Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 – Powerful GPS and mega-zoom lens

Thumbs Up:

Numerous features; semi-manual plus manual controls; inbuilt GPS.

Thumbs Down:

Poor photo quality in low-light.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 is 12-megapixel digital camera that has CCD optical sensor of 14,500,000 pixels resolution. Effective sensor resolution is 12,100,000 pixels. The ZS7 offers 4x digital zoom, frame movie shooting mode, face detection and POWER O.I.S. Optical Image Stabilizer. Maximum shutter speed is 1/2000 second and minimum is 60 seconds. The digital camera has 15MB internal memory and SD memory card slot.

Exposure compensation is ±2EV range in 1/3 EV steps and auto-exposure bracketing is 3 steps in 1/3, 2/1 or 1 EV steps. The Exposure metering is of three types: Center-weighed, Multi-segment and Spot. Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 offers five exposure modes: Aperture-Priority, Shutter-priority, Automatic, Program and Manual.

3 inches LCD display of Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 is based on TFT active matrix technology. It has 460,000 pixels resolution. The ZS7 has inbuilt stereo microphone with wind-noise reduction. It also has inbuilt voice recorder and digital player.

Zoom lens is manufactured by Leica and is aspherical in nature. It has focal length of 4.1-49.2mm that features 12x optical zoom. The lens aperture is f/3.3-6.3 for Wide and f/4.9-6.3 for Tele. Focal length equivalent to 35mm camera is 25-300mm.  Minimum focus range is 19.7 inches and macro is 3cm. Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 has TTL contrast detection auto focus, 11 auto focus points, ED glass and inbuilt lens shield. Zoom adjustment is motorized drive and focus adjustment is automatic.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 has inbuilt flash that has range from 2ft to 17.4 ft and features AF illuminator. The flash modes include Red-eye reduction, Flash OFF mode, Slow synchro, Fill-in mode and Auto-mode. The still image format is JPEG and digital video format is AVCHD Lite and QuickTime. The video capture resolution options are QuickTime – 320×240, QuickTime – 640×480, QuickTime – 848×480 and AVCHD Lite – 1280×720.

The image storage resolution options are JPEG 640×360, JPEG 640×424, JPEG 640×480, JPEG 1920×1080, JPEG 2048×1360, JPEG 2656×1768, JPEG 2784×1568, JPEG 3552×200, JPEG 4320×2432, JPEG 3392×2264, JPEG 4176×2784, JPEG 2048×1536, JPEG 2560×1920, JPEG 3264×2448, Standard JPEG 4000×3000 and Fine.

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

Special effects are Black & White, Natural, Vivid, Sepia, Happy, Warm and Cool. Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 has three white-balance types: Automatic, Presets and Custom. The white-balance presets include Daylight, Halogen, Cloudy and Shade.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 has self-timer delay function of 2 seconds and 10 seconds. The additional features are Dolby Digital AC-3 (2 channel recording), Intelligent Resolution Technology, Camera orientation detection, Intelligent Scene Selector, In-camera red-eye removal, RGB primary color filter, Digital noise reduction, 720p HD movie recording, Backlight compensation, USB 2.0 compatibility, Inbuilt help-guide, Saturation control, PictBridge support, Exif Print support, Sharpness control, Resizing an image, Histogram display, Cropping an image, Face Recognition, Contrast control, Inbuilt speaker, Audio recording, Face detection, Direct print, DPOF support and inbuilt GPS.

Software included inside the included disc are Panasonic PHOTOfunSTUDIO 5.1 HD Edition, Drivers & Utilities, Apple QuickTime and Adobe Reader. Panasonic Lumix DMX-ZS7 has 895mAH lithium ion battery and three connectors: 1×HDMI output, 1×composite video/audio output and 1×USB.

Razzle Dazzle:

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 is 2.4 inches tall, 4.1 inches wide and 1.3 inches deep and it weighs 6.9 ounces. Its design is quite similar to its predecessor – Panasonic Lumix ZS3. Moreover, the size and weight are approximately identical. The ZS7 is available in red, silver and black colors. Our test model had red color. It feels solid while taking in hand and provides comfortable grip at its right side.

Inside Dope:

Panasonic is one of the famous camera/camcorder manufacturers, especially renowned for implementing first-rate mega-zoom lens in compact digital cameras. Now, it has launched new product – Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 with 12x optical zoom. The DMC-ZS7 succeeds its predecessor the Lumix DMC-ZS3 by two features: integrated GPS, and manual plus semi-manual shooting modes. It also offers complete set of photo enhancement settings and good number of HD video options. The Lumix DMC-ZS7 has a price tag of $399.95. Its picture quality is not the best above ISO 400; still enough satisfactory for persons who do not want to use professional digital SLR cameras.

