Panasonic makes great digital cameras. It may not be the first brand name that comes to mind when you think of solid point and shoot cameras, but that could be because they put more money into their research and development than the do in large ad campaigns. For years Panasonic has been producing incredible point and shoot cameras with cutting edge technologies like MEGA O.I.S. and Intelligent Auto–in some cases months and even years before their competitors.
That’s why cameras like the ZS7 make me smile. In general the price point for Panasonic digital cameras start a little higher than the market, but that’s because they tend to shun the low end and focus on mid to high-end cameras. The value that you get for your dollar, however, is pretty incredible; Panasonic packs a ton of technology into these camera bodies, they insist on high quality materials, and the build quality of the Panasonic cameras that I have used has been excellent.
The ZS7 has a list of features that are quite appealing.
- 12x optical zoom
- LEICA lens – produced by Panasonic to LEICA’s design specifications and standards
- 25mm wide angle – wider than most cameras in its class
- POWER O.I.S. – the evolution of MEGA O.I.S., this feature can handle more vibration and movement
- iA – intelligent auto mode detects the type of scene and makes adjustments on the fly
- AVCHD Lite HD movie mode – high quality movies with stereo sound that take up less disc space
- Integrated GPS – geotag your photos automatically, so you can record not only when you took your pictures, but where you took them.
All of these features together make the ZS7 a great camera for every day use–which is exactly what I did.
Everyday use
I swapped the ZS7 into my walkabout photo kit for almost three weeks; using it regularly wasn’t a problem, if anything it made things incredibly easy. The lens is wider than I’m used to, and while the zoom is roughly the same as my current point and shoot, the stabilization on the ZS7 made the shots more crisp and clear than I was used to.
Being able to fit more into the frame without having to back up was great; I’m a big fan of wide lenses, so having an even wider option on this camera really worked out well for me.
There’s no viewfinder on the ZS7, so you don’t have to worry about parallax too much (that’s where you look through the viewfinder and can see someone, but they’re head is cut off when you take the shot). The large 3″ LCD screen on the back is of incredibly quality. It’s a one-half megapixel resolution, which is high for a screen this size, and colour and contrast are good. It’s also very usable in direct sunlight.
iA Mode
iA Intelligent Auto gets it right… most of the time. Like many point and shoot cameras you’ll find that in-door shots in low light tend to trigger a full-power flash, washing your subjects out. It’s rare that it happens, but if you can find a way to stabilize the camera and shoot without the flash you’ll enjoy those shots more.
Video
The ZS7 features a stereo mic to go with the high definition recording. The video you’ll get is of good quality (It’s not comparable to what you’ll get from a fully featured camcorder, but it’ll do in a pinch). You’ll get a nice 720p movie from it when you access the motion picture shooting mode by hitting the dedicated button. I found the button to be convenient some of the time, but I did hit it accidentally on occasion. Still, it’s in a good place for your thumb to control it when you’re holding the camera up to site your video. The end results are good: they’re easy to edit and upload to the web for sharing, and they look great when played back on your HDTV. I plugged the SD card directly into my Panasonic plasma and was able to browse and playback my videos quickly and easily.
GPS
This is the whizbang feature of the ZS7, and I can confirm it’s totally worth buying the camera for. I’m a sucker for geotagging, and I think most people out there will be as well. There’s something incredibly cool about uploading your pictures to Facebook or Flickr and being able to let everyone know where you were when you took them. I’ve used a variety of third party devices to do this in the past, but nothing has been as elegant as the solution built into the Panasonic ZS7. It’ll even try to approximate where you are based on points of interest in its map database, but that’s not always terrible accurate (especially if you’re in an area that’s crowded with POIs). Even with the GPS on the battery life remained quite good, giving me over one hundred shots before I began to notice the battery draining.
Conclusion
I really like the Panasonic ZS7. It’s very easy to use and has a ton of great features that will help everyone from casual camera owners to prosumers get better shots. The solid metal body construction and metal controls and switches are also a step above the competition; Panasonic has built a camera here that you shouldn’t be afraid to use. The ZS7 is a great blend of the right stuff: the right size, the right features, and the right materials all work together to make it the right camera for a lot of people out there.
