Andy Westlake tests Panasonic's pocket travel camera with a 1in sensor and 10x zoom lens

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ100

Features:90%

Build/Handling:80%

Metering:70%

Autofocus:80%

AWB colour:80%

Dynamic Range:80%

Image Quality:80%

LCD Viewfinder:70%

Pros:

+ Really useful zoom range covers most subjects
+ Excellent image quality from 1in sensor
+ Pocketable design
+ Well-implemented in-camera raw conversion

Cons:

- Electronic viewfinder is rather small
- Enthusiast photographers may find the controls frustrating
- Fixed rear LCD limits compositional flexibility

Manufacturer:

Panasonic

Price as reviewed:

£529.00

Image quality

The ability to shoot in raw gives more scope for post-processing your shots

Over the past few years the 1in 20.1MP BSI-CMOS sensor that’s used in the TZ100 has become very familiar, and the image quality Panasonic is extracting from it is absolutely as we’ve come to know and love.

At base ISO there’s stacks of detail and not very much noise, but raising the sensitivity setting sees detail loss from noise and noise reduction becoming detectable as low as ISO 400. But while it’s best to stick to low ISOs as far as possible, you’ll still get entirely tolerable results up to ISO 1600. It’s important to get exposures as close as possible to correct, though, because there’s not as much leeway for adjusting exposure after the event in post-processing as you’ll get from raw files from larger-sensor cameras.

Resolution

With its 20.1MP sensor, the TZ100 can record a whole lot of detail, and this shows in our resolution tests. As usual, it performs best in raw, and here we see it achieving at least 3400 l/ph at low ISOs with the lens set to 35mm (equivalent), which is about as much as we could possibly hope for.

Noise starts to have a clear impact on detail at ISO 800 and by ISO 3200 resolution has dropped to around 2600 l/ph. At the top standard setting of ISO 12800 and the extended ISO 25600 setting, resolution falls even further due to the impact of noise.

Below are 100% crops taken from our resolution chart, using raw files converted in Adobe Camera Raw. Multiply the number below the line by 200 to get the resolution on lines per picture height.