Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS7 The Major Digital Camera With Built-in GPS

Buy DMC ZS7

Panasonic has proven before that it knows how to attain a top-notch cloggy megazoom. The 2010 Panasonic Lumix DMCZS7 builds on 2009′s ZS3 by adding two features: manual and semimanual shooting modes and an integrated GPS receiver. Cartel those with better HD video options, a 25mm-equivalent wide-angle organ with a 12x whizz, and a match new image enhancements and you’ve got a elastic camera for those who don’t ever impoverishment to lug a digital SLR with them. Tho’ its photos are sometimes less than stellar (especially those taken above ISO 400), the ZS7 module no doubtfulness change a lot of people euphoric.

The design of the ZS7 doesn’t change much from its predecessor, the ZS3. Its weight and size are approximately the same, remaining remarkably compact for its features and wide-angle lens with 12x zoom. Tho’ it’s a skintight fit in a pants incurvature, the ZS7 easily fits in an number jacket concavity or runty handbag. The body–available in black, silver, and red versions–has a nice, solid feel to it with a comfortable grip on the right side. The 3-inch LCD looks good and gets reasonably bright, though it gets reflective in direct sunlight so you may struggle occasionally to see what you’re shooting. Lastly, though the sensor is 14 megapixels, the camera only uses 12 megapixels, making it possible to have three aspect ratios–16:9, 3:2, and 4:3–with the same angle of view across the entire zoom range of the lens.

Controls are straightforward despite the pretence that there’s a lot effort on. On top is the shooting mode dial, shutter release with zoom ring, and power switch. Moving to the back to the right of the LCD is a switch for changing between shooting and playback; an exposure button for accessing changes to shutter speed and aperture; a start/stop record button for movies; four navigation buttons for moving through menus and settings and toggling among the exposure compensation, flash, macro, and self-timer options; a Display button for changing the amount of setting information displayed on screen; and Panasonic’s Q.Menu button that brings up a bar of commonly used settings like ISO, photo and movie resolutions, autofocus modes, and white balance. The main menu system is reached by pressing the Menu/Set button at the center of the four navigation buttons.

Menus by and plumping are wanton to get through with cause tabs for ease actuation, recording, and generic camera settings. However, there are a lot of options if you’re in a mode other than automatic; it can take some getting used to.

One of the main attractions for the DMC ZS7 is the built-in GPS. Using it is fairly simple, but unless you’re really good at figuring out menus and understanding potentially obscure language, you’ll want to read up on how to use everything in the full user manual (a PDF file on the bundled software disc) before you head out shooting. The main menu system has a Travel Mode tab with access to all of the GPS features. Once you’ve turned on the receiver you can have the camera retrieve the information for your current location. In tests this took anywhere from little than a bit to various proceedings depending on how often afford sky was above me. Once locked, the ZS7 can display country, state, city, and landmark information and continues to update itself every minute. You can then go into the GPS Area Select menus and pick the correct information for your location. For example, if you’re standing in the middle of New York, it could quite possibly have a couple pages of landmarks to pick from. Also, you can take to decrease what country info is affianced, in occurrence you exclusive impoverishment the calumny of the port for occurrence. The extent collection covers 173 countries or regions for all over the humankind and author than half a million landmarks in 73 countries or regions.

For everyday shooting, attaching GPS information is probably not that exciting. But, if you do a lot of traveling, hiking, or other activity where you might want to remember where you were, then it’s a great feature to have. Longitude and latitude is seamlessly added to the EXIF data and, again, you can have the camera include country, city, state, and landmarks. The GPS will automatically update time, too, should you be traveling between different time zones.

Related Posts

Digital Cameras Online Online Digital Camera Sales, Deals & Ripoffs Online digital camera sales have more than double...
Canon T2i Top Value And Feature SLR Digital Camera eos t2iOnly ten months after hitting the market with the EOS Rebel T1i as the...