Okay, I like the Panasonic's Zs cameras. They're easy to get the hang of and I've had no reliability issues. I started with a Panasonic Zs3. Later on I upgraded to a Zs7, then when I saw Amazon was selling a Zs9 which was the same as the Zs8 but with a stereo microphone and the price wasn't much over $100 (from Amazon Warehouse), I couldn't resist buying it for its 16x zoom. It's been a great camera. I love my Zs9 with it's long zoom despite it not having GPS (which I didn't care about) or HDMI out, and with a lower LCD screen resolution than the Zs7. I thought the screen clarity was fine and didn't miss the 460,000 dots on the Zs7.
Well, I couldn't resist this newer upgraded Zs. The Zs20 is my 4th Panasonic Lumix Zs camera (all of them purchased from Amazon), and I can say without reservation that this is the best of them all. I love the fast burst shooting made possible by the CMOS sensor.
The 16x zoom on the Zs8/9 is really great. I've taken some fantastic close-up shots with it. Now I have a 20x zoom. Amazing. It's operates when shooting video too.
Canon's G series, by comparison, has a larger 1:1.7 sensor compared to the Zs20 1:2.33. But, the zoom is very limited on the Canon and the camera is too big to carry around in your pocket - and it cost twice as much (and the older unavailable G9 model is better than the later ones I hear.) Their competitor for this Panasonic is their 20x zoom model SX260SH with a similar 1:2.33 CMOS sensor. Professional reviewers are rating the Zs20 higher than the comparable Canon, which is slightly larger, heavier, and costs more. Everyone raves about Panasonic's Leica lenses, with good reason. The Zs20 is just an amazing camera for the price. It's even slightly smaller than the Zs 7,8/9/10 and easy to carry in your pocket in a thin stretch case. Like the Zs7 (which never cost less than about $250.00) it has the 460,000 dot bright LCD screen, HDMI out, and GPS. It also has more features than the Zs7 or 8/9/10.
Don't expect the price to get much lower. As I recall, the Zs10 (the real predecessor of the Zs20) price came down to about the Zs20 price today, or maybe at the very end, a few dollars less, but I wouldn't wait. Panasonic may refuse to lower the price any further. It's already so heavily discounted, and there is a limit to how low they'll go. If you want the absolute best deal, get a "used" one from Amazon Warehouse. It's hardly, if at all "used," and most likely brand new but returned for some reason and re-packaged. You have 30 days to send it back if there is anything wrong with it. You don't get the one year warranty however, so if that's important to you, but a new one. It's definitely worth the price. I already had an extra battery but you can buy a non-proprietary battery very inexpensively that lasts even longer than the battery that comes with the camera. I also had a wall charger (two - from my Zs7 and Zs9)), so I didn't have to buy that. I'd say that's the only thing Panasonic let down on. It's worth getting a wall charger, but it should come with the camera. This is the first time it doesn't. Don't let it deter you.
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This Item  Panasonic Lumix ZS20 14.1 MP High Sensitivity MOS Digital Camera with 20x Optical Zoom (Black) (OLD MODEL) |  |  |  |  |  | |
| Price | $189.99 | -8% $99.99 List: $109.00 | -17% $149.00 List: $179.99 | -9% $499.99 List: $549.99 | -8% $183.98 List: $199.99 | $185.00 |
| Delivery | — | Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 14 | Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 14 | Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 14 | Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 14 | Get it May 15 - 17 |
| Customer Ratings | ||||||
| Picture quality | ||||||
| Image stabilization | ||||||
| Zoom | ||||||
| Auto focus | ||||||
| Easy to use | ||||||
| Sold By | HDD Shop | Xinyuan US | Amazon.com | Amazon.com | Amazon.com | Digital Village |
| display type | LCD | LCD | LCD | LCD | LCD | LCD |
| display size | 3 inches | 3 inches | 3 inches | 3 inches | 3 inches | 3 inches |
| lens type | Zoom | Fixed Lens | Wide Angle | Macro | Telephoto | Zoom |
| zoom type | Optical Zoom | Digital Zoom | Optical Zoom | Optical Zoom | Optical Zoom | Optical Zoom |
| shooting modes | — | Shutter Priority | — | Movie, Auto, Manual | Panorama, Automatic, Easy | High-sensitivity, soft snap, portrait, landscape, night portrait, night scene, gourmet, beach, snow, fireworks, pet and party |
| connectivity tech | HDMI, USB | Type-C USB, HDMI | USB | Wi-Fi, Micro HDMI, Micro USB, Bluetooth | USB | USB |
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Good things come in small packages
