Digital Home Thoughts: Panasonic's Lumix DMC-ZS3 Reviewed

This is a review video of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 digital camera. This is a 10 megapixel point and shoot digital camera with an impressive 12x optical zoom, starting at 25mm and reaching all the way to 300mm. That's a lot of zoom! It uses Secure Digital memory for storage, and is SDHC compatible, allowing for up to 32 GB cards to be used. It also takes 30fps 720p videos in either AVCHD Lite or MJPEG formats, has optical image stabilization, and you can zoom while shooting a video - a feature many comparable cameras lack. I didn't do an unboxing/first impressions video of this camera because I bought it and immediately wanted to start using it - so instead what you have is my review after having used it for a couple of months. You can see all the specs here. If you're interested in buying one, Amazon.com has them in our affiliate store. On to the sample pictures and video...

This isn't dpreview.com, so I'm not going to pretend I can test this camera with the lab-type tests they perform, but I can at least show you a few sample images and a test video. The test images below are straight from the camera (JPEG Normal); no adjustments or re-saving of the JPEGs.

Figure 1: A test photo with flash. Download the full-sized image [4.7 MB JPEG].

Figure 2: A test photo without flash. Download the full-sized image [3.9 MB JPEG]. The camera decided that 1/8th of a second was a good shutter speed, so the image is a bit blurry. It kept the image at ISO 400; I'd have preferred ISO 800 and a faster shutter speed instead. This is the problem with fully automatic cameras - sometimes they're just plain dumb.

Figure 3: A test photo; no flash. Download the full-sized image [4.2 MB JPEG].

Figure 4: A test photo; no flash. Download the full-sized image [5.6 MB JPEG].

The above video is a quick AVCHD Lite video test where I uploaded it to YouTube without first converting it - YouTube accepted the native file. Even YouTube's HD quality doesn't quite do the trick, so if you want to see the original file, you can grab it here (29 MB). It's a .MTS file so unless you're using Windows 7, you'll need to grab VLC or a similar program to play it.

The above video is a demonstration of the DMC-ZS3's ability to shoot video while in macro mode.

All in all, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 is a great camera for what it is: a reasonably small point and shoot camera that packs an awesome zoom and decent quality 720p video. Do I sound a bit less than enthusiastic with my purchase? Well, the camera delivers a lot in a small package, but after using it to take pictures without a flash (I pretty much loathe most direct-flash photos) I'm not impressed with the image quality. I knew going in to this purchase that this was a camera with a tiny sensor (0.28cm2), so it's not like this is a surprise to me, but I'm finding that I want a better camera for low-light photography that's not as heavy and big as my D300 - so I'm going to be picking up a Panasonic GF1 shortly. The dpreview.com side-by-side comparison says it all: the ZS3 has a CCD sensor with 45 MP/cm² pixel density; the GF1 has a CMOS sensor with 5 MP/cm². The lower the pixel density, the better the pixels are at picking up light and generating less noise. The GF1 isn't the camera I'll take with me when I want to zoom in on the action since it comes with a 20mm prime lens, so the ZS3 will still be a part of my collection.

Got questions about the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3? Post 'em and I'll do my best to answer them.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, his son Logan, and his sometimes obedient dog. He officially is addicted to buying new digital cameras since becoming a new dad.

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