JonSnow wrote:Seriously why does this question come up every single time? It's 16x optical PLUS 5x digital zoom. Not that difficult to understand.

Answer the question, man, and stop being arrogant and disrespectful! Do you everything?

I own this camera, its great. As you can see its larger than most, but very powerful. GPS can be turned off. Picture quality and size are selectable. Video quality is great.

As a WOOT this should be cheaper. Not much more on Amazon even if they are including an SD card with it. Poor ratings for this camera on C-NET so I would only buy this camera if less than $119 even with 16X zoom and HD movies. Panasonic makes much better cameras than this one.

I loves me some Woot but not this one.

Does the optical zoom work in video mode or just digital?

quantamm wrote:What the original poster was saying is that with 14.1MP on a 1/2.33" sensor, the pixels are so small and so smashed together that they aren't collecting all of the light they could be. As a result, saving to JPEG, even though it's lossy, doesn't result in the same information loss as if you had a 5MP on a 1/2.33" or a 14MP on a 1/1".

...

But the point is that because of the high MP and the low sensor size, the fact that this camera doesn't have RAW probably isn't that big of a deal.

That's actually one of the reasons why having RAW would be a good thing. As you point out, having so many pixels on such a small sensor means that it's going to be very noisy, especially at high ISO settings (as pretty much every review has pointed out).

That means that someone needs to do some heavy-duty noise reduction to get a usable finished picture. If all you have is JPEG, that means the camera needs to do at least a first pass at it, and by all accounts the Panasonic ZS series is very heavy-handed about its noise reduction. From what I saw of my ZS6 I think it was trying to apply different levels of noise-reduction to different areas of the photo depending on how much detail it thought there was, but frequently mistook low contrast for low detail and muddied up soft textures like hair or fur.

If it had RAW output, I could have taken the original sensor data and applied more thoughtful noise reduction in Photoshop, thus possibly saving a lot of photos that I ended up discarding.

RAW clearly isn't for the masses, but it wouldn't have been that hard to add it as an option. I suspect that maybe one reason they didn't (and virtually no travel-zoom camera does) is that all of these lenses have lots of optical distortion that the cameras correct as part of the JPEGification process. (That's not a criticism of this camera; it's unavoidable in super-zoom lenses, even expensive ones for SLR cameras.) If they offered RAW output, you'd get some nasty-looking images that needed a lot of geometric correction to fix, and maybe the manufacturers don't want to be turning those loose on the world.

Helicopter and moon shots were great

With regard to "GPS doesn't work in China", my guess is that if this is true, then it's the camera's firmware that refuses to tag photos if the coordinates are inside their border. If the camera is made there, their government could make this a requirement.

Outstanding examples and extremely helpful. Many thanks to you. In for one!
J'pop

genii69 wrote:I bought this camera the last time woot had it also. I love the camera. I am constantly amazed at the things that I keep finding out that it does. By default the digital zoom is turned off. Even with it off the camera will go to 21x (intelligent zoom)as a posting before this one mentioned. When I first started using the camera I also thought that the 21x was the limit. Well after playing with a bunch of settings the other night, I found out that there is a setting for digital zoom. I know everyone is not crazy about digital zoom but once I turned it on I was able to go out to 84.1x. Wow! It is digital but you can sure see far away with that setting. Anyway, I normally run it at 16x or less in IA mode but I have done some interesting things with burst mode (10 pictures per second). Even when not using burst I find that the shutter speed is very quick. I took a photo of a helicopter in flight and in the picture the blades look as if they are standing still with no motion blur that I can detect at all.

Outstanding examples and extremely helpful. Many thanks to you. In for one!
The 1080i 60fps video is incredibly smooth. The stabilization works better than any I have seen before. I took a couple of videos where I was intentionally shaking the camera up and down (several inches) and it came out in the video as a mild rocking.

The camera works better in low light than I expected after reading some of the reviews. It's not perfect but I find it is very good in most cases. There is also a handheld night photo mode that is amazing. It takes several shots in a row and then compares them to figure out what is noise and what is real (I think that's how it works anyway) and it is really cool. I took a photo of my house at night with no flash and handheld and it came out looking like I had it on a tripod.

I took a few shots of the moon a couple of nights ago and they came out best using the sports setting. I am still experimenting with the settings but I got a couple of really neat shots.

Overall, I know that there are cameras that will take better photos such as DSLRs etc. but for a pocket camera to do the things this one does is amazing. I will link to a few of the photos and videos I have taken with this camera...

