This thread doesn't seem too popular but while I have a moment I thought I'd post a few more pictures and thoughts just in case anyone is interested or helped. I haven't used this camera a lot but I am trying to carry it more so when we went to the park yesterday I took it along.
The main issues to me are that the lens is a bit soft and even softer at some focal length but doubtless fine for whole pictures or even crops depending upon your own standards, just don't expect this camera to give you cutting edge sharpness when looking closely. Another possible issue is dynamic range but I suppose putting this into a little perspective I tried to think about the Canon 20D and 5D I had years ago. With those cameras lifting the shadows was likely to show unsightly noise PDQ whereas with the TZ100 the files seem to be able to take quite a bit of pushing at least at the ISO's you'd expect on a day out. Low light shooting may be another matter. Just out of interest I googled the DR or the TZ100 and it's apparently 12.5, the 20D and 5D are apparently 11 and 11.1 respectively, according to DXO. Whatever the numbers mean this seems to confirm what I'm seeing, that the TZ100 pictures can take a push in processing when the old Canon DSLR's I had struggled.
Note that posting the pictures here may lead to softening and people willing to spend more time processing will no doubt get much better results.
This is what one picture looked like upon import into CS5.
The camera seems to have tried to protect the highlights and hasn't quite managed to stop the top left blowing a bit. I painted on some exposure correction in the top left, lifted the general exposure a bit and added fill light and got this.
It was a dull day and I was shooting into the glare and this wont win any prizes but it's useable as a "we had a day out here" picture.
Pointing the camera away from the sun and again lifting the shadows a bit as appropriate gives the following and just out of interest I've included the focal length and aperture, all shot wide open. Googling tells me that this camera is a 2.73 crop and again out of interest I've included the FF equivalent focal length but I haven't bothered with the aperture.
The eye detect works well. I normally use aperture swapping to manual as the light drops and the camera selects too low a shutter speed and I also have a couple of custom settings saved with eye detect and wide area focus so changing settings for a people picture is quite easy.
f4.5, 26mm (FF equiv = 70.98mm)
Same settings as above.
f2.8, 9mm (FF equiv = 24.97mm)
f5.9, 91mm (FF equiv = 248.43mm, the longest it would go.)
A 35% crop from that.
As above, wide open at f5.9 and at max zoom.
I forgot to include a 40% crop from that so it's in the next post.
Oh, and if anyone enjoys taking pictures of flowers and leaves etc I think it fills the frame best at about 90mm or so. This is a bit confusing as the camera reports the focal length in FF terms on the EVF and screen but the exif states the focal length as it is before applying the crop factor. Confusing? You may be able to change this in the menu somewhere but I haven't bothered. So, when I say that the best results for close up pictures are at about 90mm that's what the camera is telling me but the exif will state 32.96mm.
This camera wont replace my FF Sony A7 and IMO it can't match the image quality of my Panasonic MFT cameras but it is compact and light and will fit in a coat pocket and it has a good zoom range, I think the spec is 25-250mm. I try to take this camera when I think that my A7 or even my Panasonic MFT cameras will be too much and I do think it makes a nice day out and holiday camera. The last couple of times I've managed to go on holiday I've taken my A7 with 35mm f2.8 and this TZ100 for wider and longer shots and for when I think the A7 is too intrusive.
I hope this was of interest and maybe helped some.
WEEK 17 Beautiful (1 of 1) by Mark Gameson, on Flickr
WEEK 17 Beautiful (1 of 1)B&W by Mark Gameson, on Flickr
Stream on Dartmoor. by R Hillman, on Flickr[/URL]
