Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1

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Performance
Not the fastest compact camera we've seen to date, the TZ1 powered up within 1.5 seconds. Shutting down the camera until all activity ceases took slightly faster at 1.2 seconds. Time to first shot (without flash) averaged 2 seconds. And you can shoot every 1.9 seconds (without flash) thereafter. With forced flash, it took longer at 3.5 seconds. Expect to wait even more (4 seconds) between pictures if you enable the red-eye reduction.

We felt the burst mode on the TZ1 was somewhat choked up because we could capture only three frames in Fine quality for both high-speed (1.3 seconds) and low-speed (1.7 seconds) settings. Decreasing the quality to Standard will allow you to snap an additional two frames. Alternatively, you can shoot continuously at 1.65fps until your finger cramps or your memory card runs out of capacity. For our tests, we used Imation's ultra high-speed Secure Digital card.

It was agonizing to watch the zoom bar on the camera's LCD move from 1x to 2x, which we timed at 1.4 seconds. That might seem like a short time, but it's ages if you consider that it took only 2.6 seconds to move from wide to telephoto (10x optical zoom). At a 3-megapixel resolution, the camera needed approximately 3 seconds to achieve the maximum 12.5x optical zoom.

Image Quality
Overall, image quality from the Lumix TZ1 was acceptable though colors turned out to be slightly muted in some of our pictures. We didn't have significant problems with purple fringing, though blooming could be noticed in some heavy backlit images.

	Noise was an issue at ISO 800.

The Auto White Balance setting worked fine most of the time, though there's an option for users to custom set the white balance in more challenging environments. We didn't have any issue with the flash but we won't recommend shooting at close proximity to your subject with it because chances are your images will get blown out.

Noise, however, was an issue especially beyond the ISO 800 range. Though it was still relatively contained between the selectable ISO 80 and ISO 400, we've seen other compact cameras performing better.

Editors' note:

We will be conducting further tests on the issue below with another unit and will update this review once we have the results.

It could be an issue only with our review unit, but even with the Rotate Display on, our portrait images always turned out upside down. Either we had to switch off the function, or review our pictures with the camera upside down as well.

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