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  • Introduction

  • Design & Appearance

  • Tour

  • Ease of Use

  • Size & Handling

  • Auto Mode

  • Movie Mode

  • Playback Mode

  • Custom Image Presets

  • Drive/Burst Mode

  • Other Modes

  • Manual Controls

  • Focus

  • ISO

  • Aperture & Shutter Speed

  • White Balance

  • Exposure & Metering

  • Image Stabilization

  • Picture Quality & Size Options

  • Other Controls

  • LCD

  • Flash

  • Lens & Sensor

  • Jacks, Ports & Plugs

  • Battery

  • Memory

  • Other Hardware

  • Conclusion

  • Sample Photos

  • Specs

  • Introduction
  • Design & Appearance
  • Tour
  • Ease of Use
  • Size & Handling
  • Auto Mode
  • Movie Mode
  • Playback Mode
  • Custom Image Presets
  • Drive/Burst Mode
  • Other Modes
  • Manual Controls
  • Focus
  • ISO
  • Aperture & Shutter Speed
  • White Balance
  • Exposure & Metering
  • Image Stabilization
  • Picture Quality & Size Options
  • Other Controls
  • LCD
  • Flash
  • Lens & Sensor
  • Jacks, Ports & Plugs
  • Battery
  • Memory
  • Other Hardware
  • Conclusion
  • Sample Photos
  • Specs

Introduction

Design & Appearance

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 is a sporty looking compact camera with a decidedly "rugged" aesthetic, as evinced by the hard angles and rivet-like screws in the face plate. It looks like it wants to be dropped down a cliff. All the elements of the body are packed in tightly: all the ports are gathered under one water-proof door, and the flash is built into the front instead of popping up. It's all in the interest of keeping the camera's components protected.

Tour

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Ease of Use

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 seems to be quite easy to use, as it's primarily designed for simple picture and video recording while you're busy doing other things, like swimming, snorkeling, rock climbing, or some other un-nerdly activity. The buttons are all fairly large and well-labeled, so you could conceivably tap them even with gloves on. The only thing that may be lacking here is an "Easy Mode" button. Imagine that you had the camera set up for some very specific shooting situation a few hours ago, and now a moray eel is peeking its head out of a reef. You only have a second before it disappears, but you first have to go into the camera's menu and change the settings. You can switch to auto mode with only a few button presses, but what if there's no time?!

The menu is simple and well-organized. The camera is definitely not packed with manual controls. Instead, it's designed to let you jump in, find the scene mode you want, maybe fiddle with the flash settings, and jump back out (and into the water).

Size & Handling

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 measures 4.07 x 2.52 x 1.04 inches (103.5 x 64.0 x 26.5 mm) and weighs 0.434 lbs. (197g) with battery and memory card. That's pretty small and light, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The TS3 is feels as rugged as a camera can be. All the elements of the camera – lens, flash, ports, etc. – are carefully protected from water and shock. It doesn't feel like a high-end camera, per se, as the handling isn't designed like a high-end point & shoot. Rather, they're large, easily grip-able surfaces and buttons that (presumably) perform well under adverse conditions. The d-pad on the back felt especially solid.

Auto Mode

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 has a simple mode labeled "iAuto" in the menu. To access it, push the Menu button on the back of the camera. In iAuto mode, the menu options are limited to GPS (on/off), the color mode, bracketing, resolution, and LED light (on/off). For most shooting situations, you'll be able to stick the camera in iAuto mode, then simply point and snap. In truth, the camera doesn't offer all that many manual controls, so iAuto mode is probably going to get a lot of use.

Movie Mode

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Like nearly all point & shoots, the Panasonic DMC-TS3 shoots HD video. In this case, the maximum resolution is 1080i (1920 x 1080 at 60 interlaced fps) in the AVCHD format. It can also do 720p (1280 x 720), 640 x 480, and 320 x 240 in the Motion JPEG format.

Playback Mode

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 allows you to organize photos by content type (pictures or video), by geo-tagging, by category, and by calendar. You can also create slideshows. The camera has an HDMI, AV video output, and USB for displaying your content on other devices or transferring files.

Custom Image Presets

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 has a series of scene modes, organized (presumably) by those you need the fastest and most frequent access to, and those used for very specific types of situations. The former group of scene modes are presented on the front page of the menu, and include Sports, Snow, Beach, and Underwater. Panasonic assumes that these are the situations in which you'll find yourself most often (probably a good bet for this camera).

