Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZR3 – Compact Camera with Flexible Lens

Thumbs Up:

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZR3 is a camera with great feature set, simple design and user-friendly interface.

Thumbs Down:

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZR3’s AVCHD Lite video and 14 megapixel resolution looks needless; the camera also doesn’t have any controls for shutter and aperture release.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Manufacturer: Panasonic

Part Number: DMC-ZR3R

Price: $231.88 – $299.97

Product Type: Compact Digital camera

Weight: 4.8 oz

Dimensions (W x D x H) in inches: 3.9 x 1 x 2.2 inches

Shooting Modes: Frame movie mode

White Balance Presets: Shade, Daylight, Cloudy and Halogen

Exposure Modes: Automatic & Program

Software: Adobe Reader, Panasonic PHOTOfunSTUDIO 5.0, Apple QuickTime, and Drivers & Utilities

Cables Included: USB cable & A/V cable

Connector Type: USB, Composite audio/video output and HDMI output

Additional Features: DPOF support , Audio recording , Face detection , Direct print , Built-in speaker , Histogram display , Face Recognition , Exif Print support , Resizing an image , Cropping an image , PictBridge support , Backlight compensation , Built-in help guide , 720p HD movie recording , USB 2.0 compatibility , In-camera red-eye removal , RGB primary color filter , Digital image rotation , Camera orientation detection and Intelligent Scene Selector

Shooting Programs: Pet , Snow , Food , Baby2 , Pin hole , Baby1 , Candle , Beach , Scenery , Sunset , Soft skin , Starry sky , Fireworks , Film grain , Transform , Underwater , Night scene , Flash-burst , Sports mode , Photo frame , High dynamic , Aerial photo , Portrait mode , Party/indoor , Hi-speed burst , Self-portrait , Panorama assist , Night portrait and High sensitivity

Focus Adjustment: Automatic

Features: Aspherical lens & Built-in lens shield

Included Accessories: Hand strap& Battery case

Supported Battery: Li-ion rechargeable battery – 895 mAh

Razzle Dazzle:

Considering the specifications of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZR3, it’s quite a compact camera. In terms of looks and feel, the camera is pretty great. The camera has a subtle design, which clearly won’t make it a clear head turner, but still you can get it in a wide range of colors to at least differentiate it from others. It’s available in a wide range of colors: silver, red, blue and black. The camera has a decent curled right side, which provides a satisfactory grip on the camera, and makes it easy to operate it with one hand. The ZR3 also has Panasonic’s high-end image stabilization and the Power O.I.S., the doubles the repressing power of Panasonic’s previous MEGA O.I.S. system. The ZR3 performed exceedingly well in our performance test, even when we kept the zoo lens in use. The same is also available for still and movies.

Inside Dope:

Panasonic continues its dominance in delivering compact cameras having flexible lens with its all new Lumix DMC-ZR3. The Lumix DMC-ZR3 comes with a 25mm-equivalent wide-angle lens and an 8x optical zoom lens, apart from all this the camera gets a body that’s hardly an inch thick. The ZR3’s lens is the same that Panasonic’s ZR1 had; in point of fact both the cameras are almost identical. The Lumix ZR3 has around 14 megapixel camera, instead of the 12 megapixel and it now can also capture the video in AVCHD Lite format.

There are some other feature enhancements here as well, but primarily there are only two major upgrades, and both of which according to us are needless. On a whole the ZR3 is a decent point-to-shoot camera and offers comparatively great image quality. The control panel for the camera is rather simple and easy enough to be understood by the out of the box users.

The top floor of the camera houses a silver plastic Mode dial, which allows you to easily slip in between the shooting options naturally. As a matter of fact the operation was so smooth that you have to resent that thing every time you take the camera in and out of the pocket. The camera shutter release and the zoom ring are somewhat distantly placed and hence it will take quite a reach to operate them, and can be immensely troublesome for some users. The rest of the controls for the camera are to be found on the rear end and are logically arranged and are rather easy to operate.  The camera switch is used for turning the camera power on and for capturing the playback, the decent size of the control will make it easy to operate it without even looking at it. There also is a movie record button placed on the rear end of the camera allowing you to capture the clips quickly.

Just as the controls the menu system for the camera are also rather simple. Positioned on the rear end of the camera is a Quick Menu button (Q.Menu), which brings up the straight up bar, which further can be used for shooting-mode-sensitive options. There also is a navigational pad with a general menu button in the center. The four buttons doubles an exposure, flash, macro and timer controls. The memory card compartment and battery is positioned behind a locking door.

In terms of performance, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZR3 surely was not the fastest kid on the block, but still was satisfactory. But anyways, we don’t expect the compact megazooms to be faster either, but still the camera impressed us with its speed of 1.4 seconds for its first system. The camera has shutter lag of 0.5 seconds in decent lighting conditions, while the same becomes 0.7 seconds in dim lighting. The camera makes use of Panasonic’s pre-focus Quick AF in iA mode which improves the performance a little, but we found that the results can easily be contradictory and at the same time it eats up the battery life. The time taken for two consecutive shots is a bit slow at 2.1 seconds without flash, while with flash it becomes 5 seconds.

The photo quality here is just similar to the quality offered by an average camera phone and is satisfactory for web use, without cropping. On a whole the photo quality for Lumix DMC-ZR3 is rather decent for a compact camera.

Nitty Gritty:

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZR3 is a decent compact camera offering satisfactory automatic shooting results. The camera comes with a flexible lens in its actually compact body.