by Rowlandwithaw

Created on: December 22, 2009

The Panasonic DMC-TZ65 is a 10 megapixel ‘point and shoot’ digital camera with a 12x Optical Zoom, a model which might appeal to serious photographers wanting a ‘carry every day’ ready for every situation or a beginner wanting to start somewhere but wanting more scope than a basic ‘point and shoot’.

The camera itself is small enough to fit into a jacket pocket or purse. Despite its small size it has a large screen covering virtually the whole of the back of the camera and with rest being taken up with the controls. The switch at the top changes the camera from record to review, and the main controls are four buttons arranged in a circle around a central Menu/Select button. These switch between the various flash modes, allow over and under exposure, change the macro modes and set the self timer. On the top of the camera,  there’s the on/off switch, the zoom lever and a circular dial which switches through the various modes : from Intelligent Automatic, Standard, Scene Mode, Video and Clipboard - which allows you to save an image just to the camera’s internal memory – useful for say copying a map in a strange town! Scene mode is something which is being offered more and more often these days at the Point and Shoot level and on the TZ65 there are 27 scenes on offer including Portrait, Sports and a simulated Pinhole camera effect – which seems a bizarrely retro inclusion!

Reviewing all the detailed specifications of the camera seems pointless, so I’ve simply included these at the end of the article but what I think is more important is to comment as how it works in practice……. and the simple answer is very, very well. The lens is excellent and the range seems extraordinary – especially to someone like me who started taking photographs nearly fifty years ago when zoom lenses were rare and expensive. My Olympus 75-150 mm seemed wonderful so to leap from 2x to 12x is unbelievable. My only slight criticism is that it is sometimes difficult to frame your shot accurately as a small movement of the zoom lever makes a large difference in the degree of zoom. Obviously this is a function of the 12x zoom range, and I suspect that this would not worry beginners, though an experienced photographer might find this a little frustrating. I have to say the biggest surprise for me was how good the extreme wide angle seemed (made me nostalgic for my trusty Zuiko 24 mm…)

At the other

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