For travel or sports photography a long zoom is almost essential. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 (also known in Europe and Australia as the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7) takes it even further in that the wide end of the Leica DC Vario-Elmar zoom equates to a 25mm lens on a 35mm SLR, stretching out to 300mm at the tele end. A good widey and a terrific longey!
A plus is the Panasonic ZS3’s large 7.6cm LCD screen. A minus is that it does not have an optical finder.
The still image maximum size is 3648×2736 pixels, on a 10.1 megapixel CCD. It also shoots 1280×720 pixel High Definition motion pictures with stereo sound. Not Full High Def — but still in an 16:9 aspect ratio.
The exposure options are not breath-taking: there’s only Program AE exposure mode with three metering options (multi zone, centre-weighted and spot) as well as 27 scene modes.
The shutter speed range is pretty good: long exposures up to 60 seconds. Shortest is 1/2000 second.
The camera runs from ISO 80 to 1600 with a step up ISO 6400 in the High Sensitivity scene mode, limited to 2048×1536/2048×1360/1920×1080 pixel image sizes.
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