PC Magazine digital cameras lead analyst David Gussman reports from Las Vegas.
The Monday before PMA 08 began, Panasonic sponsored an event for the media. The morning started with a press conference about the new cameras the company was announcing that day. They touted new 25mm wide-angle Leica lenses and improved Intelligent Autofocus. We then got to see the new cameras Panasonic will offer in the coming year. After we had our fill, we were given cases with brand-new TZ5's inside, and told to get some coffee while we waited for the main event.
We broke into several groups and were brought to buses. My group headed out to McCarron Field, helicopters awaited us: We would be going on two separate field trips that day. My group was first to go, and we discovered we were going to the Grand Canyon and being flown there by Maverick's Helicopters. I had never been to the Grand Canyon before--nor had I ever flown in a helicopter.
[More of David's pictures after the jump.]
To my relief, riding in a helicopter is smooth, and once you get past the noise and the headphones you need to hear anything, it's quite pleasant. We started out over the Vegas strip and headed toward the Grand Canyon, which is about 250 miles away; the roundtrip took us about 3 and a half hours. Panasonic wanted us to try out the TZ5, of course, and shooting in a helicopter over the Grand Canyon would give us some good opportunities. The helicopter shook a lot, so holding the camera steady was no easy task. But clicking between Intelligent Auto and manual modes made IA mode look impressive.
The TZ5 also managed to do well at switching between landscape mode and whatever other scene mode fit the bill, and image stabilization was impressive. Every time I had a shot lined up and focused, image stabilization would take over; as you can see, I got some nice shots.
We eventually landed on a clearing overlooking the Colorado River, where we took some more photos. Then we were told we'd be going to the Vegas Speedway, where we'd race around a track with the drivers from Mario Andretti's Racing School.
Once there, each journalist was fitted for a helmet and rode shotgun in a modified BMW convertible, with a Racing School driver taking the wheel. We went around a different track than the Nascar drivers were currently testing on, which involved straightaway runs along with some hairpin turns. We probably averaged around 80 mph; I thought at one point my driver was attempting to flip us when he took one of the turns.
At the end of the day, I took over 200 pictures with the TZ5. I'll still have to get it into the lab to make a final judgment, but I was impressed.
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January 31, 2008 5:58 PM
ugh... those colors look so flat.
i can hardly see the helicopter. colors are supposed to pop out at you, not hide like a chameleon; and that's in bright sunlight... ugh!
February 6, 2008 2:55 PM
Hello?? hey_jerky...
Please understand what you are looking at BEFORE you start to slag the pics eh? It's OBVIOUS that the helicopter and several of the other pictures are BACKLIT!!! The shadows coming toward the camera is the easy giveaway...
April 7, 2008 3:13 PM
This cam has really good critics and deserves it. The quality of the pictures is astonishing and the options are too, considering how small the camera is and how many possibilities you have (28 to 280 mm). It defintly is a great camera for vacations, when you don't want to take a lot of bagage with you and still want to make considerable pictures. The cam weights only 240 gr with rechargeable battery and SD-Card inside.