Panasonic Lumix ZS100 (TZ100, TZ110) review: The ZS100 is a camera for your inner Goldilocks

Occupying an interesting middle ground between the company's LX100 enthusiast compact and FZ1000 megazoom, the Panasonic Lumix ZS100 offers a general-purpose compromise among image quality, zoom and size that adds up to a highly recommendable camera for families, travelers and even hobbyists who get frustrated with the short lenses in most enthusiast compacts.

8.2

Panasonic Lumix ZS100 (TZ100, TZ110)

$598 at B&H Photo-Video

$490 at Amazon

The Good

The Panasonic's ZS100's 10x zoom lens is thus far the longest we've seen in a compact camera with a 1-inch sensor, and it offers a broad set of features including 4K video.

The Bad

It lacks a flip-up display and its autofocus speed is just middling.

The Bottom Line

The Pansonic ZS100 offers great blend of quality, size and features for people who want better photos and are willing to trade off a little quality for a lot of lens.

Part of Panasonic's "travel zoom" series of compacts -- hence its alternate names TZ100 in the UK and TZ110 in Australia -- the ZS100 goes head-to-head with the Sony Cyber-shot RX100 IV. That's a pretty good deal for its price, as well: $700, £550 and AU$1,000.

The ZS100 incorporates the same 1-inch sensor as the excellent FZ1000, but the lens is a shorter and slower 10x lens -- 25-250mm f2.8-5.9 -- compared to the FZ1000's big 16x f2.8 lens. That allows Panasonic to keep it small, making it the longest-zoom compact in the 1-inch class. There are some trade-offs to get that zoom, however; its lens isn't that great, and because it has a greater area to focus over it does more slowly than competitors.

Photo and video quality

Though it's not quite up to the standard of the best cameras with 1-inch sensors, I think most people will be perfectly happy with the photo and video of the ZS100, which ranges from very good to excellent. In auto mode the photos tend to come out darker than in manual or priority modes which results in very dense shadows, but for the most part it delivers.

Panasonic Lumix ZS100 full-resolution photo samples

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A lot depends upon how far you're zoomed in and what aperture is set in addition to the typical factor of the ISO sensitivity setting. The lens doesn't seem to be particularly sharp in general, with more than usual distortion around the edges. And at the longer zoom and narrow apertures -- essentially from f4 to f8 -- photos get a lot softer. You reach those apertures very fast; it reaches f4.1 by the time you hit 50mm. And that's the tradeoff for the benefits of a 10x zoom. As long as you're not scrutinizing the photos at full size, though, I think you'll find it worth the slight sharpness sacrifice.

There's a Diffraction Compensation setting which theoretically counteracts the softening effects of the narrowed aperture, but since the only choices are auto or off, it's impossible to tell whether it's actually doing anything.

In bright light JPEGs look very good; as the light dims, they start to look very smeary. Keep in mind that in low light (i.e., at high ISO sensitivities) for any camera, out-of-focus areas start to degrade a lot faster than those in focus. So the ZS100's naturally soft photos start to show artifacts in low light faster than ones shot with a better lens. Color and exposure look pleasing, though.

You can get better results in low light by shooting raw -- in some cases, without even doing anything to the file other than opening it and saving as a JPEG. That's because raw avoids Panasonic's aggressive processing.

Its 4K video is excellent for point-and-shoot purposes, though you do see visual noise in low light and slight movements of the camera produce wobble, which is pretty typical.

Analysis samples

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Performance

Shooting with the ZS100 didn't feel slow; I don't remember missing any single shots because of sluggish autofocus, or experience delays with playback or ability to change settings because of image processing. The one exception: because the lens drives so slowly, if you have zoom resume turned on (so it remembers your last zoom position) it takes too long to be ready to shoot when the camera wakes up from sleep.

It's not the fastest horse in the stable. It doesn't sink to the overall lows of the Canon PowerShot G5 X, but it's still relatively slow.

It takes about 2.3 seconds to power on, focus and shoot, which is about the same as the rest of the field. Focusing and shooting in good light is its best trick, coming in at about 0.1 second. But in low light that rises to 0.6 second, which is a little slow. It also takes about 0.6 second to shoot two consecutive images, which is close to other cameras. With flash enabled that's about 1.7 seconds.

On the other hand, its 5.7 frames-per-second continuous-shooting speed ties with the Sony RX100 IV, excellent performance for this type of camera. That's with continuous autofocus for more than 30 JPEGs. It's not quite as nimble for raw, which slows considerably after 18 shots.

In full autofocus mode -- letting the camera select where to focus rather than choosing yourself -- the ZS100 is as frustrating as most cameras, consistently selecting incorrectly. Even the custom multizone AF, which lets you select a specific group of autofocus areas for the camera to select from, never seems to choose wisely. I also found the tracking autofocus fairly ineffective, and the image stabilization not great when zoomed all the way out (I still had to set a relatively high shutter speed). In the sports mode the camera chose the wrong settings -- it set the shutter speed too low, even for slow-moving bicyclists -- though the pet-shooting mode did a better job for general action.

Its battery life isn't rated very high at 240 shots with the viewfinder, my preferred method of shooting, but it seems to last a lot longer than that. The viewfinder is small but comfortable, though it can't really keep up with high-speed continuous shooting.

Design and features

The camera is a great size given its lens, fitting comfortably in a jacket pocket, and a pleasure to shoot with. The ring around the lens, which can control a number of settings depending upon how you program it, is a little bigger than you usually find in a compact and a little more comfortable.

Most of the controls are well designed, easy to feel and manipulate and logically positioned. I have just two complaints: the video record button is hard to press and the diopter control on the viewfinder (which adjusts the focus distance for people with glasses) rotates too easily and loses its position every now and then. I also think that it could benefit from a flip-up LCD, since the camera has a lot of appeal for the selfie-and-groupie taker. Panasonic does have a great app for wireless file transfer and remote shooting, so that's one way to get around the lack of a movable display.

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You'll find the full set of Panasonic's features, which includes a broad set of customizable filters plus time lapse, stop-motion animation and various 4K-resolution modes for extracting stills from video. It incorporates the company's Post Focus mode which is implemented better here than in previous cameras; there's a direct-access button to toggle it on and off. And the short videos it creates, which show the focus changing, are cool in and of themselves.

For a complete list of its features and operation, download the ZS100's manual (PDF).

Conclusion

If you're ready for better-than phone or point-and-shoot quality but don't want to give up the flexibility of a zoomier lens, the ZS100 hits the Goldilocks combination of quality and capabilities.

Comparative specifications