Panasonic Lumix TZ95: Showing there's yet life in compact cameras?

It's not often you'll see a compact camera launched these days, as the smartphone market takes over. But Panasonic is out to prove that there's still life in compacts yet, with the Lumix TZ95 (which will be the SZ80 in the USA).

The camera's obvious special 'trick'? Its 30x optical zoom - which delivers a wide-angle 24mm equivalent and extends through to a 720mm equivalent at the long end - is what sets it right apart from the smartphone world. That means you can shoot, say, a group shot and then adjust the zoom to make farther-away subjects look much closer in the frame.

Plus, with a built-in viewfinder and tiltable LCD screen, you can use this little number for all kinds of situations - including selfies - without sunlight necessarily being a problem. Indeed, it's in this viewfinder that the TZ95 shows its biggest shift over its 2017 TZ90 predecessor: there's now more resolution in that little OLED panel (now 2,330k-dots).

Otherwise the TZ95 is more or less the same as the TZ90 from two years ago. It has the same 20-megapixel sensor, the same 30x optical zoom and the same screen, but adds Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for smart sharing on the go.

That seems to be part of Panasonic's current plan: utilise what it already has, tweak the formula, and repackage. It did much the same with its LX100 Mark 2, taking on a well-known formula and adding a few nips and tucks rather than investing any big money to overhaul the concept.

The Panasonic Lumix TZ95 will be available from the end of April 2019 in black and black & silver finishes, priced £399.99.

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