Panasonic updates its Lumix against dangerous batteries

Dangerous for the camera or for its users, some third-party batteries, manufactured by arcane Chinese companies which distribute products that don’t respect safety criteria. Cheaper than branded batteries, these batteries are often disappointing with a lower battery life and sometimes a very short duration. But these batteries are mostly worrying in terms of safety.  

 

The ZS3(TZ7) with 12x optical zoom and 720p video: we’ve tried it here.

As Panasonic’s after-sales services had noticed some worrying problems such as short-circuits in their digital cameras after using low-quality batteries, the firm decided to update all the firmware of its cameras to prevent them from functioning with batteries which wouldn’t be standard Panasonic, as indicated on the Panasonic blog led by Luc Saint-Elie. This update is of course not mandatory and can be seen as a legal waiver for Panasonic in case of an important accident and would also allow detecting a counterfeit battery.

 

Although one may think that it’s only about money, with an easy way for Panasonic selling more batteries, we must put things into perspective as it’s a niche market: given the quality of the Lithium batteries on cameras, the market of second-mount batteries is rather limited.  

 

The SZ1 (TZ6) is the younger brother of the ZS3: it also has a 25-300mm stabilized zoom but no HD video 720p.

 

Here’s the link to download this new firmware – which doesn’t change anything in the camera operation.