I purchased my DMC-ZS7 almost a year ago, and have subsequently taken thousands of pictures throughout my world travels - Hawaii, Africa, Europe.
My favorite features:
GPS - My Panasonic has helped me to remember where each picture was taken with the ingenious GPS function. The GPS isn't perfect, and does sometimes take a few minutes to upload the new location, especially when you've changed countries, but it makes categorizing pictures so much easier. After a Christmas cruise that featured multiple port calls, I could easily sort my pictures from a cruise by destination, and the GPS tag reminded me of the names of several of the archaelogical sites I'd photographed while listening to the tour guide. It was much nicer to upload my pictures to Facebook with captions that were informative rather than being left with "this is some place in Greece, but I forget what it was called."
Zoom - The 12x Zoom was the second biggest selling feature for me on the camera. I don't want to carry around a full size camera complete with long distance lens, but I like to be able to zoom in to capture details, and this camera seems to offer the best of both worlds. I get a lightweight purse friendly camera that can zoom in for some incredible shots, and the camera is smart enough in the IA function to compensate for zooming in and getting the macro details even on zoom. I've captured photos of butterflies and birds that you would never guess I was twenty feet away and shooting with a point and shoot camera.
HD Video - The ability to shoot quality video with the camera allowed me to retire my old video camera, and subsequently cleared out additional space in my go to travel bag - Overland Equipment Special Edition Donner Bag. With a 16GB SD card, I've never run out of space even while shooting video, high definition shots and shooting for multiple days. Unlike some other cameras that I tried, the DMC-ZS7 allows you to use the zoom while shooting video.
Baby/Pet Function - You can 'teach' your camera to recognize your children or pets, and it will then tag each photo with information about how old your child is in the photo! Makes putting together a baby book that much easier.
Scenes - I love the preset scenes to select from, especially the Film Grain and High Dynamic. With a quick flick of the top dial, you can transition from black and white, to color saturated shots, to normal photographs. I've found the rapid change ability between the scenes allows me to capture the same photographs in multiple different exposures. Very rarely do you find yourself "stuck" with a black and white picture that you wish could have been in color because it is so easy to switch back and forth. I am a photography junky, but have never taken a class, so don't really know much about apertures/exposures/etc, so I really enjoy that the various functions take so much of the guess work out of my hands. My sister has top of the line amateur equipment, and I think my pictures from our Christmas travels turned out fairly comparable, and she lugged around a lot more equipment and spent a lot more time fiddling with her camera in between shots. For a handy travel camera, I think the Lumix is pretty keen.
Image Quality - I've printed out photos up to 8x10 from my DMC-ZS7, and have been thrilled with the quality.
If you're looking for a good, smart camera for travels or for documenting your family events, I don't think you can go wrong with the Lumix DMC-ZS7. Are there cameras out there that will take better quality pictures - probably, especially if you get DSLR camera. However, I've always found that the better pictures are the ones you actually take, and the portability of this camera means that more often than not I have my camera with me and am able to get great pictures at times when I wasn't planning on taking pictures. If you opt for a larger DSLR camera, you are less likely to always carry it with you and find yourself in more of those "Man, I wish I had my camera" moments, while I'll be snapping away with my trusty Lumix.
Happy snapping!
PS - I would very highly recommend the Digital Matrex Lumix POWER KIT as an additional purchase when you get your camera. The 3rd party batteries have worked like a charm in mine and are significantly cheaper than the Panasonic branded batteries.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD (Red)
3.3 | 97 ratings
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Last update: 02-02-2025
About this item
12.1-megapixel effective recording
12X optical zoom (4X digital/48X total zoom)
Built-in GPS function lets you keep track of your photos by location
3" LCD screen
Optical image stabilization
12X optical zoom (4X digital/48X total zoom)
Built-in GPS function lets you keep track of your photos by location
3" LCD screen
Optical image stabilization
Product information
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Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD (Red)
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Top reviews from the United States
H. RitcheyThis is one smart camera!
Paul TinsleyExceptional Point and Shoot, but the JPEG Compression is too high
Paul Tinsley
Exceptional Point and Shoot, but the JPEG Compression is too high
Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2010
The GPS is a great feature, but it is very unreliable. My wife drove to Denver and had the camera with the GPS mode on all of the time, even when the camera is off, and despite spending most of the day in Denver, the camera recorded a GPS location for our home for every photograph. The camera had been exposed to the sky for most of the day, so I have no idea why this happened and it's a bit of a letdown. When the GPS does work, its a great feature.
Overall, we are very happy with this camera serving as a handy point-and-shoot. It doesn't replace our DSLR by any stretch, but it works out at a fairly good value for the price. The video is the best that I have seen for a camera of its size and has excellent motion stability, even at maximum zoom. The zoom is also phenomenal for the size of the camera and the wide angle sucks in vastly more picture than any other point-and-shoot that I have had before.
I deducted 1 point for the GPS instability and the lack of more JPEG compression settings. Other than that, it's an amazing camera that will rarely let you down.
Update 31st July, 2010:
I have taken a lot of shots now in "P" mode with Sharpness at -1 and Noise Reduction at -2. This has greatly improved the image clarity, so I would now rate this camera at 4.5, losing only half a point for some GPS instability. There was a firmware update recently, and this seems to have made GPS better, but I can't be certain until I have tested a few other areas. If fixed, this camera is a definite 5 star buy!
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