Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(107)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

I bought this camera to go on safari because of the zoom, but it has exceeded all my expectations. Low light, dawn and dusk, from a moving vehicle, intelligent auto plus anti shake produced almost perfect pictures every time. What more could I ask? Brilliant.

This is not the smallest or lightest compact camera on the market but I could be so bold as to say it is possibly the best.

Look, all you need to know is that the leica lens performs very well and produces fantastic pictures everytime. Keep the dial on iA and this clever thing chooses the best settings. I bought a 6gb sdhc card which holds approx 1000 pictures. The battery charges in 90 mins and will take approx 300 pictures.

I have played about in ms mode with the panorama assist, its fantastic you can take full 360 panoramas and the software included (panorama maker 4) will stitch them together.

Great camera

Buy one

I recently decided that it was time to upgrade my old Olympus digital camera to a newer model. Although the Olympus had served me well (bought back in 2004 when 6mp was a rarity), it was starting to literally fray around the edges. After much reading around, I decided to go for this one and what a beauty it is too.

Initially I wasn't too sure as I like to have a little bit of manual control over my photography, but after taking a few shots this was a minimal concern. It really does take great quality photos. The wide-angle lens is a real bonus and I was really impressed with the low-light photography (my old Olympus didn't have OIS) - I took a photo of my garden at 10pm and you could see everything reasonabley clearly (impossible with my old camera). In short, I would seriously recommend this camera. I was tempted by the TZ7, but I think the only real difference is if you want HD video. I wasn't that bothered so went for the TZ6.

Oh yeah, and there were some comments re battery in earlier reviews - ignore them, my local indie camera shop sells them.

Although I've become more of a video photographer in recent years and therefore no longer use my bulky Pentax and Canon SLR cameras, my camcorder takes still pictures at only 2 megapixels. After a lot of research, I decided that the Lumix TZ6 was my best choice for a digital camera that I could stick in my pocket for better quality (10mp) stills.

So far, I've been delighted with its ease of use, its zoom (not as good as the 20x on my camcorder, but quick and more than adequate for improving the composition of pictures), and the screen that's easy to see even in bright sunlight. The controls are well designed and self-explanatory. It's a bit on the heavy side and not as small as some digital cameras, but it fits the bill and the Leica lens gives outstanding results. The mode selection dial is the only real annoyance as it moves off its setting very easily when you take the camera out of your pocket. The camera alerts you to this but you lose valuable seconds in taking the picture.

The battery life is relatively short if you use the zoom a lot (and because the lens is ultra-wide-angle, you will do), so be prepared for frequent re-charging. Better still, carry a fully-charged spare battery. However, herein lies a problem because you can't buy a Lumix battery for love nor money. I've searched high and low, and even waited a month after ordering one from a reputable supplier to no avail. It seems that Panasonic can't supply them, so - like me - you'll probably need to find a compatible battery (Inov8 make one - and they're a lot less expensive than a Lumix one would be anyway).

It always surprises me that cameras designed to be portable don't automatically come with something to carry them in. Although the lens of this camera is protected by its shutter device, it does need a case to protect its screen. Fortunately, you'll find (on eBay) a high quality, lookalike, hard Panasonic Lumix case for around £4, including p&p from Hong Kong!

Putting the battery problem to one side, this a super camera. Don't pay more than Amazon's own price though - their website suggests a third party supplier quoting £90 more than their's!

What a great camera! I was torn between this and the TZ7, but the only real difference between them is the TZ7 shoots video in HD and has an HDMI socket. I don't really need that so I saved those extra pennies and got a TZ6 instead! Glad I did, it shoots really great pictures, the intelligent auto mode is spookily accurate, and as for the lens, what can I say? Blown away I was! 12x optical zoom, super wide angle, great quality. Tons of 'manual' modes to choose from, simple menus, easy to use. Battery charges in about an hour and a half, and is good for around 80 shots in normal use. If you need a great compact, buy this!

This classy,light camera was recommended by a friend to replace my ageing Nikon Coolpix which was slow to 'reload' and difficult to focus. The Lumix is excellent - quick to reload,easy to use and ,with a 2GB SD card, has loads of memory for both stills and videos.The zoom/wide-angle lens gives plenty of scope to compose shots.As with most compact digital cameras, there's no viewfinder but, away from direct sun, the LCD monitor screen is perfectly clear. The pictures are amazingly 'shake-free', even in poor light, but a tweaking on Picasa 3 remedies any under-development.

Panasonic TZ6
Purchased for holiday to Baltics, as a keen amateur photographer wanted compact take anywhere point and shoot. Fantastic camera, in and out of my pocket everwhere I went. Took shots sailing from St Petersburg to Helsinki at 12.30am Sun never sets all night, red sky red/silver sea black silhouette of small yacht, going to blow them up for wall pictures quality amazing. Every setting needed for everyday photography catered for with the range of settings. Would have needed SLR to do the job a short while ago!!