Panasonic offers quality now, quantity next year

By JUHA SAARINEN

Japanese electronics giant Panasonic aims to make a dent in the burgeoning digital camera market with its new range of Lumix pixel snappers for casual and professional photographers.

Unlike its competitors, Panasonic isn't offering more megapixels as the main attraction.

Mamoru Yoshida, director of Panasonic's digital camera business and development centre in Osaka, said it wasn't technically possible with the current generation of sensors and electronics to reach the high megapixel amounts of the competition.

But Yoshida says revised technology will enable Panasonic to catch up in the megapixel war.

In the meantime, Panasonic is instead focusing on features that help photographers produce better pictures. These include anti-shake technology, improved image processing circuitry and high-quality Leica optics.

The anti-shake system has gyroscopes and sensors to compensate for movement causing blurred pictures.

The system is fast, reacting in less than a hundredth of a second, and has two selectable modes that work either constantly, or just before the shutter release is squeezed.

Anti-shake is necessary in digital cameras, Panasonic says, because photographers hold them away from the body so they can compose the picture with the LCD instead of the view finder.

And the Leica zoom lenses with up to 420mm focal length mean photographers would normally have to use a tripod to avoid blur - with the autoshake system working, this isn't necessary, even at longish exposure times.

The Venus II Engine image processor is new and provides 50 per cent higher diagonal resolution than its predecessor.

It works with the anti-shake system, and has features such as colour-fringing reduction and non-stop shooting until the memory card fills up - the top-end models can capture four frames a second.

The Lumix range has three categories, starting with the LC80, intended for everyday photography.

It has a 5 megapixel sensor, a 3X optical Leica zoom lens with f/2.8 brightness and a 1.5in LCD.

A feature of the LC80, says Panasonic, is its long battery life - two AA nickel-metalhydride batteries should last for 320 pictures.

But it does not have the antishake system or the Venus II Engine.

The Compact Line has two models, the 5 megapixel FX7 and the 4 megapixel FX2. Both have antishake and the Venus II Engine and are compact and light.

Neither camera has a viewfinder, but they have 2.5in and 2in LCDs respectively, which fill up most of the back.

Like its competitors, Panasonic is offering the FX7 and FX2 in a range of colours for the fashion-conscious.

At the top end of the range are two new Lumix models, each with the super-long 12X Leica f/2.8 zoom lens.

The FZ3 is small and light, and has a 3.1 megapixel sensor. It is intended for budget photographers wanting top-grade optics rather than high image resolution.

The FZ20 has improvements over its FZ10 predecessor, including a 5 megapixel sensor, an auto-focus assist light and TIFF output format as well as JPEG.

Photographer-controlled exposure features on the FZ20 are more readily accessible than on the FZ10 - they can now be set with the mode dial. The camera still does not have manual zoom.

The FZ3 and the FZ20 come with anti-shake and the Venus II Engine.

All the new Lumix cameras will be available in New Zealand. The LC80 arrives this month, and the rest in October.

Panasonic NZ says prices are still being calculated.

Panasonic