Introduction

Ease of Use

Panasonic were one of the earliest manufacturers to design their digital compacts with a retro look to them. Using features such as brushed metal, using a certain shape for the body that resembled an old fashioned camera, then placing the lens in a particular place on the body to accentuate that feel. So it was surprising when they seemingly abandoned that approach – especially with the boom in retro and vintage – and went for more sleek looking cameras.

However, it looks as though they're back because, along with other models in the current range, the SZ9 is a lovely looking camera that harks back to the olde days of photography. Maybe not the days of bellows and metal plates, but maybe a 1950's 35mm camera?

The 10x optical zoom pushes the lens out of the body slightly, so it's not entirely flush. Still, instead of try to mask it away, Panasonic have chosen to wrap a big bezel around it to show it off. It also gives the lens the appearance of being bigger than it really is. As we all know; size does matter.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9's lens is made to a specification designed by Leica, a German lens manufacturer – in fact, one of the best in the world – and starts at 25mm. It's not the widest available, but that would only cause barrel distortion. The full test will reveal if the lens suffers from it anyway. Obviously, a 10x optical zoom means that the 25mm wide setting stretches out to 250mm at the top end. That's enough to prevent you from having to walk to things.

Front	Rear

Interestingly, Panasonic have done away with the switches on the DMC-SZ9 – possibly due to keeping costs down – so the camera is powered up using the small, square button on the top plate. It sits flush with the body, just next to the shutter release which is raised slightly to accommodate the zoom ring. A direct video record button is situated on the opposite side of the shutter release on the right shoulder. The small holes are the stereo sound microphones.

The SZ9 is shaping up to be a great little compact to simply slide into a pocket and use on a day out when carrying around bulky camera gear simply won't do. However, if you're the type that has larger fingers, you may find the small buttons on the back difficult to operate.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 has wifi connectivity, so you're able to link up to the internet and upload images to a portfolio on one of several approved sites. This is a great resource for young, travelling photographers as it means you don't have to mess about with huge memory cards and you can safely store them online where friends and family back home can view them instantly. Regular uploading means parents will be happy that you're safe, so it's a triple whammy. In fact, the SZ9 seems to be a camera designed for travelling. In the Setup menu (accessed by pressing the Menu button and selecting the section with the spanner icon), there's options to set the World time, set a Travel date and switch the camera into Airplane mode. This latter feature simply stops you from activating the wifi which can interfere with navigation systems and doesn't – as we thought – choose the wrong week to stop drinking coffee.

The other buttons on the back are similar to the layout and organisation of other digital compact cameras. There's a central control pad with four buttons surrounding it. The pad navigates around the menus on the camera as well as doubling up for shooting options such as macro, exposure compensation, flash and macro. The Mode button is for selecting the way the camera takes pictures such as Auto, Intelligent auto, Panoramic, Creative filters or Scene modes. The Creative filters are digital effects that replicate a particular look or type of photography. Effects such as Low key, Soft focus, Impressive art and High dynamic will interest users more interested in photography while Retro, Toy effect and Cross process will please the Instagram crowd.

Front	Top

The cost of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 is apparent in the build quality. A camera at a lower price wouldn't have a metal casing, decent lens or even a good quality USB port cover. However, the SZ9 has all these. Interestingly, some of the budget cameras from other manufacturers have recently had metal tripod connectors fitted to them. Weirdly, this has been a kind of unwritten benchmark in quality for many a year until the last 12 months have changed that. Not so with the SZ9, it still has a plastic connector (bush). It's a disappointment to photographers looking to take long exposures at night because the high volume of use that the tripod will see could make it wear sooner.

The menu systems on the SZ9 are very easy to read and navigate your way around. The Main menu has four sections: Rec, Motion Picture, Setup and Wifi. The Rec section goes into the camera modes and features that you need a lot of access to, such as ISO, resolution and white-balance. But they're not as commonly used as the flash options, macro or exposure compensation, which have dedicated buttons on the back of the camera. In the Motion picture section, you make changes to the video features such as the resolution, autofocus and wind cut. We've delved into the Setup menu earlier in the review and discussed the travelling options available. There are other interesting options available in the Setup menu, though, such as Monitor luminance, Economy mode, Histogram and the option to reset everything. If you want to only reset the wifi, that can be done as well as a number reset for the pictures you're taking. The latter could lead to a clash of file numbers when downloading and cause overwriting.

Focusing is quite fast on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 and we think this helped it in it's cold start test. The results yielded a faster time than we're used to. The time it took to switch the camera on, focus and take a picture was a little over two seconds. That's around half a second faster than other digital compacts that we've tested recently. Not bad going and will help with candid photography.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

The DMC-SZ9 has four burst modes. The first two are similar in what they achieve. They both use continuous AF while shooting, just at different rates; 2fps (frames per second) and 5fps. The latter is arguably the one to choose when shooting continuously. We managed a total of 14 pictures in a ten second period which averages at 1.4fps. Realistically, the camera took four pictures in the first second. Not the 5fps advertised, but we think that could be down to the AF. In this mode, the focusing is in continuous, so as the camera is shooting, it will shift if necessary. This focus shift will stop the camera taking pictures – only briefly in our test as we barely moved – while it focuses. The 5fps will be a clinical test performed by Panasonic. Both of these settings are done at full resolution. The rapid burst mode drops the resolution to 5 megapixel, though. This is to ensure the processor can keep pushing the pictures through at a fast enough rate. Shutter lag sits at 0.08sec which is standard for a digital compact camera and our reflexes.

