Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5A reviews
Lumix is perfect for me, former pro photog in the 60s. Recently
restarted with an FZ20, liked it semi-pro. Went FZ30, better. Went FZ50
and it does excellent portraits/landscapes, so replaced my Olympus
point-and-shoot (P&S) (good camera, but xD) with TZ3K (black), and
cut my "shaky" pix in half, improved my low light (harbors at night,
etc.) pix, and got very good family pix even with the wimpy flash. So
when the TZ5A (blue) came out, it was just a bit pricey. With Amazon
discount, bought it early this year, and I remain very impressed with
its quality despite being a P&S. The face recognition does a better
job than the excellent TZ3, the 10X zoom gets shots I used to have to
skip, color is very good, and it works well with CS3 and Elements 6.0
at 9 Megapixels. This camera lacks manual controls, but from what I've
seen so far, I haven't needed them: the automatic/ intelligent exposure
rarely misses. Battery life is very good (200 to 250 pix average before
replace/recharge). I've become a Lumix fan because much as I loved 35
mm and 2-1/4 Mamiya and Nikon years ago, Lumix gives routinely nearly
the same quality without the extra cost and complex menus that can
buffalo us oldsters. Lightweight, commonly available battery same as
the TZ3, and it ran the 8 Gb and 16 Gb flash cards with no significant
problem (counter has a display-only limit with 16 Gb). With SDHC cards,
the Lumix TZ5 (A, K, or S) is my choice for a non-pro but near
pro-quality P&S camera. Wow! Cheyguy
