The Panasonic Lumix DC-TZ95 / ZS80 marks a new entry for Panasonic in the point-and-shoot market, but its look and specs will be familiar to many.
The camera is an update to the solid, selfie-friendly TZ90 / ZS70. That camera brought with it a decent amount of features to give the users a modicum of control, coupled with a great touchscreen, a big zoom and 4K shooting capabilities.
See also: Best Panasonic cameras in 2019
Panasonic Lumix DC-TZ95: Specifications
The Panasonic Lumix DC-TZ95 / ZS80 offers this and a smidge more. The biggest changes are under the hood, although the camera’s look has changed a little. Where the TZ90 had a different gradient of silver for the bottom half of the body and the top, the TZ95 flips this look to great effect. The black version of the camera also has much more subtle colour change between the top and the bottom.
Button layout are essentially the same. There’s a decent grip on the front, above this a lozenge-like flash and Lumix branding.
The lens is Leica, offering 30x optical zoom with equivalent 24-720mm focal range. The sensor behind this is a decent (and a slight upgrade to the TZ90) 1/2.3-inch, 20.3 million pixel sensor. This ups the aperture to f/2.8
Again the top of the device and the buttons haven’t changed from the previous model. There’s some subtle Panasonic branding, a mode dial, zoom rocker, on/off button and recording button.
Panasonic Lumix DC-TZ95: Features
That 30x optical zoom is huge and backed by something called Power O.I.S (Optical Image Stabilizer) and a Zoom Compose Assist function helps keep track of your subjects by quickly zooming out. We tried this out and it really does feel like you are still completely in control of the shot, even while zoomed out that much.
The camera also boasts a new 0.21-inch 2,330k-dot equivalent Live View Finder (LVF) and has the same great 3.0-inch 1040k-dot static touch type control monitor. This monitor is tiltable, which means that you can get pretty much all the shots you want and you can flip it round if you want that all-important selfie.
Other new features include Bluetooth and Wi-Fi functionality. While this is good for uploading images, it also means that you can tether the camera to a phone or tablet and then shoot remotely. This is a nice addition and we can’t wait to get more time with the camera to try it out.
As with its predecessor, there is 4K shooting on board and you can also shoot in raw.
All of this does come at a cost of £399/$449.
Panasonic Lumix DC-TZ95: early verdict
While there may not be enough changes here to make someone upgrade from their current TZ90, this is a camera that’s set to supercede that one and certainly has enough features to entice those who are new to the range.
