Once your phone or tablet is connected to the TZ80 / ZS60, you can remote control it, browse the images direct from the memory card, copy them onto the handset and if desired send them onto various storage or sharing services. You can also set the app to make a GPS log for subsequent syncing and tagging, create a snap movie, or photo collage.

These images show 72ppi (100% on a computer screen) sections of images of a resolution chart, captured using the Leica 24-720mm (equivalent) lens set to 45mm and f/5.6. We show the section of the resolution chart where the camera starts to fail to reproduce the lines separately. The higher the number visible in these images, the better the camera’s detail resolution at the specified sensitivity setting. Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 review – White balance and colour New to both the TZ80 / ZS60 and TZ100 / ZS100 is 4k Live Cropping which exploits the resolution of a 4k frame to provide a digital pan and zoom feature at 1080p resolution. You specify the start and end of the clip by tapping the screen to position a 1920×1080 sized frame. You can also set the overall time of the clip to either 40 or 20 seconds. The degree of zoom is limited to the full 4k frame at the wide end to the 1920×1080 frame at the ‘zoomed-in’ end to maintain quality. It’s a neat feature which, once again, makes innovative use of the camera’s 4k resolution to make life easier, particularly if you need a super-smooth panning shot, but don’t have a suitable tripod. You can see what the results look like in my video sample below. Shooting moving subjects with the focus mode set to continuous is a bit more of a hit and miss affair though. I found the best results were achieved with the TZ80 / ZS80 set to 49 Area AF mode using the central AF area grouping. In good light the TZ80 / ZS60’s contrast detect system, aided by Depth from Defocus, can acquire and maintain focus on a moderately paced subject moving towards the camera with a better than 50% success rate. Once the light starts to fade, however, it becomes much less reliable. And you can expect the hit rate to fall pretty dramatically with faster moving and less predictable subjects like animals or football players. So to help you manage those expectations, the long zoom may let you get closer to wildlife or sports subjects, but may struggle to keep them in focus if they’re moving, especially in lower light. With quite a high pixel density, the sensitivity range of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 has been kept to a moderate ISO 100-3200, expandable to ISO 6400. With raw image capture it will be interesting to see just how much the DMC-TZ60 can be pushed to the limits of the range, given that editing the raw files should produce better images than the in-camera JPEGs. At the time of writing, the raw-conversion software for the DMC-TZ60 wasn’t available, so we will look at this in more detail in our full test.As always, the key will be the image quality, as 18 million pixels on a small compact sensor will no doubt be a test of the in-camera image processing. It will also be interesting to see what the processed raw images look like. A few notes on the display views. The TZ60 / ZS40 offers a variety of views with varying amounts of information and guides. There’s a dual-axis leveling gauge, and if enabled in the menus, a live histogram or choice of guidelines; although unlike its predecessor, no chance of dragging them around the screen with your finger. There are two options for transferring images; Batch transfer provides a menu from which you can select options to transfer the current day’s images, or you can include the last 3, 7 or 30 days, or if you’re feeling impetuous you can opt to transfer everything. Further options allow you to restrict transferred files to just photos or videos. If you want to browse the images on the card in the camera before deciding which to transfer, then Transfer selection is the option to go for. You can also adjust the drive mode, exposure compensation or focus area, although strangely the ISO and White Balance buttons were always greyed-out when I used the remote control; maybe you need to use a different shooting mode to enable them. There’s also a Q.Menu button which presents a list of additional options you can remotely change including the flash mode, aspect ratio, resolution, compression, focus mode, metering mode, colour mode or movie quality.