First, these 2 pictures were taken from the same exact location. The first is zoomed all the way out and the second one is zoomed in to 21x.

http://home.fuse.net/lazyriver1/Panasonic%20Lumix%20DMC-ZS10/P1000211.JPG

http://home.fuse.net/lazyriver1/Panasonic%20Lumix%20DMC-ZS10/P1000213.JPG

(Yes that big building is there in the first picture too)


Next, the helicopter with the stationary blades (no zoom, IA mode)...

http://home.fuse.net/lazyriver1/Panasonic%20Lumix%20DMC-ZS10/Helicopter.jpg

The next one was using burst mode. When looking at this fountain with the naked eye, the water appeared to totally surround the pipes that it comes out of but in burst mode I got several pictures with the water appearing to be in different places. I think the water looks like ice in this one...

http://home.fuse.net/lazyriver1/Panasonic%20Lumix%20DMC-ZS10/Fountain.JPG


Here is a squirrel that was in a tree about 50 feet from me in low light. It was actually getting dark and the tree was in the shadows and I did not use the flash. I would think this was taken in the middle of the day if I didn't know better...

http://home.fuse.net/lazyriver1/Panasonic%20Lumix%20DMC-ZS10/Squirrel.jpg


The moon over my neighborhood...

http://home.fuse.net/lazyriver1/Panasonic%20Lumix%20DMC-ZS10/Moon.jpg


Then the handheld night shot (no flash) of my house. I think this would have been even better if our streetlight wasn't out at the time...

http://home.fuse.net/lazyriver1/Panasonic%20Lumix%20DMC-ZS10/P1000207.JPG

(on this one I'm just amazed that it didn't look like one big blur. It would have if I did the same thing with any of our other pocket cameras that we own)


Now, a couple of short videos. Both at an amusement park and I was just shooting to get a feel for the camera. Be sure to click at the bottom right of the YouTube window to select the highest resolution. I uploaded these 1080i videos and YouTube converted them to 1080p. I am not sure if they maintain the 60 frames per second though as I read somewhere that they only do 30fps...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG47bWlA_OA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NtRJw8XNSA


There you go... I hope that helps anyone considering this camera to make the best decision for them. It suits me well for my needs.

(Now, I just hope all my links came out ok)

Happy Wooting!!

...

If you live in Texas as I do, this is makes the camera cost $210 with sales tax and shipping. I can purchase the very same camera new from Amazon for only $4 more. That's right, $214 new from Amazon with free two day shipping. Even if you don't live in Texas, why would anyone purchase this refurbished camera for only 8.8% less than a new one from Amazon? Not a good deal at all. Woot, you've really got to do better than this.

I bought one of these in February. It's my favorite camera of all time. If it has a problem, it's battery life -- if you're on a 3 day wilderness trip, you'd better take a second battery or keep the GPS turned off. Having said that, it takes astonishing photographs and high quality video. I'd buy it again.

21 zoom it says on camera but title says 16 zoom. which one is it?

Very complete review here: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/ZS10/ZS10A.HTM

darkomandic wrote:Does the optical zoom work in video mode or just digital?

The zoom works in video mode the same as it does in photo mode. I posted some links earlier and in the 2nd video I zoomed near the end of the video. The zoom seems very smooth so I am thinking that the zoom speed is slowed down a bit during video to make a more appealing movie...

http://www.image-acquire.com/hasselblad-went-to-the-moon-but-nikons-taking-the-new-millennium/

Yes, it’s true–Hasselblad was the camera that went to the moon, but when the time came for NASA to place a new order of camera gear, where did they turn? Not back to Hasselblad, but to Nikon.

$214.99 with 4 stars on Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-DMC-ZS10-Digital-Stabilized-Function/dp/B004KKZ0HY

Sounds like a good deal. Wish I had the cash and Woot had 3 day shipping... I would buy it in a second.

I have owned this camera since it came out about 2 years ago. We paid around $300, purchasing directly from Panasonic.
We've brought the camera on many trips, taking lots of pics and videos.
Overall, we love it. But, as noted, there are a few things to understand:
- The camera is a little large, bulging our pockets
- It uses batteries quickly with the GPS on. We know this but leave it on anyway.
- The camera rejects third party batteries, so you must buy the Panasonic brand batteries. The previous version accepted these batteries.

Overall, if I did not already own this unit I would purchase this Woot.

So happy when camera's show up on Woot! I swear there isn't a place in the house I can hide mine without my daughter finding it and breaking it! Ours is good for now, the tape does a nice job of holding the battery door on my Kodak Camera I got a while back on woot.

