Panasonic Lumix TZ6 Digital Camera - Black (10.1MP, 12x Optical Zoom) 2.7 inch LCD

This really is a classy little camera. Sleek looking, quality lens and plenty of features.

I normally take my photos on a digital SLR - which cost over 3 times the price of this little beauty, but I like to carry a camera around with me whenever possible (on a walking or bike trip) so lugging a huge SLR with all of its lenses isn't really feasible. OK so this Lumix isn't as versatile as an SLR - there are no out-and-out manual settings on it, but it does allow you to have some forms of override and its compactness, small weight and quality of lens make up for this.

The quality of the pictures I have taken on it so far - whether at 25mm or 300mm have been quite stunning. The full range of the zoom (12x) has been used to take photos of flora and fauna. If you WANT to you can even get it to zoom in further (up to 21.4 times - that's the equivalent of over 500mm lens - though the quality does suffer).

The Leica lens is really crisp for a small camera such as this. Just over 10mega-pixels may be less than some of its rivals but the quality of the lens shines through and is plenty for really crisp shots. I've taken pictures of architecture, landscape, animals, flowers and portraits of people and been mightily impressed with all of these.

The first setting on the dial is "Intelligent Auto" which allows the camera to decide the best aperture/shutter-speed combination for each shot. I've set this and been more than happy with the results.

For those who like to have a little more control - the "Normal Picture Mode" allows you to take pictures while customizing the settings. You can change a large number of settings here including the format of the picture - from 4:3 to 3:2 or even 16:9; the ISO, quality etc. White balance and extra stop exposures are also available.

The third style is "Scene mode" - this allows you to choose the normal types of modes - portrait, landscape, small tulip (!) etc - but there are a myriad of them here - 25 in fact! - including "baby", "pet", "candle light", "party", "sunset" and "fireworks". These might all sound like gimmicks but they do actually work - though I haven't yet had the time or the inclination to try each of the 25 options yet! The booklet gives adequate details of all of these 25 different scene modes. The "My Scene mode" basically allows you to save your favourite scene for future use.

It allows features like a "black and white" or "sepia" setting if you prefer to do your image manipulation in camera rather than with photo software.

The 2.7 inch LCD is also really clear - although as always don't allow the sun to creep over your shoulder or the image will be hard to see.

Its shutter speeds go from 1/2000ths of a second to 8 seconds but it also has a "starry sky" setting which allows you to take photos in the dead at night of all the stars and moon (up to a whole minute if its necessary!) Try it out for really good results (you may have to experiment a bit for the best exposure).

The auto focus also works a treat - the "face-recognition" technology appeared to work in all of the situations I trialled it through - whether the "guinea-pig"* was central or to one side of the shot - near or far away. Likewise the "Optical Image Stabiliser" appears to work to stop that irritating camera shake.

As usual there are a number of flash options: Auto, Auto-red-eye, forced flash on, forced flash on-red-eye, slow sync, red-eye, forced flash off. All functions of the flash worked fine for me - the red eye reduction worked a treat.

If you want to use it very often for its "motion picture" facilities I'd probably advise you to go for the TZ7 instead (which is almost £100 more expensive) or a model in another range of compacts. I'm not saying it's bad - it's good enough for the odd moving sequence but don't expect camcorder quality.

One final thing I liked about this camera is that the booklet is on paper - no having to download all of it from a cd. You can actually carry around the little booklet with you wherever you go. And 90% of it isn't in a numerous other languages - this is the English version. And amazingly - it's a very good booklet. I don't have anything bad to say about it at all - it tells you exactly what you need to know!

If you are looking for a small compact camera with a super quality lens which goes through the whole range of wide-angle and telephoto which you can rely on time after time to give you excellent shots and allows a little manipulation of the exposure, then this is the baby to buy.

* No guinea-pigs were harmed in the writing of this review...

This definately is the best compact camera I have ever used for a number of reasons. Can be used with an SDHC card and has a 25mm ultra wide angle lens.
It features a Leica lens which is capable of zooming 21 times - with most cameras this would be pointless because you'd get a blurred, useless image. The first time I zoomed to the max I was completely suprised when I looked back at the photo and saw it was in perfect focus. But obviously the quality is noticable when enlarged on a computer screen.

The Intelligent auto is a very innovative feature that is constantly adjusting to whatever you are pointing the camera at and making re adjustments in focus, choosing what scene mode would best fit the shot, compensating for any camera shake and deciding whether to turn the macro mode on depending on how close you are to the object. The only things you can change in iA mode is whether you want the auto flash or no flash at all, the self timer and a very good AF tracking feature, where you can lock it on a moving subject like a dog and keep it in focus till you are ready to take the shot.

