Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20 Review: Travel Light Discussion

[Jim Keenan]

Panasonic's new Lumix ZS20 compact ultrazoom offers a 20x optical zoom lens spanning the 24 to 480mm focal range in 35mm equivalents. Despite that generous focal range, the ZS20 is readily shirt pocket portable (Panasonic describes it as the world's slimmest digital camera with a 20x zoom).

The camera also features a newly developed 14.1 megapixel high sensitivity CMOS sensor teamed up with an advanced Venus Engine image processor which, according to Panasonic, produces high-speed and high sensitivity image recording. High-speed burst shooting at 10 frames per second (fps) with full resolution is possible; burst shooting with continuous autofocus is a still-credible 5 fps.

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[Andy Stanton]

When I reviewed the Panasonic FZ150 I noticed a considerable improvement in the camera's higher ISO image quality over the previous version of the camera, the FZ100, so I was curious how the ZS20 compared to the ZS10, which was reviewed here in 2011. Here are the 400, 800 and 1600 ISO images of the two cameras. It's evident that the ZS20 is a vast improvement over the ZS10.

400 ISO
ZS10

ZS20


800 ISO
ZS10

ZS20


1600 ISO
ZS10

ZS20

[Jim Keenan]

Thanks for the comparison, Andy. I've never shot a ZS10 and I make it a point not to read other reviews of a camera that I'm reviewing until my review posts so as to not be influenced, but your observation about the ZS20 being much better than the ZS10 has been echoed in one other review I just looked at. The ZS10 sensor didn't fare well in that review on ISO.