I couldn't decide between these three cameras (and their variants, the Sony HX30 and the Panasonic ZX20) because many of the reviews of each made the cameras sound very similar. So, I went out and bought (from merchants who accepted returns) one of each of these three cameras (I didn't need WI-FI or GPS, so that's how I settled on these less expensive variants). And then I took photos and videos in various conditions. I am not a professional photographer, and I didn't do Imatest or any other specific tests on the images (you can read C/net for that), but this is an experience of a regular person who was taking pictures and videos with these three cameras side by side, which is a comparison that you do not often see.
The bottom line is that these three cameras are very similar with a few minor differences, but those differences set them apart and may make you decide that you like one more than the other.
Generally speaking, NONE of these cameras is a DSLR replacement. Whomever writes that the pictures are as good as a DSLR is not speaking accurately. Also, none of the cameras is a replacement for a high end camcorder.
OUTSIDE PICTURES
If you are taking pictures outside on a sunny day all of these cameras will take very nice pictures for small to medium enlargements (no bigger than 8 x 10). The cameras all produce nice fairly sharp images that would be well suited for that purpose. And, like most people, I don't remember ever enlarging a picture more than 8 x 10, so it is not a common problem.
What might be an issue is if you are zoomed in all the way and wanted to crop a photo (which sometimes happens), the differences in the way the cameras' photos look when you "pixel peep" might make a difference. In good light outside, the cameras were close, but the best photos were from the CANON with the SONY and the PANASONIC a close second.
INSIDE PICTURES GOOD LIGHT
If you are inside and you are taking pictures in low light, you will see a different story. Again, at smaller sized prints 4x6, 5x7, most people will see almost no difference between the pictures of the three cameras other than the PANASONIC's colors are a little less vibrant than those in the CANON and the SONY. I am not sure whether those colors are less accurate, they are just a little less vivid.
If you pixel peep at these pictures, the CANON's photos are clearly the best with the PANASONIC's being second. The CANON's remain very sharp through a good amount of enlargement while the PANASONIC's, although close, get softer a little faster. The SONY's pictures inside with good light became soft rather quickly and, I'm not sure if this is because the SONY has 18MP on a small chip (as some of the tech reviewers write), but there is a "watercolor" effect where after you enlarge it a little bit, it looks like a Claude Manet painting.
INSIDE PICTURES LOW LIGHT
In poor light, the hierarchy between the cameras remains the same, but there is less of a gap between the CANON and the PANASONIC. It seems as if the CANON takes somewhat worse pictures in low light, and the PANASONIC just doesn't get that much worse. As a result, the gap between these two becomes somewhat closer. The SONY's pictures remain the poorest of the three in low light.
VIDEO OUTSIDE GOOD LIGHT
All three cameras take very nice video outside in good light. If you are editing or nitpicky, you will note that the SONY and the PANASONIC take 60 frames per second, which is somewhat easier to edit, than the 24 frames per second that the CANON records. While you have to look for it, the CANON's outside video does have a couple of instances where it seems to be a tad jerky compared to the SONY and PANASONIC's video. But you really have to look for it and most people won't notice if you don't have another video outside for comparison.
While all the outdoor video is close, I would give the edge to the SONY in video, with the PANASONIC second and the CANON third. But they are close for outside video.
VIDEO INSIDE
Taking video inside is a different story. Inside, the SONY shines and clearly has the best video. The video from this camera is actually good. It is not professional level by any stretch, but it is good solid quite viewable video from a camera that takes still pictures.
There is a noticeable difference on indoor video between the SONY and the PANASONIC. This difference was perhaps most noticeable to me because I had both videos from both cameras and watched them over and over again looking for differences. While the difference is noticeable, it is not a tremendous difference. The SONY video is super smooth and seems to get as much out of the light as it can. The PANASONIC video also is smooth and gets a good contrast tone and color out of the available light, but is slightly less smooth than the SONY. The PANASONIC video is still very viewable and looks good, but not as good as the SONY.
The CANON will take decent indoor video in good light, but in poor light, it just seems to struggle. The CANON's video had many shadows and dark areas that simply were not present in the SONY and PANASONIC videos. I did not notice any hissing in the CANON video as some of the other reviewers have mentioned. This may be an issue that varies from camera to camera.
HANDLING AND SPEED
This was a fairly subjective comparison between the three cameras as to how they felt in the hand and how quickly the camera did what I wanted it to do because if the camera doesn't take the shot when you want to, it doesn't really matter how sharp the picture or video might be.