The other scene modes are buried in a sub-menu. They include: Portrait, Soft Skin, Transform, Self Portrait, Scenery, Panorama Assist, Night Portrait, Night Scenery, Handheld Night Shot, Food, Party, Candle Light, Baby1, Baby2, Pet, Sunset, High Sensitivity, High-speed Burst (Image Priority / Speed Priority), Flash Burst, Starry Sky, Fireworks, Aerial Photo, Pin Hole, Film Grain, High Dynamic (Standard, Art, B&W), and Photo Frame.

In the shooting menu, you'll find a small selection of color modes: Standard, Natural, Vivid, Black & White, Sepia, Cool, Warm, and Happy. Some of these are only available in iAuto mode.

Drive/Burst Mode

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The camera a few burst modes. At full resolution, it only clocks in at about 3.7 shots per second, for a maximum of 7 shots. In lower resolutions (3M for 4:3, 2.5M for 3:2, 2M for 16:9, 2.5M for 1:1), there are two modes. Speed Priority records up to 10 shots per second, and Image Priority records up to 7 shots per second, each for 15 to 100 shots altogether.

Other Modes

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 has a 3D shooting mode, which has become an aggravating standard in many cameras this year. Why aggravating? Because shooting a convincing 3D image is hard, and these cameras do not do it well at all. It works by asking you slowly pan the camera from left to right while it snaps off a quick burst of photos. The camera then automatically finds the best two images and creates a composite 3D image in the MPO format. We've seen it, and we're not impressed. It strikes as a thrown-on feature that was ordered from the higher-ups at Panasonic who, not so coincidentally, have been marketing the hell out of their 3D TV line-up.

Manual Controls

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 does not have a lot in the way of manual controls. There is no manual focus, shutter speed, or focus. You can choose between a lot of auto modes for various functions, but it's definitely not equipped like a high-end point & shoot.

Focus

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There is no manual focus on the Panasonic DMC-TS3. However, you can set the auto focus to Normal, AF Macro, Zoom Macro, Quick AF, and AF Tracking. You can push down on the d-pad to switch between normal focus and Macro focus.

ISO

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There are ISO controls that allow you set it at 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and Auto. There's also a high sensitivity mode that automatically ranges between 1600 and 6400.

Aperture & Shutter Speed

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 has no aperture or shutter speed controls.

White Balance

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You can set the white balance from the following options: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Incandescent, and a manual white set.

Exposure & Metering

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 has metering modes for Face, AF Tracking, 23-area, 1-area, and Spot. This is pretty standard for a camera in this range.

Image Stabilization

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 features a Power O.I.S. (optical image stabilization), something found on nearly all Panasonic cameras this year. An optical system is good, because this is expected to be a camera for extremely active use. We don't expect it to smooth out the bumps of a rattling mountain bike, but ordinary handshake shouldn't be a problem.

Picture Quality & Size Options

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 has lots of options for picture resolution, compression quality, and aspect ratio. In 4:3 mode, you can choose between 12MP, 8MP, 5MP, 3MP, 2MP, and 0.3MP (VGA).

In 3:2 aspect ratio, you get 10.5 MP, 7MP, 4.5MP, and 0.3MP.

In 16:9 aspect ratio, you can choose between 9MP, 6MP, 3.5MP, and 0.2MP.

In 1:1, there are options for 9MP, 6MP, 3.5MP, 2.5MP, and 0.2MP.

In any of these resolutions, you can choose between three compression qualities.

Other Controls

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 puts its road-worthiness front and center with a whole set of tools for determining where in the world you are.

p. * GPS – A GPS system is fairly common in a certain class of cameras these days, but that makes it no less useful. By recording the GPS data, you can sort your photos by geo-location when you get home. This is the year the TS series has offered GPS.

p. * Altimeter – The TS3 also includes an altimeter for measuring height from sea level and up. In playing with the pre-production sample at CP+, we noted that the camera had to be manually calibrated in order to work properly, but this may not be the case for the full-working models.

p. * Depth Indicator – Essentially the inverse of an altimeter, this measures the depth of the camera while underwater. Note that the camera is only good to down to 12 meters. We're not exactly sure how this works, but Panasonic's website also indicates that this tool is used to automatically switch between Beach mode and Snorkeling mode.

p. * Compass – Invented over 2000 years ago, and still incredibly useful.

p. * Barometer – Perhaps less vital to your memories – but hey, who knows? – you can measure the barometric pressure.