Staying on the subject of ports, the other wired connector on the TZ60 / ZS40 is micro HDMI. The camera additionally features built-in Wifi with NFC to aid negotiation on compatible devices, and also a GPS receiver which supports GLONASS. I’ll talk more about Wifi and GPS later in the review, but for now mention that the Sony HX60V has both Wifi and GPS built-in, but the Canon SX700 HS only has Wifi, instead relying on a separate handset to make a GPS log for subsequent syncing. Panasonic Lumix TZ60 / ZS40 screen and viewfinder There are two different modes, Mode 1 is on all the time including image composition, and Mode 2 is only on when you press the shutter button. An Auto setting is also available if you're not sure which one to use. You don't notice that the camera is actually doing anything different when anti-shake is turned on, just that you can use slower shutter speeds than normal and still take sharp photos. The TZ60 has a respectable battery life of 300 shots. Note that the camera battery is rather inconveniently charged via the USB port, rather than a separate charger, so it's a good idea to invest in some extra batteries.The Lumix TZ80 / ZS60 has 1080p HD movie modes at 25 and 50 frames per second in PAL regions and 30 and 60 fps in NTSC regions. It also supports 4k UHD video at 25 or 30fps along with Panasonic’s 4k Photo mode – a fun way of exploiting the fact 4k video captures an 8 Megapixel image up to 30 times a second. The clever part is Panasonic equips its 4k Photo cameras with menus that let you easily capture bursts of video before scrolling through the footage and extracting the perfect frame as a JPEG image, all in-camera. You could of course frame grab from video externally, but Panasonic has made it easy to perform the whole process in-camera. Gordon’s gone into more detail about 4K Photo in his Lumix GX8 review and I’ve demonstrated it later in the review, along with the Post Focus feature.

On top of all this, the TZ60 / ZS40 inherits the unique GPS-driven landmark database of its predecessors, while also sporting the best smartphone remote control of the group. Sure the built-in mapping of the earlier TZ40 / ZS30 is gone, but in an age of Google Maps on large and detailed smartphone screens, I suspect no-one will miss it. To be fair, the approach is not dissimilar to the way most other manufacturers implement direct uploads, but to me it makes more sense to just use Wifi to copy the image from the camera to a more capable device and upload from there instead. Numerically the Lumix TZ60 / ZS40 is the successor to last year’s TZ40 / ZS30, although Panasonic has made a number of key changes that make it a significantly different camera. But in the year since it was released, the TZ40 / ZS30 has fallen considerably in price to become a relative bargain, and in some respects a more attractive option than the newer TZ55 / ZS35 depending on which features you rate highest. As before, there’s a wealth of alternative image resolutions and sizes. You can shoot in the full 18 Megapixels, or at 12, 8, 5, 3 or 0.3 Megapixels in the 4:3 aspect ratio, or switch to 3:2, 16:9 or 1:1 cropped shapes instead, each with reduced resolutions. Again as before there’s also the choice of two JPEG compression levels, Fine or Standard, but new to the TZ60 / ZS40 is the chance to record RAW files, with or without a JPEG at either compression level. This is a major move for the Lumix travel zoom, and gives it with another valuable edge over the competition, at least in theory – you can see it in action in my RAW quality results.

Despite a bright display and an anti-reflective coating, the 3in, 920,000-dot screen struggled in the extremely bright sunlight of the Mojave Desert, and it was awkward to compose images. In more subdued daylight the screen was fine, with good colours and a pleasing level of contrast. Panasonic Lumix TZ60: Build and handling Trying to choose between the TZ60 and TZ70? Read the What Digital Camera Panasonic Lumix TZ70 vs Panasonic Lumix TZ60 comparison I found that sensitivities of ISO 400 and below produce the best results, so for day-to-day shooting I chose to set the ISO to auto and limit it to ISO 400. Between ISO 1600 and the maximum extended ISO 6400, slight colour noise starts to become evident and luminance noise is very noticeable,while, the detail along high-contrast edges becomes jagged and smudgy. Okay so let’s start with establishing a connection between the camera and a smartphone or tablet. NFC or not, the first thing you’ll need to do is install the free Lumix Image app, available for iOS or Android devices. Next you’ll need to enable Wifi on your phone or tablet and if you’re intending to use NFC, you’ll also need to enable this on your phone / tablet. The AVCHD mode can record video in either 1080p at 28Mbit/s, or 1080i or 720p, both at a rate of 17Mbit/s. 1080p footage is recorded at 50p or 60p depending on region, while 1080i footage is recorded at 50i or 60i depending on region. 720p footage is recorded at 50p or 60p depending on region. You can choose to tag AVCHD movies with GPS location data, although it may cause incompatibilities with some devices. Using the best quality 1080p AVCHD mode, you’re looking at about 200Mbytes per minute of footage, considerably more than the 1080i and 720p AVCHD modes which consume closer to 120 Mbytes per minute of footage.

