Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ40

Great But Problematic Camera – Takes great pictures & movies. That said I have had 2 of these cameras now and BOTH have failed after 2+ years in the zoom lens mechanism. The lens moves but no longer smoothly and then does not respond to the button mechanism on the camera. Feels like it has broken! Only way to correct this is to turn the camera off. Did this as I've said on both. Sad really because I love using them.  Show details

TZ40 not very happy – My experience with my TZ40 is also about screen failure, purchased 18 months ago ( and hardly used ) the camera shop pointed out that it was out of warranty .. therefore no chance of any help from the manufacturer, I would be very cautious about buying another one, thankfully my " old " TZ5 is still working o.k. I upgraded to a TZ40 because of… Read more

more megapixels 20 as opposed to 10, however I shouldn't have bothered... maybe they don't make them like they used to !!

Perfect for my use – I travel in Australia on motorbikes every chance I get . Needing a good quality flat pocket camera I originally went to Nikon point and shoot . First one failed , couldnt get it fixed. Decided I just got a lemon so I went for the latest an greatest Nikon and still not happy . Always had to re adjust pictures etc never happy with quality .… Read more

$900 down drain.

A friend had a Lumix TZ40 . Had a lend of it and streight away went out and bought one.

Destroyed it on Cape York in bike crash . Was that happy with TZ40 Came back to Cairns and bought another one which I still have.

Just bought a Lumix TZ70 from Camera Sky .have not been away with it yet ,but from the pics so far it is just as good but with a whole lot more more power .

So TZ40 is now a backup to the TZ 70

Cheers

Doug

WiFi and GPS are fiddly at best and unreliable – I was after a small camera with GPS and WiFi since my Sony DSC-T1 did not have this capability. I was tired of having to manually geotag my photos and I thought WiFi would be great to transfer to my iPhone while travelling. At the time I bought the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ40, it was one of the few cameras that fitted my needs. Having bought it… Read more

though I am disappointed, I wish I had not bought it. The WiFi and GPS capability of the camera is insanely complex to understand, difficult to get to work and many functions are not compatible with iPhone and Mac. The software crashes when using GPS. WiFi and GPS are a big fail.

It takes OK photos, handles low light well. I'm not sure that the focusing is the best around thought, I think it could be better.

WiFi - the instructions on how to use WiFi are long and complex. I'm reasonably tech savvy and after spending hours and hours trying to get it to work, I was only partially successful. If you have a Mac and iPhone, then some functionality just won't work. I would not recommend this camera if you are looking for WiFi capability, try another brand who explain it more simplify and make it easier and faster to setup.

GPS - even though I have the GPS turned on, so it is using battery even when I have the camera turned off so it to keep track of the satellites, I found in practice that about 50% of my photos do not have GPS information. For photos where I have turned the camera on, immediately taken a photo, then turned it off, these photos are missing the GPS data. Therefore, I would not recommend this camera for GPS capability either.

Even worse still, when I go into the menu setting to replace the missing data, the camera goes into long "Please Wait" pauses while information loads. Sometimes after waiting a long time, the next menu appears. Other times I believe the camera software has "crashed" so I have to take the battery out to re-power the camera. This is annoy especially if the sense is extended. I have also had the camera crash while powering off.

I wish I hadn't bought this camera now, the only upside is that it takes SD card which fit into my Mac and iPad more easily than a Sony MemoryStick!.

The instructions to download photos are terrible – The camera seemed to work fine when I was taking photos but I have spent weeks trying to download the photos to my PC or the Panasonic Image App on my Smartphone. Still not possible. You need to be an aeronautical engineer to understand them, but even then I'm not sure.

Horrible – The LCD screen has failed twice! The first time Panasonic refused to replace and the camera shop I brought it from was embarrassed with how they handled the problem they replaced mine free of charge and now again I'm on holidays and it's failed!

If it works – When it worked, this was a good camera. But it was hopelessly unreliable and the main board failed after less than two years, It was never subjected to anything but a normal operating environment. The quote for repair was more than the replacement cost at a store (not even online).

Excellent travel and general camera – I read a number of reviews about this camera and there was a mixture of good and bad, mainly good. My previous camera was also a Panasonic Lumix, but it was getting a bit old. The operation is quite simple, although I know I don't use most of the functions, but then again who does. Image stabilization is excellent. I was able to take a… Read more

handheld photo of the Moon, at full zoom, whilst on the deck of a moving cruise ship. The craters are clearly visible, not a bad effort. Image quality is very good for a compact. Images taken at night without a flash show a lot of noise, but I think any compact would suffer from the same problem.

The Panasonic ImageApp is excellent and available for Apple and Android devices, although it is a bit hard to remember what to turn on first to get it to work, but I don't use this very often, so it is just a lack of use that is the problem.

Images are very clear, colour natural. With the camera off, it easily slips into the pocket. Can't really fault it in general, only thing missing would be the ability to save in an uncompressed format, say TIFF or RAW would be nice, I believe the newer model offers a RAW option. Excellent image stabilization, easy to use, small No option to save uncompressed