Resolutions

TZ3 sensor is unique because it is slightly larger in order to provide all three aspect ratios 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 without cropping the image horizontally or vertically. These are all resolutions available:

One thing related to smaller resoulutions is the Extra Zoom feature which is discussed bellow.

Lens

The lens is great. In my opinion all the image quality related problems come from the small sensor. There is no need of any additional tests since the reviewers have already tested all the things like distortion, vignetting, purple fringing and corner sharpness and the results are widely available. I can definitely say about it that the image quality is the same throughout all the range from 28mm to 280mm. The lens has exactly 37 steps while zooming. More detailed information about these steps is available in the table aperture table below.

Aperture

TZ3 offers two aperture values for each focal length. At 4.6mm they are F/3.3 and F/8.0. They quickly increase when zoomed and they get to F/4.3 and F/10 on 2x zoom. At 46mm they reach F/4.9 and F/11. The complete list can be seen bellow:

Possible shutter speeds

TZ3 uses shutter speeds between 8 sec and 1/2000 sec and also 15, 30 and 60 sec. in starry sky mode. They come in 1/3 steps and there are 3 series of shutter speeds:

Min. shutter speed.

Minimum shutter speed can be set from the menu to 1, 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8. There are only a few modes where a higher shutter speed is available. More information is available in the scene mode section.

Max. shutter speed

In general the wider aperture is used unless shutter speed of 1/1000 or 1/1300 sec is reached. That appears to be the maximum shutter speed for that aperture so instead of using faster shutter speed, TZ3 switches to smaller aperture and goes back to 1/200 or 1/250 sec shutter speed. Then the maximum shutter speed of 1/2000 sec. can be reached.

Auto ISO

When ISO is set to auto in normal or macro mode, ISO 100 is selected most of the time. More specifically it is selected until shutter speed reaches 1/30 sec. For the next 1/3 stop, TZ3 increases ISO to 125. Again for the next 1/3 stop we have another increase to ISO 160 and then to ISO 200. After that the shutter speed is decreased to 1/25 and so on until the selected limit (1, 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8 slow shutter in the menu) is reached.

i-ISO

i-ISO mode is not so different then auto ISO in normal mode as long as there is no jitter at all and no subject movement (at least my observations show this). If one of the conditions is broken, i-ISO mode behaviour is activated. When the shutter would be 1/125 or faster for an ISO 100 shot, there is no raise in the ISO. On the other end, the only way a shutter speed slower than 1/30 could be reached in i-ISO mode is when ISO value equals the max ISO value chosen in the menu. For the rest of the cases, TZ3 reacts pretty accurately and only in a few cases miscalculates the required ISO and a blurry shot may come out. Based on the jitter and subject speed, TZ3 tends to use shutter speeds of 1/30, 1/60 or 1/125 sec. Most common of these three speeds is 1/125 sec. and in fact this is one of the few ways at which images can be taken at ISO 1000!

Auto Bracketing

It's not a coincidence that this section comes exactly after i-ISO section. There is a reason for it. When normal and macro modes are used, auto bracketed images have the same properties like the base image and they only differ in shutter speed. ISO always stays the same. For example if auto bracketing is set to 2/3 and base image is shot at 1/30s, ISO 160, then the other two images are shot at 1/20s and 1/50 sec., both staying at ISO 160. This is the only way to get ISO 125 or 160 in combination with shutter speeds 1/15, 1/20, 1/25, 1/40, 1/50 and 1/60. The situation is different in i-ISO mode. For simplicty let's assume that shutter speed for the base image is 1/125. Then the overexposed image has the same ISO as the base image and only the shutter speed is slower - 1/100 for 1/3 bracketing, 1/80 for 2/3 and 1/60 for 1. The underexposed image is subject to a different treatment - for 1/3 and 2/3 bracketing and ISO 200 or more, ISO gets halved and the shutter speed is 1/80 and 1/100. For ISO 100, 125 and 160 the shutter speed is recalculated to get the correct exposure. For 1 bracketing and ISO 400 or more, ISO gets four times less and the shutter speed is 1/60. For ISO 100-320, again the shutter speed is recalculated to get the correct exposure.

