Panasonic TZ3

Tim39 said:

The more I've started thinking about the TZ3, the more I've found
myself comparing it to the TZ1.

Picking up on your comment about price, I checked here -- and the
TZ3 is $120 more than the TZ1 among high quality vendors. What
would cause me to pay that premium? Not the wider angle, not the
extra MP, not the slower (aperture) lens, not the more resolute LCD
or slightly larger sensor.

In fact, I can't find anything for my particular needs that
justifies a MORE THAN 50 PERCENT premium. Especially since that I
want to use those funds for the camera Panasonic will one day make
-- you know, the one with a sensor to rival Fuji's and a NR system
to match.

Click to expand...

My F30 was €450 about eight months ago. It is now selling for €300 in the shops which is a 33% drop. The TZ3 will drop considerably in time too. It's high price is due to it being just on the market and you are comparing it with something that will be leaving the market pretty soon. Actually, I have only paid €360 for the TZ3 which eight months on is cheaper than my F30.

As for waiting for one day for the better sensor....it's not doing too bad now if one look more closely and don't get bogged down with silly reviews that fuss over split hairs. All it takes is a slight bit of neat image on the TZ3 to get close to the F30 at ISO800. At ISO400 you won't even need neat image as they are that close. Going on the reviews I would never have guess that the TZ3 would be doing that well....but judge for yourself.

These were shot at ISO800 with a tripod and as practically as possible under the same conditions and only a few minutes apart. And the shutter speeds were about 1/6s so light was low.



And before the "peepers" run rampant and point out little pointless differences, this what you would ACTUALLY BE GETTING in prints and real viewing...spot the differences?



*****************************************
Packy

http://picasaweb.google.com/patsweb .... try the slideshow option!

Well, for my money , the Tizzy takes the lead by a long mile on those !!

--
ericN-UK

Pixel peepers here in the fuji forum.... I have never heard of such a thing!
Are you sure you are in the right forum? 8^)

You are doing a fine job with the Tizzie 3 Packy. It is looking like a winner for sure in your hands. Can't wait to see how Danny is doing with his.

gus
Get what makes you happy...
Anything less makes you less happy!

igilligantoo said:

Pixel peepers here in the fuji forum.... I have never heard of
such a thing!
Are you sure you are in the right forum? 8^)

You are doing a fine job with the Tizzie 3 Packy. It is looking
like a winner for sure in your hands. Can't wait to see how Danny
is doing with his.

gus

Click to expand...

Sure there only all tools at the end of the day, Gus. I used to squeeze some good shots out of less, like my 3mp Canon S30 and it had the lot...rampant noise after ISO100, PF, cr@p flash, snail like performance ect. ect.

*****************************************
Packy

http://picasaweb.google.com/patsweb .... try the slideshow option!

I really don't know, I guess it belongs to a sub-contractor of the Government Water Supply Department. BTW, it was taken with a Panny FZ1:-0 not a F30, but I do switch sig. pic.

Do visit us again and post some pics if you have Fuji DC.

--
Best Regards,

Danny



My Albums
http://photobucket.com/albums/a44/yeeonly

See some of my f31fd shots below or in the forum, just posted a Miami Florida night shot in the forum. Thanks.

Matt
--
http://flickr.com/photos/jomatt/

igilligan said:

Little Billy Bestbuy only wants to know how many mp the camera
has... More is better! Everybody knows that. Even little Billy.

Very disappointing really.

Click to expand...

Very true, even if the consumer and Fuji themselves don't want to, but if buyers of the major electrical and photographic chains are looking to fill a space on their shelves and only look at the figures, then that is the future.

at your profile. Wow!

You take excellent pictures, either with Canon or Fuji I wish you can post more pictures in this forum, I like your flower macros & animals pics too.

I have been to Toronto and Florida, many many years ago. Still remember Dundas Street and KeyWest

BTW, you and your wife are good looking and pleasant couple.

Thank you for visiting us, wish to see more of your F31fd pictures.

