jimray wrote:I didn't see it in the spec's, how large of an SD card is supported? And I don't see a tripod receptacle in any of the pic's. It would be needed with that aamount of zoom.

Does have a standard tripod mount. Found this out there so I assume it will take a 32gb sdhc
"The battery compartment also houses an SD memory card slot, and alongside the door, just off-centre, is a metal tripod thread. The TZ10 / ZS7 is now compatible with the SDXC format to support cards bigger than 32GB. You'll need a card rated at Class 4 or higher to successfully record video in the AVCHD mode, or at Class 6 or higher to support video in the Motion JPEG mode. We used a Lexar Professional 8GB SDHC 133x model in our tests which is rated as Class 6 and worked fine with all the movie modes. SanDisk's Ultra III and Extreme cards are also rated as Class 6, so should be a great match for the TZ10 / ZS7; note the cheaper Ultra II cards are only Class 4, so while fine for still photography and AVCHD movies on this camera, will be too slow to support the Motion JPEG mode. See the movie section below for further details."

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


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!!

...[/quote]

Aahh Stricker's Grove...you must be from my side of town.

I have had DMC-ZS3 for a while and really like it. Whenever a Lumix pops up on Woot I have to check it out.

enktwiss wrote:Hopefully this is just some very dry sarcasm that I'm missing, but just in case... 20x magnification in and of itself does not require a tripod it's all relative to how much light is available.

24-384mm equivalent in 35mm with a max aperture of 3.3 to 5.9. In anything other than bright sunlight you're going to want a tripod for anything much longer than 100mm (4x or so) if there's no IS.

jimray wrote:I didn't see it in the spec's, how large of an SD card is supported? And I don't see a tripod receptacle in any of the pic's. It would be needed with that aamount of zoom.

Front page of woot:


Recording Media:



Built-in Memory, SD Memory Card, SDHC Memory Card, SDXC Memory Card

Minimum size of SDXC cards is 8GB, with 128GB being the current max size.

Also, from the front page of woot, in the picture links, the fist shows the bottom of this camera, with the tripod mount showing.

I'm almost interested in this P&S, but just bought into a DSLR camera system with 3 FA Limited lenses on order, so I will also pass on this deal.

Bought mine of the last woot for $10 more, couldn't be more satisfied...except maybe I could have waited a couple of weeks and saved 10 bucks.

skiddyfisk wrote:Yet another camera lacking RAW support :[ why, woot, why?

Most P&S makers decided that RAW was too complicated for the targeted buyers to need or use. JPEG works just fine for this and is easier to design the camera to use and adjust. RAW also almost always needs a 3rd party application to open and edit (Lightroom, Photoshop, CorelDraw, etc...)which can cost from $150-$1000.

Don't even get started with the different RAW formats that are in existance right now, from the various camera makers too..

When you use Digital Zoom versus Optical, you are essentially editing your photos on the fly within the camera instead of editing them with Photoshop or other image editing software after downloading them. I never use the DZ options in any of my cameras because I prefer to edit my pictures using my computer and monitor. That's what makes the huge MP storage nice - you can zoom in for very fine details and not lose print quality - and you can control the image you get in the end. If you don't have post-download editing software, using DZ makes sense. Your mileage may vary.

Panasonic makes a great camera. When I was camera-shopping last year a major criteria (aside from simplicity-of-use and picture quality)was reduced lag-time for snapping pictures. Lumix scores on all three of these points. With my old camera I used to miss pics all the time waiting for the shutter to actually snap. With Lumix usually you will get a great shot just from the Normal pic mode without all the lag.

I bought the refurbed Panasonic 12.1MP camera with 12x optical zoom off Woot over the summer and it is hands down the BEST digital camera I've ever owned. The Intelligent Auto (IA) setting is phenomenal, and what I generally keep the camera set to. It will automatically go into macro-mode for example and focus perfectly. I have amazing pictures of butterflies that are so detailed, you can see the texture of their eyes (see link)! For 20 bucks, I was even able to add a two-year extended SquareTrade warranty! I HIGHLY recommend this line of cameras.

example picture: http://preview.tinyurl.com/643sqrp

quantamm wrote:What about the battery? Can I use a 3rd party battery? Or is this one locked down like many other Panasonics?

2 years ago 3rd party batteries were locked out due to overheating and a few exploding when long videos were shot, because of this Panasonic made a hard firmware fix to all cameras to prevent this from happening again.

zozozoz wrote:What's "Panorama Assist"? Does it allow for real panoramic shots?

You still need to take a series of photos for the panorama. The Assist will lock in white balance and exposure to get consistent images,and help 'stitch' or line up edges of the adjacent photo in the series.