Based on my experience, the PANASONIC had the best handling of the three. While the PANASONIC and the SONY were both quick to take a picture, for some reason the SONY that I had would take a much longer time (seconds) to record the picture onto the card. This was despite the fact that both cameras had comparable cards with comparable write speeds. Both the SONY and the PANASONIC had rather quick autofocus which also made them seem to react faster. The PANASONIC is noticeably thinner and lighter than the SONY while maintaining a similar full raised rubber grip on the front which made the camera easier to handle. While both the SONY and the PANASONIC were quick, the blazingly fast (by comparison) write speeds on the PANASONIC compared with its almost non-existent shutter lag made this the best handling camera of the three by far.
Even though it consistently took the best pictures, the CANON was the worst handling camera. The autofocus often had issues focusing and there was a constant shutter lag while it was searching for its focus. We did miss some shots because the CANON was so slow to react. Also, the CANON is somewhere in weight between the SONY and the PANASONIC, but has the worst grip of the three. That little rubber strip on the front is not as effective a grip as the fuller grip that appears on the SONY and the PANASONIC.
With respect to handling, I've read many reviews and each of them seems to state different things about each of the cameras. Many of these reviews seem to indicate that the SONY is a very fast camera, and that might be the case, but the write speed of the 18 MP pictures (which are 50% larger than the CANON's photos and almost the same for the PANASONIC) was so slow, it was distracting and detracted from the experience of using the camera.
VERDICT AND CONCLUSIONS
None of these cameras is the best at everything. The CANON has the best pictures, but is slow to focus, somewhat awkward to handle and has the worst video of the three. The SONY handles okay but is heavy and has noticeably slow write speeds, its picture quality varies greatly with the light (and will deteriorate rapidly with any significant cropping) but the SONY has the best video, and it is noticeable.
In the end I decided to go with the PANASONIC. While it only was the best in handling, to me that was a significant portion of the photographic experience. It is not DSLR fast (instantaneous), but it is a zippy camera for a superzoom, is light in weight and has a good grip which makes it easier to hold. Also, it does not have a pop-up flash which I found always seemed to come up under my fingers where I was holding the left side camera. As noted above, the PANASONIC's videos were good, perhaps not as good as the SONY, but the PANASONIC was certainly capable of capturing some nice video, even in low light. The photos also were not as good as the CANON's, but they were close and very close in low light. With respect to the vibrancy of the colors, if you set the photo vibrancy on the PANASONIC to "happy" (which I guess is their "vivid") it is less of a noticeable difference. The photos look very nice and certainly are competitive in quality for this type of camera.
Hopefully this comparison and these observations will help you decide between these three similar cameras so you can choose the best one for your needs. Good luck.
I had the original ZS-3 which served me well until it broke down. I purchased the ZS-10 and was disappointed with the low-light performance to the extent of returning it. The ZS-20 is a major improvement over the ZS-10.
I have taken only 100-200 pictures but the low light performance is much better and comparable (or slightly better) to the ZS-3. I don't have hands on experience with the other supercompacts but the panasonic worked well for my needs
Pro's
-The Zoom is phenomenal (but comparable to other super compact out there)
AF speed is very good.
Low light performance is ok (major improvement but still just ok)
Flash works surprisingly well to improve overall picture quality
Small, easy to carry around
Same battery as previous model, so if upgrading, you can re-use old peripherals
Con's
Menus could be better, 2-3 clicks to get somewhere, too many buttons and dials *** see update below
Touch screen is confusing unclear when it's used vs. the navigation buttons *** See update below
Preliminary but I feel that the OS can do a better job. Might be because of the extended zoom
Overall
Great compact superzoom, small, light and produce great pictures. Does well what its intended to do.
UPDATE: April 9
Learning curve for touch screen is faster than I originally felt
Video looks great at good light, low light performance for video is not great compared to my panasonic camcoder
HDR works great with minor caveat do not shoot moving objects as the processing gets confused and the blended picture includes multiple fragments of the moving object (in my case kids). I believe this is an issue on all HDR's general recommendation, always take an extra pic on no HDR since a garbled HDR picture is useless
Macro works great
I played with custom setting on the dial which mitigates the multiple switches and dials this to some extend. For example, relatively easy managed to setup custom scene for HDR so to switch from HDR to iA is just a turn of dial
Still very positive on the camera, great buy. Easily fits into my pocket
UPDATE: April 22
Zooming on video adds a slight humm noise to the soundtrack
Touch screen is great! I love the fact that you can just touch the specific object you want to focus on and have the camera focus on it and immediately take a picture. No more half way press, turn and then full press to "tell" the camera where to focus
Buy Panasonic Lumix ZS20 14.1 MP High Sensitivity MOS Digital Camera with 20x Optical Zoom (Black) Now
I tried the models that directly compete with this camera from Canon, Sony, and Nikon and much to my surprise, overall, this camera was superior in almost all areas that matter most to me. That would be the quality and flexibility of the video, the quality of the optical image stabilization, and the overall quality of the still pictures it takes. I didn't care about the GPS as it is largely a gimmick in my opinion and all the major competitors have it now or they feel they won't be able to compete.
