Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 review – Noise, resolution and sensitivity
When previewed at A4 size, images at the minimum ISO 100 sensitivity look clean with only a hint of luminance noise – if you are pixel peeping. The same can be said for images at ISO 400, but when zoomed in to 100%, many of the high-contrast lines in JPEG images start to become smudgy due to in-camera noise reduction. When previewing A4-sized JPEGs at ISO 800-1600, the luminance noise does not detract in any way from the images. However, these images do appear noticeably softer than ISO 100 images because so much detail has been lost due to heavy in-camera noise reduction.
I found that sensitivities of ISO 400 and below produce the best results, so for day-to-day shooting I chose to set the ISO to auto and limit it to ISO 400. Between ISO 1600 and the maximum extended ISO 6400, slight colour noise starts to become evident and luminance noise is very noticeable,while, the detail along high-contrast edges becomes jagged and smudgy.
These images show 72ppi (100% on a computer screen) sections of images of a resolution chart, captured using the Leica 24-720mm (equivalent) lens set to 45mm and f/5.6. We show the section of the resolution chart where the camera starts to fail to reproduce the lines separately. The higher the number visible in these images, the better the camera’s detail resolution at the specified sensitivity setting.
