"Picky Details" for the Panasonic DMC-LZ5 Digital Camera
(Timing, Power, and Storage Info)

Timing

When you press the shutter release on a camera, there's usually a lag time or delay before the shutter actually fires. This corresponds to the time required for the autofocus and autoexposure mechanisms time to do their work, and can amount to a fairly long delay in some situations. Since this number is rarely reported on (and even more rarely reported accurately), and can significantly affect the picture taking experience, we routinely measure both shutter delay and shot to shot cycle times for all cameras we test, using a test system Dave designed and built for the purpose. (Crystal-controlled, with a resolution of 0.001 second.) Here are the numbers we collected for the Panasonic DMC-LZ5:

The Panasonic LZ5's performance ranges from good to the slow side of average, depending on what you're trying to do. It starts up a little slowly, and has a shutter response on the slow side of average at both wide angle and telephoto. On the other hand though, if you "prefocus" the camera by half-pressing and holding down the shutter button before the final exposure, it's blazingly fast, with a shutter delay of only 0.012 second, among the fastest on the market. Shot to shot cycle times are average, at about 1.98 seconds for large/fine JPEGs, regardless of how many shots you take. (That is, there's no slow-down after a few shots, once the buffer memory fills.) The LZ5 does have an annoying characteristic shared with a number of other cameras on the market, namely that it "penalizes" you for pressing the shutter button too quickly after having just snapped a shot. If you press the shutter button again while the camera is still processing the previous image, it will just sit there until you release and re-press the shutter again. The (much) preferred response would be for the camera to simply snap another shot as soon as it's able, rather than making the operator release and try again.

Continuous-mode speed is good in High mode, at about 2.85 frames/second, for up to six shots in succession. The flash takes about 7.1 seconds to recharge after a full-power shot, slightly slower than average. Connected to a computer, download speeds are fast enough that you probably won't feel a need for a separate card reader, but nonetheless are slower than the fastest cameras currently on the market. Bottom line, while not a first choice for sports or other fast-paced action, the DMC-LZ5 is responsive enough to handle most other amateur shooting situations.

Power

The Panasonic DMC-LZ5 uses two AA batteries for power, and disposable Oxyride batteries are included with the camera.

The table below shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on either a fresh set of disposable batteries or a fully-charged rechargeable battery as appropriate), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions. (See below for a discussion of the CIPA battery-life standard.)

The battery-life rating with rechargeable NiMH cells is quite good. Plan on buying a couple of sets of high-capacity NiMH batteries and a good charger right along with the camera, they'll pay for themselves many times over, over the life of the camera.

Storage Capacity

The Panasonic DMC-LZ5 stores its photos on SD / MMC memory cards or in approximately 14.5MB of internal memory, and no card is included with the camera. (We strongly recommend buying at least a 128 MB card, preferably a 256 MB one, to give yourself extra space for extended outings.) The chart below shows how many images can be stored in the internal memory at each size/quality setting.

Download Speed

The Panasonic DMC-LZ5 connects to a host computer via a USB interface. Downloading files to the Sony desktop in our studio running Windows XP (Pentium IV, 2.4 GHz), we clocked it at 654 KBytes/second. (Cameras with slow USB interfaces run as low as 300 KB/s, cameras with fast v1.1 interfaces run as high as 600 KB/s. Cameras with USB v2.0 interfaces run as fast as several megabytes/second.)

1. Power up the camera, set to default focus and image-quality settings, turn on LCD monitor
2. Wait 30 seconds
3. Take a picture
4. Zoom from wide to tele or tele to wide, as appropriate
5. Turn the flash from off to on, or on to off, as appropriate
6. Make sure LCD is still lit, if it has gone out, turn it back on again
7. Wait until 30 seconds has elapsed from previous shot
8. (If 10 minutes has elapsed since the camera was last turned on, turn it off and back on again)
9. Loop back to step (3), until batteries are exhausted and camera shuts down

The number of shots captured under the above conditions then becomes the CIPA battery-life figure.

Battery life is going to be highly dependent on the operating mode of the camera, which is why we never published our power-consumption data in the form of "number of shots" as CIPA does. The CIPA methodology will miss certain camera behavior that can bring considerable benefits to the user, such as cameras with very low power drain in capture mode with the LCD disabled, or with very low power consumption in "sleep" modes from which the camera can waken quickly. A camera with only modest battery life under the CIPA test conditions could show exceptional battery life when used with its optical viewfinder rather than its LCD. (In years past, Olympus cameras were particularly notable in this regard.) Likewise, few consumers routinely use flash for every other photo they take. It's much more likely that they'd either use it on no photos (daylight conditions), or every photo (indoors or at night).

While the CIPA methodology is far from perfect or truly comprehensive, we feel that it currently serves as a "good enough" standard to give consumers a fair idea of how long different cameras will operate from a set of batteries or on a single charge of a rechargeable battery pack. Because of this, we've elected to discontinue our earlier power-drain measurements and simply pass along the CIPA numbers generated by the manufacturers. (A note to the manufacturers though: We will be spot-checking cameras here or there, following the CIPA standard, to insure that these values are and continue to be reported accurately.)

Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document)