--
Best Regards,

Danny



My Albums
http://photobucket.com/albums/a44/yeeonly

Your message reminded me how the shocking look on my father's face he saw my jean (similar to what Gus wore in his performance, but worn out on left side only), today, I was shocked when I saw the dresses of my sons:-0

Fuji forum is a relatively friendly and open minded forum, we can discuss about the amazing things of other brand cameras without getting bashed and we also wish Fuji can deliver something similar to us soon. I will be using F30 and TZ3 more, I guess I almost knew most of the limitation of F30 (and circumvented them by adding polarizer, WCON and TCON to it) and now I will explore the limitation of TZ3, together. This will keep me busy for a while, thus not thinking of DSLR anymore.

The FZ1/FZ2 is a legend, it served me well, back then I was very happy with its iso50 performance (iso100 needs denoise, I avoided using), if it has TZ3 iso100/200 performance and extra 1M pixels, I will not upgrade to FZ5.

Things in the digital photography change quickly.

--
Best Regards,

Danny



My Albums
http://photobucket.com/albums/a44/yeeonly

with his TZ3. I am not an expert in PP like Packy, I am still using iso100 to iso200 on my TZ3. It is difficult to buy another camera and use it freely after using a F3x Fuji:-0

The TZ3 is really handy, One can travel around world easily with a F3x, a TZ3 (may an extra battery) and a digital album.

--
Best Regards,

Danny



My Albums
http://photobucket.com/albums/a44/yeeonly

danny_only said:

Your message reminded me how the shocking look on my father's face
he saw my jean (similar to what Gus wore in his performance, but
worn out on left side only), today, I was shocked when I saw the
dresses of my sons:-0

Fuji forum is a relatively friendly and open minded forum, we can
discuss about the amazing things of other brand cameras without
getting bashed and we also wish Fuji can deliver something similar
to us soon. I will be using F30 and TZ3 more, I guess I almost knew
most of the limitation of F30 (and circumvented them by adding
polarizer, WCON and TCON to it) and now I will explore the
limitation of TZ3, together. This will keep me busy for a while,
thus not thinking of DSLR anymore.

The FZ1/FZ2 is a legend, it served me well, back then I was very
happy with its iso50 performance (iso100 needs denoise, I avoided
using), if it has TZ3 iso100/200 performance and extra 1M pixels, I
will not upgrade to FZ5.

Things in the digital photography change quickly.

--
Best Regards,

Danny

Click to expand...

Danny -

Benefits of age ! .. after awhile you just don't bother quite so much with a bit of noise , especially at low level where the pic still counts most .. and you don't give a damn about pixel-peeping like some seem to get obsessed by. It's mainly MY enjoyment and whilst I still have a fairly high expectancy , it's not always a thing to get too perverted with ...

I think in some ways the Fuji Fxx have spoiled a lot of folk .. many just seem to expect far more than such a camera really is capable of - if you DO go mad and start thinking in higher-echelon types .. like making it a dSLR !!

Just reconcile yourself, I say, by thinking of the poor Canon etc souls who haven't a hope in Hell of getting anything like it ..

--
ericN-UK

I had taken about 30+ touristy type pics with the TZ3 @iso100 to iso200 (few), and will upload to my gallery.

If interested please visit a little bit later tonight.
http://s8.photobucket.com/albums/a44/yeeonly/TZ3/2007%20-%202nd%20Quarter/

If you have already own a s6500fd, the TZ3 may not be too attractive to you, except for its small form factor and light weight. The better iso performance, EVF, size & weight, manual controls or Program Shift function in Auto modeof s6500fd will make up of the lack of OIS in most of the cases.

Like most of the people in HK, I commutel by public transportation, plus my interest in street photography which makes me interested in owning a TZ3. For serious birding I will use my FZ5 + TCON17 combo.

Another thing is how good is the TZ3 in remote distance landscape pictures? another area which I have intererst in. I need to test it more and compare with my F30 (with TCON and WCON), initial impression, for long distance landscape pictures, the F30 + WCON has an edge in resolution. This impression is based on the samples downloaded from dpreview, my existingTZ3 pics vs my previous F30 + WCON pictures.

Still to try to find if TZ3 has only 2 aperture values only at a single focal length or not? I always wish to use the sweet spot of a lens, may need to look for the answer in the Panny forum.

