Timelapse With the Panasonic TZ7
Having shot a couple of timelapses with the TZ7, I've found that the following settings work best when using the cheap and lean timelapse machine.
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Unless your target is 4:3, set the aspect ratio to widescreen. REC - 1 - Aspect Ratio: 16:9
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Set the picture size to 1920x1080. Besides making the SDHC card fill up slower, there is really no reason to shoot in anything higher than 1080p. (Well, unless you target digital cinema 2K which is 2.5M(EZ) plus some cropping, or digital cinema 4K, in which case you'll have to upscale and crop from 9M.) REC - 1 - Picture Size: 2M(EZ)
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There is no point to save the pictures in high quality. REC - 1 - Quality: Low (one line of boxes)
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If you will be doing a timelapse of sunrise or sunset, use automatic white balance. REC - 2 - White Balance: AWB
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Finally, set the burst mode. REC - 3 - Burst: Infinite
Conservation of Battery Power
When shooting timelapses with a battery-powered camera such as the TZ7, there is one major problem: It being battery-powered. There is no way to switch batteries during shooting without getting an annoying "hiccup" in the resulting movie, no way to add a second battery in a battery grip, and no way to connect external (grid) power. So to avoid running out of battery power in the middle of shooting a sequence, do this:
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Turn off optical stabilizer. REC - 3 - Stabilizer: Off
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Turn down the LCD brightness. SETUP - 2 - Monitor: -3
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Turn off face recognition. REC - 2 - Face Recog: Off
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Turn off all beeps, shutter noises and other other disgusting, deviant and perverted noises you may be forcing your camera to make. Really, this should be turned off under penalty of not being allowed to use a camera. SETUP - 1 - Beep: Beep Level 0, Shutter Vol. 0
I've found that I get about 1h38m of continuous shooting during sunset with this setup.