Simple Mode

Simple mode is generally not interesting. In general, this is the same as i-ISO with max ISO set to 800 and most of the settings in the menus removed. The backlight compensation that can be selected with the up arrow is in fact nothing more than using +2/3 EV compensation (+1/3 EV for low light shots starting from ISO200@1/13sec shots.

Function Button

Before buying the camera, I read a lot of reviews where the func. button was mentioned. I was a bit curious what is so special with it. When I took my TZ3 I got the answer - the camera simply stores the last selected option and selected value from the menu and brings you back to it. This way you can take a series of photos using ISO 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1250 for less than 7-8 seconds which is great.

Extra Zoom

The EZ feature is pretty useless unless there is not enough storage space. What the camera makes is that it simply crops the sensor to it's middle part (the same can be done with a software). Well, almost. You get two benefits - exposure and focus is measured for the cropped area and you may get some better exposure and focus. The transition between max. resolution image capture and lower resolution one is made by adding 6 extra zoom steps. All three images sizes for each aspect ratio start at 1x zoom and use the whole sensor. Then on full resolution zooming one step increases the focal length from 4.6mm to 4.9mm and aperture from F/3.3 to F/3.4. For the lower resolutions there follow 6 steps which make the camera crop the sensor thus reaching a final zoom ratio of 1.3x or 1.5x depending on the resolution (5mp or 3mp). The seventh step for both resolutions is increasing the focal length to 4.9mm and aperture to F/3.4. For the rest of zoom steps, only optical zoom is applied. Unlike other cameras zooms (like Sony safety zoom), in the lowest resolutions 1600x1200, 1280x960 and 640x480, there is no additional benefit from the extra zoom and it is the same as the one of the 3mp resolution - 15x total zoom.

OIS modes

It is widely known what is the function of the two OIS modes. Mode 2 stabilizes only when the image is shot while Mode 1 stabilizes also when framing. Mode 2 is known to be better enough than Mode 1 and many people claim that they always stay at Mode 2. But in my opinion that's not always true. I went recently to a zoo and there were a lot of little animals and birds behind cages. I then switched to spot metering and zoomed to 10x or a little less. In Mode 2 I could not hold my hands so steady and I could not frame the targets very well. Most of the time when I tried to focus, the camera focused on the cages. Then I decided to try Mode 1 and I managed to focus correctly and took many successful shots.

OIS performance

OIS performance is really good. I have a lot of hand-held shots taken at 1/4, 1/8 and similar shutter speed that are not blurry at all. For faster shutter speed like 1/15 and 1/20 only a few shots of still subjects get blurred. Then at 1/30 and slower I don't remember a shot that is blurred unless the subject moved a lot.

Macro

TZ3 does not have a good macro distance. It focuses at 5cm distance wide and the distance increases to about 2m while zooming. There is a little "island" at 9.5x zoom which allows taking good tele-macro shots. The weird thing here is that a telemacro icon appears on the LCD screen only when the camera is zoomed at maximum zoom level but in fact it's not as good as at 9.5x zoom. This topic is widely discussed in the dpreview forum here: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1033&message=23780522&changemode=1 so I won't go that deep here. One thing that is worth mentioning is that all dial modes and all scene modes either allow macro focusing or don't. This is described in the features table but there is also an easy way to check - zoom to 10x and if the telemacro icon is shown, then the mode supports macro focusing.

Image Quality

One of the things that I am not totally happy with is the image quality. It is mentioned in all the reviews - high noise levels and a heavy noise reduction. I will try to have a different point of view. All I can say about outdoor pictures is that the images are a little soft but 80% resize makes them look perfect enough for the computer monitor. I have not printed any photos yet but I am pretty sure they will look just fine. Higher ISO images look not that good but I think that outdoor pictures at ISO 400 look good enough. Indoor and low-light pictures are known to be quite noisy. I don't want to go against the obvious. I will just say that they could be good enough for any non-professional photographer.