All in all, if Kuroth had not purchased his F20, I would have highly recommended the TZ3 to him. Great for taking pictures of his 2 lovely kids.

--
Best Regards,

Danny



My Albums
http://photobucket.com/albums/a44/yeeonly

Danny -

All this reminiscing about earlier cams and days has had me searching through my FZ1 pics and have come up with a lot of memories.

One pic I shot with the FZ1 was obviously this here that I presumably was inspired to shoot as a mixture of 'record' and maybe close-up with the FZ1 - but it was in fact the very first dSLR I ever bought - the Pentax *ist which I'm sure you'll remember as their very first - this at the time to compete with the popular Canon Rebel 300D. But this Pentax was a real beauty - a REAL cam , far better I think than the relatively cheaper mass-market catchers they are doing now. This first effort of theirs was sold with the special and superb 24-90 lens they made for it (don't think it's sold now) and the total price was a good 50% higher than the Rebel .. in fact the price was its downfall as nobody wanted to buy at that level , so it got phased out and eventually came down to the lesser quality as at present, just to catch the market with such as Canon & Nikon particularly making more inroads. But to this day , this original *ist is 'the goods' and it was passed on to my Son-in-Law who is still getting great pics from it - I went over to the Canon 20D , following a good friend in US who to this day has kept with his - after trying the 30D and just not finding (he said) it as good or better in general use.

If you ever do get the urge to go dSLR I can certainly recommend you consider the Canon as it's remained as good as any , in right hands, and the choice of glass is enormous of course .. AND includes a good few non-Canon but well up there with the marque equivalents and a little better in price.



--
ericN-UK

More and more at place like best buy I' hearing that megapixels don't matter. Mind you, everything being sold has at least 5mp. Features are becoming a selling point. Hence the 'image stabilization' that is only higher iso, and ridiculously high iso with low quality (talking about non-fuji).

kcwan said:

igilligan said:

Little Billy Bestbuy only wants to know how many mp the camera
has... More is better! Everybody knows that. Even little Billy.

Very disappointing really.

Click to expand...

Very true, even if the consumer and Fuji themselves don't want to,
but if buyers of the major electrical and photographic chains are
looking to fill a space on their shelves and only look at the
figures, then that is the future.

Click to expand...

Eric,

Just read a comparison of Nikon D40. D40X and Canon 400D, for high iso performance, the Canon won, but basically, they are all great cameras. I guess with my Panasonic background, I prefer Pentax or SONY with in body IS, but I think if I buy DSLR, Pentax will be on the top of the list.

Just posted some TZ3 pictures in the Panny forum, if interested please take a look.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=23057797

--
Best Regards,

Danny



My Albums
http://photobucket.com/albums/a44/yeeonly

danny_only said:

Eric,

Just read a comparison of Nikon D40. D40X and Canon 400D, for high
iso performance, the Canon won, but basically, they are all great
cameras. I guess with my Panasonic background, I prefer Pentax or
SONY with in body IS, but I think if I buy DSLR, Pentax will be on
the top of the list.

Just posted some TZ3 pictures in the Panny forum, if interested
please take a look.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=23057797

--
Best Regards,

Danny

Click to expand...

Danny -

If you do ever decide to go the dSLR route I don't envy you the choice. I have strong regard for that first Pentax I had but it just isn't the same range nowadays. One of the popular ones is barely more than 1/4 the price I paid for that original *ist , and with having to reduce prices to compete with Canon/Nikon particularly , they've just downgraded the camera. Most shots of yours that I seem to recall are I think the type mostly that just do not demand a particularly long lens ..and with that in mind I'd say that either a Canon 20D , or if you wish , a 30D .. with a Tamron 17-50 f2.8 lens , you'd find is capable of superb results. My Georgia friend uses this extensively - and HE chops and changes his lens almost by the week sometimes (!!) .. but still sticks to the above and gets some wonderful results from it. For what I think maybe is 'your' kind of use it would I'm sure be an ideal combination to consider.

