[pshute]

After thinking about it for getting on for a year, I found a TZ80 heavily discounted on the weekend, and bought it. Some questions about AF:
- What's the smallest AF area I can set? I assumed I could make it as small as one of the squares I see in 49 point AF mode, but the smallest seems to be equivalent to about 4 of them. Any way around that?
- What's the best way to make sure the AF area stays in the middle? I keep touching the edge of the screen when using the EVF, and it moves across. I tried changing the Touchpad AF setting from Exact to None - no change. I changed Touch AF from AF to None, and that works most of the time, but occasionally it'll suddenly active touch again, and I'm not sure why.

Not very familiar with Panasonic cameras.

[etudiant]

I have the prior model without the touchscreen.
It works and is surprisingly capable, but I can only recommend that you download and study the user manual.
Be warned that it is not a fun read, the format is hard to follow and the explanations are opaque. There really should be a 'Missing Manual', but trial and error will have to serve.
Spend a day just working the options, including the manual focus. That is essential in the field as the camera will focus on everything but the bird. Colors are muted, but you can adjust the balance to taste.

[pshute]

I've been going through the manual, and I agree with you entirely. An annotated version would be really useful. I wonder if anyone has created such a thing.

I worked out how to make the AF area small. In the Rec menu, in the AF Mode setting, I set it to 1-Area. Then tapped on the little "AF Area" label in the bottom right, and followed the instruction on the left to turn the dial to make it bigger or smaller. It's now as small as I'd like it to be. It's in the instructions, but not on p149 under "Switching AF Mode". It's on page 159 (it even says so on page 149). I had actually seen this, but thought they were referring to the lens ring, not the control dial, so thought it was as small as it could go.

I was inspired to search for this after I noticed that the AF area had somehow got bigger! I would like to know how that happened, so I can avoid it happening again.