Panasonic Lumix ZX1 digital camera review

Panasonic's latest point and shoot digital camera features a wide angle 8x optical zoom - but does that make it the perfect travel companion? Best4Reviews takes it to Portugal to find out

From the front Panasonic’s 12.1 megapixel ZX1 looks like the latest in a production line of compact digital camera clones – unassuming metallic silver face plate suggesting that this model could have been released any time over the last five years.

It is however, with a stated aim to deliver ‘style with substance’, rather more exciting than familiar first impressions may have you believe.

For, housed beneath the metal and plastic exterior, is an 8x optical zoom lens, equivalent to 25-200mm in 35mm film camera terms.

OK, so that might not be a match for the 12x zooms offered by the same company’s only slightly bulkier TZ series compacts, but for a camera that will slide into the front pocket of your jeans, the broader focal length is welcomed. Slightly oddly, Panasonic’s press material describes the ZX1 as the TZ series’ ‘younger sister’, the inference being that the slender dimensions may find favour among the ladies.

While that may well be true, there are aspects here for both sexes to favour. New technology has enabled the feat of ‘big zoom, slim camera’ and the ZX1 is claimed to incorporate the world’s first 0.3mm super-thin aspherical lens and industry’s first 0.3mm spherical lens.

In terms of operation, the top plate features a familiar bottle top design mode dial falling under the forefinger to the right hand side, and incorporating auto and intelligent auto (iA) modes – the latter automatically recognising common scenes and subjects placed before the lens and adjusting settings according. So, point the camera at a flower and it will – reliably – switch to macro (close up) mode.

Users also get a My Scene (MS mode) to which they, as it sounds, can attribute a particular pre-optimised scene mode. So, twist the dial to ‘MS’ and the camera will always be ready to take pictures of sunsets, if so desired.

Next around the dial is what feels like a rather unnecessary repeat helping of the same scene modes, which can therefore be adjusted at whim without disturbing the pre-programmed custom setting in the previous mode. A video mode – here pleasingly allowing high definition recording – and less essential clipboard mode – for inter-railing travellers to take reference shots of maps and train timetables at two megapixel setting – complete the shooting mode line up.

Adjacent to this control is a springy shutter release button surrounded by a zoom lever with prominent raised lip, positioned where it also falls under the forefinger. And along from this again is a small, narrow on/off switch. Flick this with a finger and the ZX1 powers up in just under two seconds, lens extending from its former hiding place within the body to maximum 25mm wide-angle setting.

In terms of shooting handheld, with the LCD screen swallowing up the left hand side of the backplate, there’s practically nowhere to place the thumb at the rear except on the monitor itself, with the result that the glass quickly becomes smeared with prints.