Press the small Playback button on the back of the camera and you can look at the pictures you've already taken. This can be done regardless of whether the camera is powered on or off. If it's off, you have to hold the button down for a second or two. Press up on the pad and you can retouch the picture either with an Auto retouch feature, a Beauty retouch or Creative retouch. Press the Mode button and you can choose different viewing options such as a slide-show, calendar or filter by specifying certain parameters such as only pictures or only video. The Playback menu has some fascinating features such as Location logging (not using GPS, but manual input), Titles, Retouch, Video divide, Cropping or Resize.

In the box, there's a camera, rechargeable lithium ion battery, charger, wrist strap, Basic owner's manual and a CD that holds the full manual along with PHOTOfunSTUDIO 9.0 editing software. There's also a link to a trial version of LoiLoScope – a video editing software program.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 16 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 6Mb.

Noise

Low noise results from the Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 seem pretty good when viewed from a normal distance. Zooming in to full magnification shows green colour present even at ISO 100, which is a great shame. Interestingly, edge definition seems sharp enough and the noise isn't interfering with the overall colour of the image.

Moving up to ISO 200 doesn't appear to make any change either for better or worse, so if we were to look for a silver lining, it would be that you can push the ISO to 200 and get similar results than ISO 100.

In fact, there's no definite change in the image quality until ISO 800 when noise reduction starts to smooth the image out, suggesting that the sensor is starting to fail. The last two settings are more art work than photography as the noise reduction gives the image a painted look. Not a brilliant performance from a manufacturer that has made ground breaking achievements in the past.

ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

Sharpening

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9's pictures suffer from noise a little bit too much for our tastes when it comes to sharpening. We used a simple pre-set Sharpening tool in Adobe Photoshop CS4 and found that the problematic noise was exacerbated in the image.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The focal length of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 is 4.5mm – 45mm. It's a 10x optical zoom which, in 35mm terms, is a 25-250mm.

25mm	250mm

Chromatic Aberrations

While we found evidence of chromatic aberration, it was very low compared to other cameras at this level. This goes to show the increased quality that comes with an alliance with Leica.

Chromatic Aberrations 1 (100% Crop)	Chromatic Aberrations 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

Close focusing is a mediocre 5cm. It's not bad, but nothing to write home about. It gets in close enough, but it's easy to over step the mark. A couple extra centimetres would have been nice as a buffer.

Macro	Macro (100% Crop)

Flash

There's an ever-so-slight amount of vignetting when a flash isn't used at wide-angle. Add flash and it increases ten fold, resulting in dark corners in the images. Zooming out to full magnification, the problem goes but is still faintly observed.

Forced Off - Wide Angle (25mm)	Forced On - Wide Angle (25mm)
Forced Off - Telephoto (250mm)	Forced On - Telephoto (250mm)

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 didn't have any trouble with red-eye in our tests, so using red-eye reduction wasn't necessary as we gleaned the same results.

Forced On	Forced On (100% Crop)
Auto/Red-eye Reduction	Auto/Red-eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9's night shots were interesting. They were both shot during the snow and we used the snow to do a white balance check. The results were a strong green cast, meaning the camera didn't have the range to deal with the strength of the light. The night scene shot was more realistic to the actual light available. Both shots are sharp and well exposed. The camera chose ISO 100 for the night scene and exposed a 1 second image just like we did in Program.

Night Auto	Night Auto (100% Crop)
Night Scene	Night Scene (100% Crop)

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 camera, which were all taken using the 16 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera / Lens Extended

Isometric View

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera / Turned On

Rear of the Camera / Shooting Mode Menu

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

This is the first camera we've noticed the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) certificate listed for. This is a universal system which was introduced when the main players (Panasonic, Sony, Samsung and a number of non-photographic companies) realised that consumers don't only use their products. DLNA allows integration with other company's products so the Panasonic will be able to plug into a DLNA Sony television, for example.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 is a nice enough camera to use, the buttons are laid out intuitively although the video button needs a firm press and being on top of the camera, typically it causes a slight dip when ending video. What we did notice is that the focusing is very fast. Couple that with a good lens that obviates chromatic aberration very well for a lens on a digital compact and you have some good quality images coming through. The main downfall of the camera is the quality of the sensor. We found noise at ISO 100 that was normally found at ISO 400 on lesser cameras. That's not good in this day and age. It's entirely possible they don't want noise reduction to interfere too much with the image but then they could always drop the resolution to help towards that problem.

The SZ9 has a pretty good build to it. We couldn't fault it with any elements of that area. The flash leaves a lot to be desired for, but more than likely if you're looking at this camera, you won't be too bothered about that. After all, the flash will be used in dark places and the vignetting will blend in.

At around £200, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 isn't a bad little compact. For the price, you're getting a high resolution, large zoom, sexy compact with fast focusing and multiple picture sharing options. Whether you want to share via wifi, DLNA or plug straight into a PC, the SZ9 will be ok with all three. That's pretty cool and good to know for anyone thinking of buying a little compact to go out travelling with. The only part of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 that lets it down is the noise poking through at the first ISO step. Getting green blobs at ISO 100 is rubbish to say the least. The most unfortunate part of that is that as a camera, that's its primary function.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	4
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	3
Value for money	3.5

Specifications

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