The ability to shoot a sweeping landscape at wideangle one minute and to zoom right in to capture distant details the next is addictive, and invaluable of course when travelling.
This being said, the primary attraction of these cameras is versatility. We know from previous group tests that putting complex zooms of this type into such small bodies can lead to compromises in critical image quality. The sensors in these cameras are all the same size - 1/2.3in, which equates to actual dimensions of 6.1x4.6mm - much smaller than the sensors in most interchangeable lens cameras (with the exception of the rather curious Pentax Q) Because the size of a lens is directly related to its required imaging circle, the smaller the imaging circle (defined by the dimensions of the sensor) the smaller the lens needs to be. Putting a 10x-plus optical zoom lens into a camera small enough to fit into a jacket pocket is quite a feat, and zooms of this type are made possible because the sensors inside these cameras are tiny compared to the sensors inside DSLRs. Fast forward to 2011, and almost all of the major camera manufacturers offer compact cameras with at least 10x optical zooms, up to almost 20x in some cases. Released in 2006, the TZ1 was the first camera with a 10x optical zoom lens that could truly be called 'compact', and although Panasonic had the field to itself for a while, it wasn't long before other manufacturers started to move into the same space. The so-called 'Travel Zoom' category was effectively invented by Panasonic, with the Lumix DMC-TZ1.
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