You should realize that the GPS built into this camera (and most cameras) is NOT the same GPS you may be used to in your car or smart phone. It does not have detailed maps, does not have a large database of places or landmarks, and is not as accurate. It is basically for tagging your photos and videos with the latitude and longitude of where you took the image so you don't have to take notes manually to sort out what you shot and where later. That's why I consider it largely a gimmick.
Briefly then, this camera had by far, the best video quality and flexibility. You can select AVCHD video in several quality levels including full HD at 1920 x 1080 @ 60 fps (if your computer can handle it--many can't), MP4 video in several quality settings including full HD 1920 x 1080 @ 30 fps, and even a (not too useful) 320 x 240 setting for high-speed video at 240 fps.
FOR TECHIES ONLY: Note that most of these video settings output progressive video but one of them outputs interlaced (can't remember which AVCHD setting). This makes me suspicious that the internal video circuitry may be interlaced and not progressive and they simply convert (deinterlace) the video when they create the progressive video file on the memory card. I could not find confirmation on this anywhere and calling Panasonic support is utterly useless for something this technical--they just aren't trained to know such things. I must say though that I didn't notice any interlaced artifacts or sharpness/quality issues with the video so I'm satisfied with the video either way.
The optical image stabilization is absolutely amazing and was so far superior to the Nikon for example, that I had to keep checking that I actually had the image stabilization in the Nikon turned on! You can literally hand-hold the camera at full 20x zoom (being very deliberate and careful) and shoot acceptable video, which is almost unheard of in a small camera like this.
The still images are very high quality and have relatively low noise for a camera that has this many pixels in the sensor. Most consumers don't realize that it's mostly the marketing departments that want to keep pushing the number of pixels in these small cameras. The engineers know that when you put this many pixels on a small sensor, you get more noise artifacts and you can do only so much about that. This camera is no different in that regard than all the others that are 14 or higher megapixels, regardless of what they claim in their marketing hype.
And the final selling point over some of the competitors for me was that this camera, even with all its consumer "presets" to make this a "point-and-shoot" camera (actually almost too many--confusing!) still has FULL MANUAL CONTROLS and aperture or shutter priority settings for "real" photographers.
Note that like most other pocket cameras, this one does not support RAW files but that's not what it is intended for. Furthermore, with single images files as large as almost 13 MB in size from the 14.1 megapixel sensor, you have more than enough pixels to do some serious Photoshop work even without having RAW files to work with.
This will now be my "take everywhere" camera when I don't need to do "serious" photography and don't want to lug around my full sized Canon DSLR and lenses.
Read Best Reviews of Panasonic Lumix ZS20 14.1 MP High Sensitivity MOS Digital Camera with 20x Optical Zoom (Black) Here
Where do I start? The features on this camera are amazing. The burst shooting modes, the 1080p video, the 20x zoom, the manual controls, scene modes, handling, and menus, are stunning and as close to perfect as you can get at any price point for a camera that easily fits into a pocket. This camera seemed a bargain for the features.
So why two stars? Poor picture quality. I have a camera with $400-camera features and $125-camera photo quality. Maybe I got a bad copy, but I'm reading other reviews saying the same thing so either production isn't consistent or perhaps some people are less discerning regarding photo quality. Several professional reviews (CNET, digitalcamerainfo, and others) have stated that though this model is vastly improved over the previous top of the line Panasonic compact offering it is still sub-par. The guy from CNET said that "Depending on what your plans are for its photos, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20's shots are either very good to excellent or unusable". I have to agree. If you never plan on going bigger than 4x6 or maybe 5x7s you'll probably be fine. Comparing the photos from my five-year old Kodak Easyshare C875 showed only marginal improvements in some pictures, but most were about the same some were worse and the colors seemed washed out and duller than reality. The softness and noise of the photos is noticeable upon close inspection even at regular viewing sizes. Oh, and yes, I did the half-press to allow the camera to focus so that's not the problem.
