moving the camera much, the camera will continue to go in and out of focus while shooting video, blurring everything. This is more annoying than the picture flip I mentioned. This is also correctable in the menu.
The third annoyance is the camera's memory reading ability. I have an 8 GB card, which is more than ample memory for anything. In fact, the camera can shoot about 33 minutes of video on the highest-quality setting - 720p, 30 frames/sec. However, when you go to shoot video, the camera only reads that there are 8 minutes and 30 seconds of video. This is no big deal; however, after you shoot, say, 1 minute of video, and the counter counts down to 7 minutes and thirty seconds, then you press the shutter release again to stop recording, the reading changes right back to 8 minutes and 30 seconds, the maximum amount of memory recognizable by the camera. This makes you think that the video didn't get saved.
This thinking that the video didn't get saved is reinforced when you go to play it back, leading to my final annoyance, the camera's integration with my Panasonic Viera plasma TV. I didn't buy a Panasonic camera for this purpose, but as long as I did, I figured, "what the hey?" The TV has an SD slot in back, so you can take your memory card out of the camera and stick it directly into the TV and have a slide show of your pictures. Sounds good, right? But it doesn't play back video through the card slot.
To play back the 720p video on the 720p plasma TV, you have to use cables, and connect it to one of the inputs. The problem with this is that the cables provided aren't even composite cables - they're the standard red, white, and yellow - and this degrades the video quality. This is just plain dumb, dumb, dumb. The only way you can look at the video in all its HQ glory is on your computer.
All in all, these are minor annoyances, I'll admit. But they do keep me from giving the camera a 5-star rating.
Perfect for what it is June 12, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
i have this camera 5 stars. not because i think it's the best camera around; it isn't. i have a Nikon D70 and it produces nicer images than the TZ5. you just aren't going to find a point and shoot that can produce what a nice DSLR can. with that out of the way, the TZ5 is terrific given its limitations. wide angel and 10x zoom AND HD video??? seriously, all of this for $269 or so. that's incredible.
i can fit this camera in my pocket, but it does bulge my pocket out enough that it looks awkward. i ended up ordering a lowepro 30 something or other that has a belt clip. but this is still 100 times more portable for every day use than my D70. we'll be off to Europe for a few months soon and i wanted something that could be out of the way until i need it and this TZ5 is the best camera i could find. i spent a lot of time viewing sample images, reading reviews and checking prices. i am very pleased with this purchase. i did buy a clear screen protector and i'd recommend that for anyone getting this camera (or any other camera with a big display on back).
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