The other options on the click wheel are a manual mode - where you can choose the exposure compensation, macro/macro zoom on or off, self timers and what kind of flash you want.

Also you can access a menu with more options than the iA one. Including the shutter speed you want (1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250), the picture size, quality and intelligent ISO on/off with the option on enabling or disabling the digital zoom. Also the standard options of black and white, sepia.

The MS option on the click wheel just uses your most used setting from the manual mode and is very good although I haven't used it much.

The SCN mode lets you choose up to 27 different scenes which is all you need from sunset to underwater and included a very good starry sky scene where you can choose to have the shutter speed 15, 30 or 50 seconds (obviously only works at night, the picture quality is astounding when set to over 30 secs and can pick up individual stars). The night portrait and night scenery modes are brilliant; you can just set the camera on a tripod, put it on a couple of seconds self timer and it will judge how much light is in the photo and change the shutter speed automatically, so far these speeds for me have ranged from 2 seconds to 7 seconds, you get great quality night time shots from this. Though because this is a 10 MP camera these won't be able to be blown up far beyond 4 times because while there is very little noise in smaller sized images, it grows the bigger you take the photo.
An important feature for me when buying a camera is the macro capabilities, this has a macro zoom and an af macro. The zoom is brilliant; you can get within a CM of your subject and still get focus from the zoom, although again the quality will suffer if the photos are enlarged by a large amount. I haven't come across a better macro feature in a compact yet. (At the time of this review).

I dont really use the clip board option on the wheel but it is very useful for taking pictures of time tables or maps and will always store them in a seperate folder in the internal memory. Haven't really found a use for it

The last option is the video mode which offers a very good quality picture and sound without the jumps or clicking sounds you sometimes get with older cameras, they say the sound is not as good as the TZ7 which features a bigger screen and HD quality vids (for lots more cash). But I did use this to record part of a gig with suprising results, I also recorded guitar ideas to then rip the audio so I was very suprised at how good the sound was.

Some people complain that the iA gets very annoying because you never really know what it's doing, I disagree because being a 'auto' feature it always is re-adjusting itself as you move the camera. Any auto focus camera will do this. It also has the basic manual options you will need, if you want a completely manual camera get an SLR or a different compact, The click wheel is very sturdy and can be moved while in a pocket, so just check the position before you turn on the camera. In no way is this a down feature.

All in all I think this is the best compact camera I have owned, the picture quality is top notch, with a very good macro and excellent Leica lens. This is a great camera for anyone really, but if you want one with more manual modes or a complete manual over ride I would get a high end compact or an SLR, but for what it is - essentially a point and shoot camera it's excellent, I've never seen the need to upgrade to any of the newer TZ series cameras.

I bought this to replace my Olympus C-765 Ultra Zoom, which had finally given up after nearly five years. At the time it had the longest fixed lens zoom available at 10x optical, and had a well built,traditional camera shape.
When I first received the Lumix I couldn't beleive how small and light it was in comparison, and with a 12x optical zoom too. (This will increase if you select a lower MP and there is also digital zoom).
At first I struggled getting decent pictures with it, due to shake and slow autofocus I'd always used the Olympus on a tripod, and although it has a thread on its base, the Lumix isn't really designed for this, and I soon found out after finally reading the manual that the different settings for autofocus, and anti-shake really make the tripod redundant.
The camera didn't come with a memory card, so initially I was using a micro-SD with adaptor, and the results weren't very good, but that has dramatically improved since buying a full Panasonic SD card. I also discovered that waiting for the green auto-focus dot and beep, by half depressing the shutter button makes a big difference too.
The camera has several different modes, and so far I've found that the iA setting with all options set to full auto, and the semi-manual setting are the two most useful. The camera also has a Scenes mode where you can choose a setting for over 25 specific events or scences, so if you take pictures at night or for sports events everything is set automatically to the optimum for the event - although I don't think the setting for Fireworks or Food will get too much use! You can also save one to My Scenes for ease of use.
The camera also has a video facility and will shoot video clips of up to 15 minutes.
There are a host of options this camera offers that I haven't used, and I expect most others won't either. The iA setting will do nearly everything required.
So in conclusion, and in comparison, the TZ6 is smaller, lighter and quicker than the C-765, has a bigger zoom, and takes much better photos.
However, I would say that it's not as well built, and also as others have mentioned the mode selection wheel is just too loose and prone to moving.
So on that basis I give it 4 stars.