Sorry, first time I commented. I would like to thank the above person for giving such a detailed comment on the camera. It is very helpful to see the pictures in order to make a judgement. When you look at cameras in the store you can only look at how far it zooms. Now I know the quality of the pictures. Thanks so much for taking all that time to do this.

I have the Z8 version of this camera and absolutely love it. It's my "purse" camera. Here are a couple of recent shots taken with it:

Hawk

and

Pond.

Price is great here. I paid $249 new earlier this summer.

These are pretty decent cameras, lots of features and simple to use.
My advice is don't drop them from a second story window onto asphalt.

ianf wrote:FWIW: The camera's GPS feature does not work inside China due to PRC regulations around calculating/collecting location data. This probably won't affect many people here, but if you have a trip planned to the Great Wall or Shanghai and think this is the PERFECT camera for your trip because it will geo-tag your pictures: nope.

If this is an important feature for you, other camera manufacturers allow GPS tagging within China, but you are (technically) breaking the law if you do this.

While cameras advertised and sold **in the Chinese market** may have their GPS receivers disabled, there's nothing that would keep this camera from geotagging photographs in China (although as you say, it may be illegal).

Because of the way the GPS system works, it's not practical (or even possible, really) to disable GPS reception within a specific country. Even if it were possible, the US owns/manages the GPS system, so China has no means of disabling GPS within its borders, except for GPS jammers which would only cover a tiny geographic area.

There is a feature in the GPS system called "Selective Availability" that will intentionally degrade the accuracy of civilian GPS units by up to 100 meters, but that's been turned off for over ten years now and isn't coming back.

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?

Welcome to the 21st century.

iPhones, most phone cameras, and most good cameras have GPS's and the pictures can be identified down to the house where it was taken.

Have you considered a Kodak Instamatic?

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?

...and, no, it doesn't come with a tin-foil hat either. You'll need to provide that yourself.

Thanks for all the good reviews and advice. I just bought one!

KenCalvino wrote:Thanks for all the good reviews and advice. I just bought one!

Sorry you did. I just bought the Xoom last week and it was a refurbished item. I received it and it was loaded with the previous owner's information, emails, photos, etc. I called Motorola and they said their standard proceedure is to reset the products before they ship them out. That means that Woot did not get them from Motorola and are selling used items as refurbished. Good luck with your product. I will never buy another refurbished item from Woot.

I needed a point'n'shoot camera recently and looked at this one in the previous woot. After much research, I went with the Fuji Finepix F550EXR and i love it. The EXR mode sold me. Got it new in red. Nothing wrong with this choice, just saying there are comparable out there. This class of p&s cameras really takes awesome pictures and with 1080p video & gps, they are all going to take some great pictures no matter which one you choose.

Roostalee wrote:These are very highly recommended point and shoot cameras, but I'm in the market for a zoom lens for my Canon DSLR, so I'll have to pass.

This camera's predecessors (ZS5, ZS6 and ZS7) were highly recommended but this model (ZS10) not so much. Panasonic switched to a CMOS sensor for this model (prior models had CCD sensor) in order to get 1080HD video, (supposedly) better low light images, and the fast burst mode but the image quality of this camera has been universally panned when compared to the prior models in the Panasonic compact superzoom line. The ZS10 is known to have a significant amount of noise in its pics when compared to Canon, Nikon and Sony's equivalent. There is a reason there are a TON of these refurbs (I think this has been a woot or a woot-off item at least 4-5 times now). It's tempting at this price but I still have to pass.

skiddyfisk wrote:I'm not sure what you think sheer MP has to do with the RAW format, but it doesn't.

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".

I know I'm not saying that as eloquently as I could, so maybe someone who knows a bit more about information theory could step in.

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.

I was so sad when my woot purchased refurb zs6 Lumix (http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=4454063) died this week because, ironically, my woot purchased water bottle (http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=4490811) soaked it in my purse. I have been aggressively searching for the right replacement all week long. My inner snob thinks I should get a DSLR, but my realistic, true self knows I would be too lazy to give that kind of camera the learning and attention it deserves. Plus, I simply shoot family and friends and I clumsily drop my electronics all the time. I loved, loved, love my Lumix, and was hesitant to go Canon, Nikon, or Kodak after the awesome ease and crisp images of the zs6. But the zs10 has so-so reviews at amazon. What made me purchase this woot is my desire for another Lumix and this website: http://snapsort.com/cameras/Panasonic/ZS10.

I just keep my fingers crossed that I get it before we leave for vacation in a week and half. It will be a close one.