3 inches LCD display of Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 reflects in direct sunlight. The total resolution of the camera’s sensor is 14-megapixel, but the ZS7 only uses 12-megapixel. It provides three aspect ratios – 4:3, 3:2 and 16:2 with same view-angle across full zoom range of lens.

Power switch, shutter release with zoom ring, and mode dial are located on the top. You will find Q.Menu button, Display button, four navigation buttons, start/stop movie recording button, exposure button and switch for playback/shooting. Exposure button allows changing the aperture and shutter speed. Navigation buttons lets you move through settings and menus and toggling between self-timer, macro, flash and exposure compensation options. The Display button can be use to change amount of setting information as viewed on the LCD screen.

Panasonic has also added its Q.Menu button that displays a bar consisting of common settings including white balance, auto-focus modes, movie and photo resolutions and ISO levels. The Menu/Set button is located in the middle of navigation buttons and it displays the main menu. Menus are large enough for easy to go through individual tabs for video, still capture and general settings.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 has inbuilt GPS, which is main attraction. You have to read the user manual thoroughly for its efficient usage. Travel Mode tab inside main menu lets you to access all GPS features. You can also set the digital camera to retrieve and display the information of current location. While testing, the inbuilt GPS was quick enough to retrieve the location outside under the sky, but took few minutes inside the building. Once locked, Lumix DMC-ZS7 displays landmark, city, state and country information and updates it automatically every minute. After that, you can go to GPS Area Select menu options to pick correct information about current location.

You can also limit the attached area information. The area information of GPS contains 173 regions or countries around the world plus more than half million landmarks in 73 countries/regions. Longitude and latitude can be added seamlessly to EXIF data, which allows you to add landmarks, state, city and country. In addition, the inbuilt GPS will automatically update time across all time zones. If you used to travel across the world or inside the country, then Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 with powerful GPS will be the best digital camera for you.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 also has one option for recording AVCHD Lite videos with GPS information. It is important to mention here that GPS data with movies will be played only on camera itself or with included PhotofunStudio software at the computer. This GPS information will not played back on any other AVCHD compatible device or software. For saving the battery life, you have to manually turn off the GPS by selecting the option in Travel Mode in main menu.

You can press the Exposure button at the back to turn on the semi-manual and manual exposure modes. There are settings to select shutter speed and aperture range. You can also use Panasonic Intelligent ISO to limit the ISO levels. Panasonic Lumix DMX-ZS7 also has controls for noise reduction, saturation, contrast and sharpness. You can use Custom slot at Mode dial to adjust all the settings. The ZS7 offers numerous AF options, but does not have any option for manual focus.

Panasonic Lumix DMX-ZS7 offers 28 scene modes plus MySCN option that allows associating two user-defined modes at MS1 and MS2 marks on Mode dial. Intelligent Auto (iA) is a complete automatic mode that finds out the best suited Scene mode and corrects any brightness, focus and blurring issues. Last spot on Mode dial takes to Clipboard mode that store low-resolution images at internal memory to fast recall. Panasonic suggests using this mode for taking pictures of maps and time-tables.

The shooting performance of Panasonic Lumix DMX-ZS7 is average in its class. The time from power-on to first shot is 2.3 seconds. Shot-to-shot time is 2.1-second and 4.5 seconds with flash. Shutter lag is 0.6sec in bright light and 1sec in dim light. Continuous burst mode with full resolution captures at 1.7fps. This shooting performance is not good for moving objects.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 produces overall good photo quality regardless of the cost and features. At ISO 100 and 80, the photos are best and sharp with fine detail and rich colors. The subjects look softer and less detailed at ISO 200, still the pictures are good. The noise becomes will be visible with yellow blotching at ISO 400, but the details are good. The photos become softer, yellowy and show noise at ISO 800. In addition, the photos are worst at ISO 1600. We will recommend you to use ISO 1600 only for emergency conditions. If you need the best photo quality even at low light, then the DMC-ZS7 will not be satisfactory.

Panasonic has included new image process – Venus HD II with Intelligent Resolution (IR) feature, which automatically discovers soft gradation areas, detailed texture area and outlines and then performs optimum signal process to each section. The ZS7 also has Intelligent Zoom that is a digital zoom to extend optical zoom range between 12x and 16x by cropping in on frame center. Then, it applies to Intelligent Resolution for improving the shot. The output is better optical zoom, but that is not the best. The results were good while testing, but casual shots looked crunchy and over-sharpened.

Panasonic keeps control on barrel distortion even at fully extended lens. It also keeps pin-cushioning distortion even at telephoto end under control. The exposure is very good, but highlight clipping are visible. The video quality is good at least for a mini-camcorder. You will use some scene modes and optical zoom while video recording.

Nitty Gritty:

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 offers 12x optical zoom, wide-angle lens, manual controls, good feature set and especially GPS. If you are doing most of the indoor and outside shooting in good light and does not mind poor high-ISO quality, then you can buy the Lumix DMC-ZS7.