Friends who lug around heavy DSLR kits (like I used to do) turn green with envy at what this little shirtpocket wonder can accomplish. The ZS20's zoom range from 24mm wide open to 480mm fully optical at 14 mpx has to be seen to be believed. You can start with a broad view of a landscape and then zoom in to capture a single bird on a tree so far away that you don't even see the bird in the landscape view. The images are sharp, well saturated, with none of the blurriness and occasional purple fringing that troubled the ZS10. The updated lenses also seem have shortened the depth of field so that I can now get the bird in sharp focus but the background some distance away is soft and blurry. They've also vastly improved the digital zoom so that you can now take useful pictures at the equivalent of a 1013mm zoom range, and even longer at reduced MPx. Those digitally assisted pix may not win photo contests but they'll tell you whether that distant shorebird was an avocet or a killdeer. Carrying this camera is like having a telescope in your pocket. But the amazing zoom is only the beginning. Equally useful are the burst modes. Lots of subjects -- from talking heads to grandkids to puppies to birds to flowers in the wind -- are in constant motion, and if you take just one shot, you're playing roulette. The grandkid jumping over a log -- you really wanted him in midair, not on the landing. In burst mode, you'll get two, or five, or 10 or even more shots during the leap, and back home on your computer you can pick the one you like best and discard the rest. I now routinely take dozens or even hundreds of images of moving objects, and back at home at the computer I pick out the one or two keepers, and discard the rest. The camera also has an intelligent burst mode that takes just one shot of a static object but automatically takes a burst if the object is moving. This camera is smart! Although it has manual adjustments for aperture and shutter speed, I hardly ever need them. The IA (Intelligent Auto) setting handles ISO, white balance, aperture, shutter speed, and everything else instantly and with reliably excellent results in a wide range of conditions. The ZS20 also automatically performs some operations that previously took a fair amount of effort in Photoshop, with plugins. I was very skeptical of the hand-held night shot scene mode until I happened to be out in the evening of "supermoon" without a tripod. The orange moon had partly cleared the hills when I clicked the shutter. The camera took a burst of exposures and then internally sifted and merged them, and in a second or two gave me as clear and sharp an image as if I had used a tripod. It made a believer of me. Equally good is the HDR setting for high-contrast and backlit subjects. The camera takes a burst of exposures, bracketing the aperture, and then automatically combines them to produce a single image with a well-lit foreground. It used to take a lot of work and luck in Photoshop to achieve this. Totally amazing is the in-camera panorama scene mode. Without a tripod, you stand in a spot, hold down the shutter and make a complete circle in about 8 seconds (the camera shows you a progress bar). A few seconds later you've got, in the camera ready for downloading, a perfectly merged super-wide panorama image with no, or only very faintly perceptible, visual seams. No further processing necessary. There are a number of other scene modes and creative preset modes, and you can save custom settings for quick access. The video on the ZS10 was already very good, and the 20 has only improved on it, performing in full 1080p HD, with better placement for the stereo microphones.I also like the fact that the same batteries used on the previous models work in this one. I prefer to remove the battery and charge it in a wall charger (supplied with the older models), and I can still do that, but the 20 comes with a cable that lets the battery be charged in the camera from a wall plug or a USB port.The one annoyance with this little gem is the touch-screen controls on the digital display. These controls let you set the focus and the zoom, and click the shutter, by touching the screen. I can't imagine any situation where this would be useful. I unwittingly activated these controls by touching the screen and as I handled the camera I unknowingly took dozens of shots of my hand, the inside of my pocket, the ground, the side of my pants, and like that. You can't turn this obnoxious "feature" off! I've learned not to touch the screen when handling the camera, so it isn't a problem any more, but it still diminishes my esteem for the otherwise admirable engineering job that Panasonic did on this camera.This camera -- actually, already its predecessor -- convinced me to dump the 50-lb DSLR outfit I had been lugging around for several years. I don't need it. For me, the ZS series has disrupted the DSLR market much in the same way that DSLRs disrupted the film SLR market. Who needs all that heavy clunky expensive gear? I can do 95% of what I did with the DSLR, and a great many things I couldn't, with this little gem that fits in my shirtpocket.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2012