As to the TZ3 pics you posted over there .. they were very good again and certainly I wish that cam was far better and sensibly priced here .. at the equal of around $475+ (minimum) it's just nonsense. But I also find it very difficult to assess such things on the pics you see such as you posted. Those conditioins just cry out for a normally expected ISO 100 or so .. and so of course it looks good. Here in our mostly usual conditions , there are not too many days in the year when you would just automatically expect to shoot at '100' ... so if you are forced to even 200 ..or maybe sometimes even '400' .. is it then going to be as pleasing I wonder. Very nice camera nevertheless ..

--
ericN-UK

Hi Eric,

Price is another reasons why I put Pentax on the top of the list, Back in film days, I could only afford Pentax, I had a Pentax ME, a 50mm f1.4 std lens, a 100mm f2.8 portrait lens and a third party wide angle zoom. If I go for Canon or Nikon, for sure I will buy VR lens only, except high speed prime lens, perhaps.

I am also sceptical about iso200/400 performance of TZ3, I hate to denoise iso200/400pics, because I am lazy and I am using Noiseware Community Editon, once denosied a pic, all exif gone. Still trying to take more pictures with iso200. If you look carefully, the white bowl holding the beef showed color specks, it was an iso200 pic. Denoising it, will remove them easily, but I had taken similar pictures in the same restaurant, using iso200/400 did not require denoise. F30 is still the low light king.

--
Best Regards,

Danny



My Albums
http://photobucket.com/albums/a44/yeeonly

Danny -

Just a quickie to respond to one poinit - agree ... De-noising is no great problem but you do need to do it and accept it with great care. Physically (is that right?) you just cannot take away noise without taking something else , so less (or none) the better .. BUT ..I've got Noiseware Pro, Noise Ninja AND Neat Image Pro .. and I NEVER lose EXIF. Probably depends on what you do it in .. the program I mean. It certainly doesn't in PS7...

Agree entirely with what you say - we are of course getting hardened to the fact that the Fxx is unbeatable for high ISO .. but are we getting brain-washed a bit ... we should not sound as though we actually LOOK for high-ISO shots so much .. never had it up to the last two or three years .. and we don't CHOOSE to have high ISO - nice it if gives a good pic anyway , but frankly , good as the Fuji are , the higher ISO are STILL very much a compromise .. the more you see of dSLR pics the more you realise that even a GOOD compact is very much a compromise.

--
ericN-UK

Eric,

I am using the free Community Edition of Noiseware which remove exif from pics. I normally avoid denosie for reason you mentioned, plus if I want to print a picture, I don't mind having a little noise, because it will not show on print.

ericN2 said:

Agree entirely with what you say - we are of course getting
hardened to the fact that the Fxx is unbeatable for high ISO .. but
are we getting brain-washed a bit ... we should not sound as though
we actually LOOK for high-ISO shots so much .. never had it up to
the last two or three years .. and we don't CHOOSE to have high ISO

• nice it if gives a good pic anyway , but frankly , good as the

Fuji are , the higher ISO are STILL very much a compromise .. the
more you see of dSLR pics the more you realise that even a GOOD
compact is very much a compromise.

Click to expand...

I am a practical man, when I am using IS enabled digital cameras, I still look for supports, either, tree, wall, opened menu inside restaurant or what ever support I can find near by, using the IS as an insurance. When I am using F30, I always use the lowest possible iso, if you check my gallery, you will not find many F30 pictures at iso800. Apart from being practical, I am also lazy, I avoid F30's iso800, because I may need to denoise:-0

I had used the TZ3 for a while and had made some comparison with F30. In light condition required iso200/400/800, F30 is still the best. But when comparing F3x with DSLRs at small print to medium sizes, anything above iso200, the competition is over.

--
Best Regards,

Danny



My Albums
http://photobucket.com/albums/a44/yeeonly

Don't worry , Danny , I've always admired your pics and the obvious way (to me) that you take them to heart in the process.

What a pity we can't find somebody who is able to 'shrink' dSLRs to a nice little pocket size and keep the benefits .. ho-hum ...

Until then I guess we must just dream on and THINK we're getting better than we really are ...

--
ericN-UK