Setter Dog
Veteran Member
I found this review on the TZ5 video when I went to check prices at Amazon. I noted that this review was written on June 13th, though the writer states he's had the camera a month or two. Either he has the old firmware version or the autofocus hasn't been corrected.
Has anyone else had this "time remaining" problem of only 8 minutes showing for video on an 8gb card?
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Very good, but some minor flaws that keep it from great, June 13, 2008
I bought this camera a couple of months ago primarily because it was one of the very few still cameras that also recorded movies at 720p resolution. (A couple more have been released since.) My previous camera, a Fuji F700 had just died after a long and fruitful life and I was looking to upgrade. This camera seemed to be just the ticket. I wanted a camera with great stills, of course, but also good quality video, because I don't want to carry two pieces of equipment around. This camera delivers on both ends.
Let's start with the pros. The pictures are very good, I don't see any problems with them. The 3" screen is very sharp and really nice. The 10x zoom is terrific. The camera is a nice comfortable size.
Battery life is pretty amazing. Although I bought two backup batteries, I find that I don't have to use them at all. Also, the charger, with foldup electrical prongs, is tiny and does a great job recharging in 90 minutes or so. Easy enough to throw the charger in the suitcase as well.
The cons are not too bad, but annoying and simple to fix. After shooting a still picture, the camera, of course, shows you a still of what you've just shot. However, when you turn the camera sideways to shoot, say, a picture of the Eiffel Tower, the playback will flip the shot so that you don't have to turn the camera. Why have that gorgeous 3" screen if you're not going to use it? I'll readily admit this is a minor annoyance, to be sure. This is the default mode, and after some searching in the camera's memory, it can be changed to that the playback mode doesn't flip the picture.
When shooting video, the camera's default is to have continuous focus. Even if you're not moving the camera much, the camera will continue to go in and out of focus while shooting video, blurring everything. This is more annoying than the picture flip I mentioned. This is also correctable in the menu.
The third annoyance is the camera's memory reading ability. I have an 8 GB card, which is more than ample memory for anything. In fact, the camera can shoot about 33 minutes of video on the highest-quality setting - 720p, 30 frames/sec. However, when you go to shoot video, the camera only reads that there are 8 minutes and 30 seconds of video. This is no big deal; however, after you shoot, say, 1 minute of video, and the counter counts down to 7 minutes and thirty seconds, then you press the shutter release again to stop recording, the reading changes right back to 8 minutes and 30 seconds, the maximum amount of memory recognizable by the camera. This makes you think that the video didn't get saved.
This thinking that the video didn't get saved is reinforced when you go to play it back, leading to my final annoyance, the camera's integration with my Panasonic Viera plasma TV. I didn't buy a Panasonic camera for this purpose, but as long as I did, I figured, "what the hey?" The TV has an SD slot in back, so you can take your memory card out of the camera and stick it directly into the TV and have a slide show of your pictures. Sounds good, right? But it doesn't play back video through the card slot.
To play back the 720p video on the 720p plasma TV, you have to use cables, and connect it to one of the inputs. The problem with this is that the cables provided aren't even composite cables - they're the standard red, white, and yellow - and this degrades the video quality. This is just plain dumb, dumb, dumb. The only way you can look at the video in all its HQ glory is on your computer.
All in all, these are minor annoyances, I'll admit. But they do keep me from giving the camera a 5-star rating.
Has anyone else had this "time remaining" problem of only 8 minutes showing for video on an 8gb card?
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Very good, but some minor flaws that keep it from great, June 13, 2008
I bought this camera a couple of months ago primarily because it was one of the very few still cameras that also recorded movies at 720p resolution. (A couple more have been released since.) My previous camera, a Fuji F700 had just died after a long and fruitful life and I was looking to upgrade. This camera seemed to be just the ticket. I wanted a camera with great stills, of course, but also good quality video, because I don't want to carry two pieces of equipment around. This camera delivers on both ends.
Let's start with the pros. The pictures are very good, I don't see any problems with them. The 3" screen is very sharp and really nice. The 10x zoom is terrific. The camera is a nice comfortable size.
Battery life is pretty amazing. Although I bought two backup batteries, I find that I don't have to use them at all. Also, the charger, with foldup electrical prongs, is tiny and does a great job recharging in 90 minutes or so. Easy enough to throw the charger in the suitcase as well.
The cons are not too bad, but annoying and simple to fix. After shooting a still picture, the camera, of course, shows you a still of what you've just shot. However, when you turn the camera sideways to shoot, say, a picture of the Eiffel Tower, the playback will flip the shot so that you don't have to turn the camera. Why have that gorgeous 3" screen if you're not going to use it? I'll readily admit this is a minor annoyance, to be sure. This is the default mode, and after some searching in the camera's memory, it can be changed to that the playback mode doesn't flip the picture.
When shooting video, the camera's default is to have continuous focus. Even if you're not moving the camera much, the camera will continue to go in and out of focus while shooting video, blurring everything. This is more annoying than the picture flip I mentioned. This is also correctable in the menu.
The third annoyance is the camera's memory reading ability. I have an 8 GB card, which is more than ample memory for anything. In fact, the camera can shoot about 33 minutes of video on the highest-quality setting - 720p, 30 frames/sec. However, when you go to shoot video, the camera only reads that there are 8 minutes and 30 seconds of video. This is no big deal; however, after you shoot, say, 1 minute of video, and the counter counts down to 7 minutes and thirty seconds, then you press the shutter release again to stop recording, the reading changes right back to 8 minutes and 30 seconds, the maximum amount of memory recognizable by the camera. This makes you think that the video didn't get saved.
This thinking that the video didn't get saved is reinforced when you go to play it back, leading to my final annoyance, the camera's integration with my Panasonic Viera plasma TV. I didn't buy a Panasonic camera for this purpose, but as long as I did, I figured, "what the hey?" The TV has an SD slot in back, so you can take your memory card out of the camera and stick it directly into the TV and have a slide show of your pictures. Sounds good, right? But it doesn't play back video through the card slot.
To play back the 720p video on the 720p plasma TV, you have to use cables, and connect it to one of the inputs. The problem with this is that the cables provided aren't even composite cables - they're the standard red, white, and yellow - and this degrades the video quality. This is just plain dumb, dumb, dumb. The only way you can look at the video in all its HQ glory is on your computer.
All in all, these are minor annoyances, I'll admit. But they do keep me from giving the camera a 5-star rating.