ISO and flash

The paragraph bellow holds for a flash modes except the Slow-Synch mode. When flash is used and the ISO is not explicitly specified, TZ3 chooses ISO from all the values in the 100-640 range - 100, 125, 160, 200, 250, 320, 400, 500 and 640. The only exception is in i-ISO mode when max ISO is set to 400 and then obviously 500 and 640 are omitted. Shutter speed is usually 1/30sec and cannot be slower but only faster when there is enough light. Unlike many others, I am pretty happy with my flash pictures since I always leave ISO set to auto. The manual describes the maximum distances for the flash shots very well. It generally decides what ISO to be used according to the focus distance. Here comes a little trick in help - in order to keep ISO a bit lower, focus on a closer subject. The distance limits are 1.6m for ISO 100, 2.3m - 200, 3.3m - 400, 4.7 - 800 and 4.2 - auto (which is actually for ISO 640). Although not mentioned, there are also maximum distances for the intermediate ISO values and TZ3 chooses the one that corresponds to the focused subject distance. The information above is correct when pictures are taken at 4.6mm focal length and F/3.3 aperture. A little correction is required when focal length is increased and since aperture decreases, the incoming light decreases. For example if TZ3 calculates that it will use ISO 160 at 4.6mm, then usually it uses 320 at 46mm and all the values 160, 200, 250 and 320 for the intermediate zoom steps. It's not surprising that image quality of pictures taken with a flash falls when ISO is higher and the conclusion that comes is that if you can come closer to the subject, just do it in order to guarantee a lower ISO.

Colour modes

There are three colour modes - standard, natural and vivid. They mostly affect sharpness, saturation. I think the mode that is used is mostly based on the personal preferences of the photographer. From what I read people like standard mode, lots are happy with vivid mode and only a few prefer the natural mode. My personal choice here is vivid, mainly because of the sharpness.

Focusing modes

TZ3 offers a variety of focusing modes. I won't go in detail for all of them since they all have their usage. The only thing I will mention is that the two high speed modes freeze the LCD image and it may be more difficult to make an exact framing in that case. Otherwise, the focus speed benefit is good enough.

LCD

LCD is large enough and the additional modes for high angle and bright screen work well. Most of the view modes are useful and have their usage.

Battery life

Battery life is satisfactory. I didn't like that TZ3 does not use AA batteries since I have 8 rechargeable from my previous cameras but the Li-Ion battery works well and charges quickly. Battery life indicator is accurate and the only problem is that it stays quite a long time on the last state and I cannot be sure how many pictures approximately I will be able to make before it is exhausted.

Scene modes

Number of scene modes became a good selling point recently and usually there are a lot of scene modes that are not useful. TZ3 has 20 scene modes (21 if we count baby 1 and baby 2 as different modes). Most of their features are shown in table at the bottom of the page. Some of them like beach, snow, aerial and underwater, candlelight, food, soft skin have limited usage while others like night scenery, baby and high sensitivity are useful enough. Of course, every photographer has its own preferences but some of them offer really nice features. For example, pet scene mode is nothing more but i-ISO with max ISO set to 400 and two disabled menu options - colour and metering mode. Unlike pet mode, night scenery is one of the few modes that allow shutter speeds longer than 1 sec. Starry sky mode is also unique thanks to the 15, 30 and 60 sec. exposures available. Fireworks mode gives a lot of control to the photographer about selecting shutter speed and aperture - the only other way to get a smaller aperture is when fireworks scene mode is used and OIS is set to off. This mode offers fixed shutter speeds between 1/2 and 8 sec selectable through the exposure compensation setting. This mode can be also used when OIS is on and no jitter is detected. Otherwise shutter speed range is reduced to 1/16 - 1 sec and aperture gets wide open. High sensitivity mode is not that crap as it is mentioned in all the reviews. For example, I had some nice shots in the bowling hall and I was able to capture the pins in the moment when they are hit by the bowl and the image is sharp enough. Yes, the noise is extremely high and the images need post-processing in order to look better. Another option for them is to get them resized to about 3mp. Some people find underwater mode useful because there is an exposure lock button which is not available in any other mode.

Burst

TODO

Other

- Unfortunately, file transfer is annoyingly slow and a faster card reader may be quite useful.

Features table