I'll repost this since the same questions/Amazon comments are being repeated, including errors. It was $239.99 last August and $199.99 last September vs. $189.99 for 10-9-11.

whatsamattaU wrote:The Amazon offer ($214 + $8.49 shipping) does not look like it includes the accessories. (1 Panasonic Lumix Accessory Kit Including Leather Lumix Carrying Case, Stylus & 4GB SD Card--not sure how much these are worth individually). Maybe the Amazon offer does have these accessories and just not mentioned, but someone needs to verify this. It was linked above, but I put in the editing feature to "insta-click"
http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-DMC-ZS10-Digital-Stabilized-Function/dp/B004KKZ0HY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318136533&sr=8-1

You'll have to make the call if the price difference with the accessory kit is worth it. I'm happy with my Panasonic camera purchases, but every brand will make clunkers.

Edit: and to repost, froogle

kcmark wrote:This camera's predecessors (ZS5, ZS6 and ZS7) were highly recommended but this model (ZS10) not so much ... It's tempting at this price but I still have to pass.

this writer speaks the truth. I have a ZS6, got this as back up, and quickly sold it. it sucked.

if, however, you see a new or refurbed ZS6 for $150 or less, jump all over it!!!

Ringo4422 wrote:All marketing hype.

DPReview doesn't think so http://www.dpreview.com/news/0901/09012706panasonictz7.asp Every other reviewer that covers the feature doesn't think so either. It is a useful feature.

[quote postid="4662663" user="Randycpu"]
- The camera rejects third party batteries, so you must buy the Panasonic brand batteries. The previous version accepted these batteries.

The fact that I cannot select a battery from whomever I choose is a showstopper for me! I really like Lumix cameras, too, but I will NOT buy any camera that behaves like that. ...very disappointing!

$215 shipped here:

http://www.instockdigital.com/product.asp?itemid=psdmczs10k-de

DouginSC wrote:[quote postid="4662663" user="Randycpu"]
- The camera rejects third party batteries, so you must buy the Panasonic brand batteries. The previous version accepted these batteries.

The fact that I cannot select a battery from whomever I choose is a showstopper for me! I really like Lumix cameras, too, but I will NOT buy any camera that behaves like that. ...very disappointing!

Repost from this morning:

quantamm wrote:The 3rd party batteries were locked out because Panasonic wanted to force consumers to buy their branded batteries only. This FUD* logic has been used on batteries, ink cartridges, and any other replaceable component. It's always the same BS - "for the safety of our customers and the life of your product, we're disabling features".

My question is if Panasonic still does this? I like having a spare battery for my cameras, but I don't want to pay triple to get one with a Panasonic logo.

*Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt

I can't speak for this camera, but I bought a refurb this year (it was Woot via Amazon) as a gift, and a more expensive Panasonic a few years ago. I bought 3rd party batteries for both, no problems so far.

Edit: I guess the question is whether Panasonic altered some/all of their cameras to not take 3rd party batteries.

robin731 wrote:That's actually one of the reasons why having RAW would be a good thing. As you point out, having so many pixels on such a small sensor means that it's going to be very noisy, especially at high ISO settings (as pretty much every review has pointed out).

That means that someone needs to do some heavy-duty noise reduction to get a usable finished picture. If all you have is JPEG, that means the camera needs to do at least a first pass at it, and by all accounts the Panasonic ZS series is very heavy-handed about its noise reduction. From what I saw of my ZS6 I think it was trying to apply different levels of noise-reduction to different areas of the photo depending on how much detail it thought there was, but frequently mistook low contrast for low detail and muddied up soft textures like hair or fur.

If it had RAW output, I could have taken the original sensor data and applied more thoughtful noise reduction in Photoshop, thus possibly saving a lot of photos that I ended up discarding.

RAW clearly isn't for the masses, but it wouldn't have been that hard to add it as an option. I suspect that maybe one reason they didn't (and virtually no travel-zoom camera does) is that all of these lenses have lots of optical distortion that the cameras correct as part of the JPEGification process. (That's not a criticism of this camera; it's unavoidable in super-zoom lenses, even expensive ones for SLR cameras.) If they offered RAW output, you'd get some nasty-looking images that needed a lot of geometric correction to fix, and maybe the manufacturers don't want to be turning those loose on the world.

Your explanation makes a lot of sense. Never thought of it that way.

Did a search for this camera on CNet.

http://www.cnet.com/1770-5_1-0.html?query=DMC-ZS10&tag=srch

It seems, according to the users, that the blue and silver versions outperform the black version.

I have one like this but is the 12X version. This camera is the best one I have ever tried. I have also Sony, Canon, Nikon, similar style cameras, and I can say this is the best quality.

and with Black Friday right around the corner....don't see this as being a jump on it kind of deal.

rahil123 wrote:New for $214; choice of colors.

