Almost perfect outdoor camera

I bought the camera for a long China holiday, and could there also practical to test with about 6000 images everything. I prefer a star off because Panasonic GPS functionality disabled in China - for whatever reason, geotagging, I then just made with a separate GPS tracker. The wide angle is almost always far enough for landscapes, only the zoom is not enough sometimes. The camera has a complete collection of programs receiving the Lumix family, to HDR (several shots with different exposures are mixed together) and even starry sky with up to 60 s exposure time. The starry sky you have to then extra editing, otherwise the stars are too dark. There is a panoramic shot Assist function (so you can appropriately make overlapping photos and the computer then assemble the pictures), but unfortunately composed no function that pans themselves to create a panoramic photo.

The two zoom buttons are not very convenient located (on the back), a zoom rocker in front of or next to the trigger would be better. Probably so, but not so easy to get a waterproof. The zoom motor is also relatively slow. The camera turns quickly, but somewhat more slowly; to get accidentally hit the OFF button (happens more often because of being right next to the shutter button), it will take until the camera is ready for use again. I had the two buttons used left and right by the trigger for the zoom function, and the two buttons on top of the rear panel for on / off and video. The battery lasts even in very motivational prone areas by almost a day (so 300 photos are then), a second battery, but this one must definitely have.

The image display does not use the tilt sensor of the camera, but there is the possibility of displaying the images norotate, then the vertical shooting are not displayed reduced. Also, since you can look at pictures for hours until the battery is empty.

The display is bright enough even in bright, but linearly polarized. Vertical shooting with a polarizing filter sunglasses do not, then you have to sell the glasses (or the clip fold). The quarter-wave plate for the circular polarization would have on the price actually to be in it; the camcorder (by Panasonic), I had here that can even run. And with video portrait shots are less common ;-).

But the criticisms are more little things that are missing to perfection. Taking pictures with the camera is fun, the results are good, even in low light. The autofocus is also without assistance mostly the right focal plane, a touch screen (like him the camcorder) would be useful in macro shots, but probably not robust enough.

For applications in the regions in which Panasonic does not turn off the GPS, I would forgive all five stars, but I was just in China on the road, and because it does not go up. Geotagging is for me no more fun feature, but is now simply part - and customers in Europe should not deliver a firmware a Japanese company, the Chinese regulations is sufficient (or whatever reason disables the GPS in China).