This is not a review, purely an observation of how the zoom works on my little point and shoot camera, the Panasonic Lumix TZ70. It appears to be a good addition to my camera bag for travelling, especially when I only plan on taking the 24-70mm lens with me when we go on holiday. The TZ70 is a 12 megapixel camera and it has a 30x optical zoom, roughly equivalent to a 28-840mm lens. I have not tried using the zoom in low light and assume that a tripod would be required to make the most of that amount of zoom, but I have used the zoom in full sun and I’m happy with the results.
The following images were taken yesterday afternoon, I was driving by the pond and saw several pelicans and a few magpie geese hanging around the waters edge and thought it a perfect time to test the performance of the zoom on this camera. I have not cropped the images at all and have done very minimal editing in Picasa. The highlights have blown out a little on two of the photos of pelicans, the last photo is the better one in terms of capturing the detail of the white feathers.
I had read numerous reviews of different compact cameras before deciding on the TZ70 and although my experience so far is limited, you could say I’m satisfied with my purchase 🙂
Focal length in 35mm film = 57mm
Two Black Dogs 