LCD

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 has a 2.7-inch LCD with a 230,000-pixel resolution. It's certainly not a stand-out LCD with specs like this. Several Sony LCDs, for instance, have over a 900,000-pixel resolution. But the TS3's screen gets the job done, and since there's no manual focus control anyway, you just have to trust that the camera is auto-focusing correctly.

Flash

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The flash is built right into the front of the camera, in keeping with the toughness theme. No pop-up flash means fewer moving parts and a more protect-able element.

Lens & Sensor

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The Panasonic DMC-TS3 has a Leica DC Vario-Elmar f/3.3 - 5.9 lens with a 4.6 optical zoom. It has a focal range of 4.9 - 22.8 mm (28 - 128 mm in 35 mm equiv.). If you're not shooting in the highest resolution, you increase that zoom: 5.7x (4:3 / 8M), 7.3x (4:3 / 5M), 9.1x (4:3 / under 3M). There's also a feature called Intelligent Zoom that uses a crop & digital zoom process to bump up the zoom to 6x. Generally speaking, the resolution of the picture is high enough that you won't notice the destructive results of digital zoom.

Behind the lens is a 1/2.33-inch CCD sensor with a gross 12.5MP and an effective 12.1MP resolution, along with a primary color filter.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs

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To maximize water and dust protection, all the ports on the Panasonic TS3 are gathered under one gasket-sealed port cover on the right side. Panasonic had this door taped up on all the cameras at the CP+ show, but we've seen the likes before. It's a reliable seal. Underneath, you'll find a mini HDMI, USB, AV output, DC power, and memory card slot, and battery slot.

Battery

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The Panasonic TS3 uses a 3.6V Li-ion rechargeable battery pack.

Memory

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The Panasonic TS3 records stills and video onto SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory cards. There's also a small bit of built-in memory in case you lose, forget, or fill up your card.

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Other Hardware

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p. * Waterproof – It's waterproof up to 40 feet, or 12 meters. If you want to go deeper than that, Panasonic sells a waterproof case for depths up to 40m.

p. * Shockproof – The TS3 is shock-proof up to 2 meters, but we hate to see this put to the test too often. Dropping it on dirt or grass is probably a lot kinder than dropping it onto concrete.

p. * Dustproof – The camera is dust-proof up to the famed IPX8 and IP6X standards. Of course. We remember sitting around the dinner as youths while our parents regaled us with tales of the IPX8 and IP6X standards. In truth, we have no ideas what these standards are, and hope that the International Electrotechnical Commission knows that Panasonic is bandying their name about in public.

p. * Freezeproof – The camera will operate as low as -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit)

Conclusion

The tough, new Panasonic DMC-TS3 (DMC-FT3 here at CP+ in Japan and other parts of the world) certainly brings the tough. It's waterproof, dustproof, shockproof, and freezeproof, but that's old news. We put those to the test years ago with the first-generation models, and were impressed. What else have you got?

Well, the added GPS, altimeter, and barometer go a long way in making this a truly outdoor camera. You scaled Mt. McKinley, or perhaps the rickety old water tower in your town? Now you can prove it to your friends. We also appreciate the improved HD video recording, as well as the continued thoughtfulness in design and handling.

The Panasonic TS3 is definitely shy on manual controls. This is a camera designed for simple operation while you're busy doing burly, outdoorsy things. Those that insist on aperture and shutter control may opt for a better camera and a waterproof case. All in all, though, this could easily be the camera you throw into your bag for any adventure, from white water rafting to splashing around at the local pool.

Sample Photos

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Specs

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Meet the tester

David Kender

David Kender

Editor in Chief

@davekender

David Kender oversees content at Reviewed as the Editor in Chief. He served as managing editor and editor in chief of Reviewed's ancestor, CamcorderInfo.com, helping to grow the company from a tiny staff to one of the most influential online review resources. In his time at Reviewed, David has helped to launch over 100 product categories and written too many articles to count.

See all of David Kender's reviews

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