Was all my camera/water bottle drama this week a set up by the woot gods to force another woot purchase today? I did not heed the warnings that the water bottle seal mysteriously disappears and causes leaking. So maybe the woot gods are punishing me? My snobby self says that yes, the woot gods are watching me and guiding me (while capitalizing on my laziness and online shopping tendencies), but my realistic self suspects this is all a strange coincidence.

But if woot offers a too-good-to-pass-up-bargain DSLR camera and kit in the coming year, I may become a believer.

dpuett wrote:Actually, not quite. I have the DMC-ZS3 and it has the same feature. If I turn on the "Intelligent Resolution" feature, the camera reduces the resolution a little bit and the increase in zoom is optical. Not digital. It is a useful feature. http://panasonic.net/avc/lumix/compact/zs10_tz20/lens.html#intelligent_zoom

All marketing hype.

deltbuzz wrote:Sorry you did. I just bought the Xoom last week and it was a refurbished item. I received it and it was loaded with the previous owner's information, emails, photos, etc. I called Motorola and they said their standard proceedure is to reset the products before they ship them out. That means that Woot did not get them from Motorola and are selling used items as refurbished. Good luck with your product. I will never buy another refurbished item from Woot.

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.

Thank you for the quality post. I'm in for 1.

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.

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. Snip...

...

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.

You're quick to anger...

larrym20 wrote:2 years ago 3rd party batteries were locked out due to overheating and a few exploding when long videos were shot, because of this Panasonic made a hard firmware fix to all cameras to prevent this from happening again.

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

sped571 wrote:Aahh Stricker's Grove...you must be from my side of town.

I have had DMC-ZS3 for a while and really like it. Whenever a Lumix pops up on Woot I have to check it out.

Yes it is Stricker's Grove indeed.

I am from Northern KY. (Latonia)

Our family was there for CSX's fall picnic...

I have a Canon Eos Rebel and was not allowed to take in into Bethel Woods for the Elton John concert This would have been perfect.

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.

Actually, for a lot of new buyers not familiar with digicam hype, putting a 21x zoom sticker on a 16x zoom camera IS that difficult to understand.

Digital zoom is a joke, a fraud, a scandal.

It is simply in-camera cropping, something you can do at home with any camera using editing software.

The problem is that somebody may think they are taking a glorious, tight zoom shot at 14 mp, when they really are cropping it down to a 5 mp image.

Granted, that is still not as bad at it used to be with 3 MP cameras, but it is a lie, fraud, etc., designed to make cameras look more attractive..kind of a digital comb-over that only fools some.

"monniewolf"I bought the refurbed Panasonic 12.1MP camera with 12x optical zoom off Woot over the summer and it is hands down the BEST digital camera I've ever owned. ..."

GREAT pictures! Thanks for sharing. I have the zs8 and am amazed at the pictures I have been able to capture.


I didn't get the ZS10 at the time due to the increased price and no need for GPS. I have read reviews on this line and it seems that the ZS6 has the best reviews but finding one reasonably priced (compared to the 8 or 10) is difficult. I believe they had one on WOOT a few weeks ago and toyed with picking it up for a backup. If I had the money and it came up again I probably would. I LOVE my ZS8. I went through about nine cameras before I found this one, canon, nikon, kodak, etc. I teach preschool and need FAST and easy. I have gotten wonderful pictures of my students. Turns on quick, fast shutter and display so I can tell quickly if I need to retake the shot. (Camera is fast but kids are faster!) I have been able to get great shots in all levels of lighting.

If I needed one, I'd be in. I recommend the Panasonics, especially the ZS line.

skiddyfisk wrote:Yet another camera lacking RAW support :[ why, woot, why?

RAW is for people who want to spend a lot of time at their computer, editing the photo. This is not the mass-market crowd's idea of a good time. How many film photographers had a darkroom? A tiny fraction ..the rest just dropped off their film. I see that even the option of shooting TIF files is gone, in most cases.

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.

(x * 16) * 5 = 80x not 21x
Why are the optical and digital zooming additive in your explanation?

mrabu wrote:woot did you try to trick me??? it sure isn't much cheaper then a new one.

& why is warranty so short on refurbished???

Awesome little point and shoot. I have the 12MP version. Love, love, love it for when I don't want to drag my SLR around.

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.

Edited

caya77 wrote:& why is warranty so short on refurbished???

This is typical if I remember. When I buy a refurbished, I have eyes wide open, I know I'm taking a bit of a risk. There's a reason it's cheaper. The definition of refurubished in my signature below.

There must be a ton of these that have been returned, Look at Panasonic microwave ratings....Junk!!!!
Panasonic was our 1st choice but after reading all the bad reviews we passed on Panasonic.
Panasonic used to make good stuff but not so good anymore.
We just got a Nikon S8100 camera and it works great.

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.

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...