Using the "Intelligent Auto" feature was frustrating at best. Images rarely turned out nicely and I constantly found myself going into the manual modes to try to make the camera take a better picture. As a father my primary purpose for this camera was taking photos of the kids. When they're doing something cute or funny I don't want to mess around with settings. I want to turn the camera on and capture the moment. With this camera many moments were lost. Also, I had many images blurred from movement while using the intelligent auto mode and I would think a truly intelligent auto should adjust shutter speed for detected motion. The camera seemed to do okay when shooting subjects without a lot of detail and that were not moving.
Then there are the burst pictures. The concept is great, but usually people using this feature would be using them in action-type shots. Unfortunately the intelligent auto feature doesn't know how to handle this and the pictures all turned out blurry. All even with the "Motion Deblur" on and the "iHDR" turned off. Trust me I monkeyed and monkeyed with this thing to figure out what I was doing wrong. In the end I had to conclude it was the camera. The other problem with the burst mode is that, while the 2AF and 5AF photos were okay (though still sub-par), the 10, 40, and 60 fps shots looked like something taken with a prehistoric first-generation cell-phone camera. Horrible and unusable for anything other than having. Even the manual mode shots were mostly unusable at 10, 40, and 60fps.
Other quibbles are the FLIMSY battery/SD door and the weird crunching sound from the lens when adjusting zoom though they're definitely not deal-breakers.
Some Amazon reviewers have loved this camera. One said they dropped it from a five-story building and it survived. Impressive. Others have said they're seeing near DSLR quality photos. Good for them. Me? I took well over a thousand pictures with this camera and spent hours adjusting settings to no avail. I'm sending mine back and looking for a different model. Though I'd like to give a different ZS20 another chance in hopes of achieving the type of success some reviewers here at Amazon are claiming, I really think these sorts of quality control issues are unacceptable in 2012. I'm not even sure mine is an isolated incident considering the comments from professional camera reviewing websites. A camera can have all the greatest features but if it can't deliver beautiful photos what good are the features? I was mostly happy with the photos from my five-year old 8MP Kodak C875 so I don't think I'm being too picky. I expected better quality than my C875 what I got I'm not sure is even up to the level of the C875.
By the way, I'm seeing on camera forums that Panasonic is rushing out a firmware update to improve the ZS20 photo-quality. It's not out yet, and it may just be a rumor, but keep on the lookout. While it's too late for me as mine is going back, maybe it will be useful for you.
UPDATE: The Panasonic Firmware update for improving night handheld shots is here:
Want Panasonic Lumix ZS20 14.1 MP High Sensitivity MOS Digital Camera with 20x Optical Zoom (Black) Discount?
Just got this camera, and have owned its three previous models. One thing for all to note if you are familiar with this series is that the battery must now be charged in camera with a short USB cable to a Panasonic wall charger. For me, this is a disadvantage, since I have enjoyed the flexibility of the previous arrangement -a dedicated charger into which the battery is placed outside of the camera. I found this "old" setup to be more convenient and easier to use when traveling, and easier to pack. Maybe this is not a problem for you, but it was an unpleasant surprise for me. As others have noted, though, the old charger works with this battery (same battery as before), so you can easily purchase a stand-alone charger.
Update 4-6-12
I have now taken some representative shots with the camera and have some observations. Like the previous three models, the display on this one is not ideal in bright sunlight, although it is acceptable. To my eye, the photos are really good for the category, and an improvement on the previous models. Having the extra zoom is quite nice. I have always enjoyed the Lumix menu system, which is fairly intuitive in this segment.
Since many of you are interested in the low light issues, I have taken some extremely low light shots and looked at them closely after enlarging. I find them quite good, and remarkable with a small sensor. I took a shot today, in one of our classrooms with no lights on, only illumination from an outside door half panel over 50 feet away. I cannot imagine better results with a camera this size with such challenging light.
I also took some photos outside with both bright sunlight and deep shadows in the shot. The photos were excellent, rendering detail in both the sunlit elements (as expected) and in the deep, dark shadows (pleasant surprise).
I have not made use of the touchscreen features yet, so I cannot comment on their usefulness. I assume they will be helpful in some situations.
All in all, this is an nice update to the previous models and I am sure will serve me well in my travels. It remains easily pocketable, easy to use and full of features to experiment with and explore. The compromises are few and the benefits are many.
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This is supposed to be a wireless device that let's you serf the web, when in actuality it is nothing more than a pager. You send web inquirys, and it sends back a reply, then you have to send another... get the point. An absolute worthless device, with the limitation of 100,000 characters a month you run into the maximum rather quickly. If you have a cell phone just get a cable to connect it to a modem and your off. It's cheeper...