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-DMC-ZS10-Digital-Stabilized-Function/dp/B004KKZ0HY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318136533&sr=8-1

rjathar wrote:Seriously, zooms are multiplicative, not additive. If I can zoom something twice as large optically, and I can take the resultant zoomed image and further digitally zoom it in 2x, that would make it 4 times the original, not 3x

So seriously, you might want to rethink your response...

Seriously, all of you who are correcting the OP need to get a life. If it has 21X zoom and 16 of it is optical, then the other 5X is digital. Technically it may be done by "adding" 1.3X of digital zoom, but if anyone had posted that it was 16X optical and 1.3X digital zoom there would have been 10,000 questions about what that meant. What he said was correct in layman's terms. There is 21X zoom, 16X optical. 5 is left. Duh.

i dont have one but i used a friends for about 20 minutes and if could go back to my pre-DSLR days i would DEFINITELY pick one of these up. AMAZING camera, good color balancing and the GPS feature is a great add-on for a camera as portable as this one. video's taken are really crisp too.

Amazing camera - well worth this price, even refurb'd; comparable in some ways to my dSLR (Canon Rebel T3i) - and yes, the GPS can be disabled.

where is the new woot

toasternoah wrote:where is the new woot

Midnight Central time is when the next woot happens, not Eastern time.

whatsamattaU wrote:Midnight Central time is when the next woot happens, not Eastern time.

Thanks!!!!

putdowntheducky wrote:GPS sounds nice for when I want to recall something, but what if I DON'T want everyone to know exactly where I took my pictures? Can the feature be turned off?

quantamm wrote:Your logic is flawed:

-Motorola may have forgotten to reset yours. It doesn't mean that someone else refurbished it.
-It doesn't matter who refurbished it.
-The fact that there is old data on it isn't a reason to hate Woot.
-Take 3 minutes and perform a "factory reset" (look in the settings menu) and you'll have it the way you want it.

I'm not the only one buddy! Check out the comments from everyone that received the refurbished product. http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=4651352&PageIndex=12&ReplyCount=457

1garryhurley wrote:

Several people noted in earlier comments that one can turn off the GPS.

I'm ready for a Woot Off!

cjpowers wrote:Seriously, all of you who are correcting the OP need to get a life. If it has 21X zoom and 16 of it is optical, then the other 5X is digital. Technically it may be done by "adding" 1.3X of digital zoom, but if anyone had posted that it was 16X optical and 1.3X digital zoom there would have been 10,000 questions about what that meant. What he said was correct in layman's terms. There is 21X zoom, 16X optical. 5 is left. Duh.

Once again, it isn't digital. It is a 21x optical zoom. I posted one link to it earlier, here is another. http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/ZS10/ZS10A.HTM

dpuett wrote:Once again, it isn't digital. It is a 21x optical zoom. I posted one link to it earlier, here is another. http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/ZS10/ZS10A.HTM

Are you intentionally *trying* to confuse people now?? In the link that you yourself just posted, the camera is identified as having a 16X optical zoom; not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES before the end of the very first paragraph!

Once and for all, it's a 16X optical zoom, and the rest is digital.

ScottRiqui wrote:Are you intentionally *trying* to confuse people now?? In the link that you yourself just posted, the camera is identified as having a 16X optical zoom; not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES before the end of the very first paragraph!

Once and for all, it's a 16X optical zoom, and the rest is digital.

Have you read any of the cites I posted or read any other reviews for the camera? It is 16X optical for the FULL resolution and 33X optical for a REDUCED resolution. I have a DMC-ZS3 that is 12X for a 10 MP picture and if I reduce the picture to 3MP, the camera will go to 21X optical zoom.

From the Amazon review for my camera "Here's the sweetest part about the zoom- if you planning to use smaller prints (i.e. 4X6), you can quickly adjust the camera's Megapixel (MP) count from 10 to 7, 5, and 3 to yield maximum OPTICAL zooms of 14.3, 17.1, and 21.4 respectably, without much loss of detail on such prints."

(DMC-ZS3) From DPReview "The Extra Optical Zoom function that extends zoom power to 21.4x (at 3-megapixel resolution) by using the center part of the large CCD to bring subjects even closer without deteriorating the image quality." Same feature with the DMC-ZS10.

The DMC-ZS10 has the exact same feature with different zooms levels and resolution options.

AGAIN, the DMC-ZS10 is a 16X OPTICAL zoom for the FULL resolution and up to a 33.8x OPTICAL for a REDUCED resolution. Read the manual http://service.us.panasonic.com/OPERMANPDF/DMCZS10_ADV.PDF

This isn't the black and white situation that you and others think.