Wally Sleeping

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Of course two weeks after I bought the TZ1, the TZ2 & TZ3 were announced today. I don't feel that bad about it, though, because cameras always get one-upped for one and these don't appear to have massive changes for two. About the biggest change I can suss out on the pair is that there's now a Program AE mode, which is great news. There's also a wider lens, down to 28mm from the Tizzy's 35mm. The usual megapixel upgrades are there too but I don't really care.

The body is identical outside of larger LCDs. Meh.

I knew that a TZ1 successor would be coming but still feel good about my purchase. Besides, I could always wait for a bigger better camera or just buy one and start shooting.

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The Man in Black

As part of my two-camera strategy (one general purpose, one DSLR), I decided on the Panasonic Lumix DSC-TZ1, or "TZ1" or "Tizzy" for short. It was a tough decision, honestly, but after the E18 error on the S2 IS I didn't want to even consider a Canon. The error may have been a fluke, but it was an expensive fluke, and why bother?

By far the biggest concern I had about the Tizzy was noise. This is an issue with all of the Lumix cameras, per the reviews; however there were plenty of clean images up on the flickr taken with the Tizzy and cameras such as the FZ7, which was the other contender.

In the end I was willing to give up full manual controls (remember, I'll get a DSLR in time!) in order to get the 10X optical zoom (!) in a package that is roughly the width and length of my iPod. (Sure, it's deeper.) That's impressive. Here are my first impressions from shooting with it.

• The size is great. I missed having a pretty small camera.
• The detail and design is stellar. Truly, it feels like an honest-to-gosh camera. My friend Marcus has long talked about the "old world feel" of his FZ20 (30? forgot) and I can understand that here. The whole thing looks expensive outside of the lame "10x optical zoom" label. The camera has a great weight about it: not too light, not too heavy. Pocketable for my big jacket pockets.
• Quick startup time. Flip to on, pretty much ready to go.
• The big LCD is nice. It's easy to read, the menus are pretty clear (outside of a few questionable abbreviations), and it's nice.
• Everything was dark. The big problem with the first batch of photos is that almost all of them are too dark; I need to figure out why. Adjusting levels in iPhoto worked wonders, but even photos with the EV up +2 (!) were still dark. Detail wasn't lost, though.
• I miss the easy play/record switch that Canon has. Putting playback in the middle of a rotary dial is strange, just strange. I don't get it. Put it at the end of the dial or the front. Please. Update: Yep, the little "review" button lets me do what I need to do. Never mind!
  
• Noise is present, but not yet to a fault. Can't be denied: there's noise, yes. But it's not to a point where it kills the image (yet), and given I take so many photos in good light this was something I felt I could deal with. I might invest in some noise-reduction software just for kicks.

Above all that, I really like the camera. It's a great little tool. It feels elegant and well-crafted and has been a joy to use. Unlike the D50 post, I'll be sure to check in with everyone on the Tizzy in the future.

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