Is it worth paying the extra? Only you can decide. Personally I think it’s worth it for the viewfinder and controls. Indeed for raising the bar to a degree where it reaches comfortably beyond the point-and-shoot nature of most rivals I’m awarding the TZ60 / ZS40 our Highly Recommended rating – but equally I realize if the extra features aren’t important to you, then there’s money to be saved on simpler models which share the same zoom range and image quality. To help combat camera shake, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 has an anti-shake system, on this model the POWER O.I.S. variety. Turn it on and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 automatically compensates for camera shake, which is a slight blurring of the image that typically occurs at slow shutter speeds when the camera is hand held. When shooting video, the 5-axis HYBRID O.I.S.+ is automatically added to the POWER O.I.S. system, which effectively compensates for the camera's five types of movement – horizontal, vertical, axis of rotation, vertical rotation and horizontal rotation. Although you wouldn’t know to look at it, the major change on the TZ80 / Z60’s rear panel is of course the touch-screen. The screen is a 3 inch LCD panel with a 1040k dot resolution but that’s nothing remarkable. What is new is that, for the first time in three generations, a Lumix TZ / ZS series model once again features a touch sensitive screen. The Lumix TZ80 / ZS60 retains the TZ70 / ZS50’s built-in 1166k dot electronic viewfinder which also features on the higher-end Lumix TZ100 / ZS100. An eye-sensor and a button for toggling between the viewfinder and the screen which doubles up as Fn4 works in the same way as other recent Lumix models with three options – viewfinder, screen or eye sensor, the latter activating the viewfinder when you put your eye to it and the screen at all other times. As soon as you push your card into the slot – so that the writing and brand are facing up, I might add – the computer will begin recognising it. Some computers will open a push command box, asking what you want to do next. Simply select the option that's most closely related to 'open folder to view files' and you're away.When previewed at A4 size, images at the minimum ISO 100 sensitivity look clean with only a hint of luminance noise – if you are pixel peeping. The same can be said for images at ISO 400, but when zoomed in to 100%, many of the high-contrast lines in JPEG images start to become smudgy due to in-camera noise reduction. When previewing A4-sized JPEGs at ISO 800-1600, the luminance noise does not detract in any way from the images. However, these images do appear noticeably softer than ISO 100 images because so much detail has been lost due to heavy in-camera noise reduction. The Canon PowerShot SX700 HS is a major competitor to the Lumix TZ60 / ZS40 and on the surface the two models share a lot of similarities. Both have 30x zoom lenses (with slightly different ranges), and they both have 3 inch screens with similar resolution, neither of which is touch-sensitive, Panasonic having dropped that feature from its latest flagship travel zoom. They are almost identically sized, though the SX700 HS is a little bigger and heavier, and both come with built-in Wifi and NFC. The Lumix TZ60 / ZS40 also has a built-in GPS, though you can use your smartphone to tag images on the SX700 HS with geopositional data. It’s also worth noting that the Panasonic app is more sophisticated than the Canon one and offers better remote shooting and image transfer options. Other video features include snap movie, which records a short clip of between two and eight seconds in length. With snap movies you can set up a focus pull in advance tapping the screen to define the start and end focus positions, which is pretty neat. You can also add a monochrome to colour fade in our out effect, as well as a simple exposure fade. There’s are also Time Lapse and Stop Motion modes, accessed through the main menus rather than the movie options. Panasonic recommends using a UHS-I Speed Class 3 (U3) SD card for the 100Mbit 4K UHD and High Speed Video modes and a Speed Class 4 card for everything else. Note the TZ80 / ZS60 does not offer CineLike profiles for later grading, but then I can’t imagine many people wanting this capability on this type of camera. If you want to capture video at the full sensor width, you’ll need to reduce the quality to 1080, although there’s obviously a vertical crop due to the different aspect ratios – 16:9 against 4:3. Here’s how the TZ80 / ZS60 crop looks for 4k video, below left, compared to 1080p video, below right. Again like Sony you can choose from panning with the camera held horizontally or vertically, but unlike Sony the TZ60 / ZS40 seems happy to capture a full 360 degree panorama if you’re able to keep turning it during the four second capture process – during which time it has to be said everybody around you will be staring.