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February 17, 2006
[ NEW FROM PANASONIC ]
PANASONIC announced some new cameras on 14/15th February in simultaneous regional "global" launches. Editors and technical writers from the Asia Pacific area were invited to Sydney to get the low down on the new products.
Two of the still cameras, the Lumix FX-01 and the DMC-FZ7 are small evolutionary developments of the FX9 and the FZ5. The FX-01 has an extended zoom range with a 28mm film equivalent at the wide angle end. The FZ7 has added a megapixel to the sensor count and the eye piece for the electronic viewfinder is now in line with the centre of the lens rather than on the far left corner of the camera body.
The Lumix DMC-TZ1 is a new compact camera with a 10x Leica zoom. The extreme range of the lens is contained in a compact body [Panasonic claim it is the world's smallest 10x zoom digital camera] by using folded optics.
Guests at the launch were allowed to use sample cameras but we were warned that they were pre-production models and that we should not reproduce any photos taken with them as some further improvements in image quality may be made before the official release.
All Panasonic cameras now feature the company's "key technologies", meaning the very effective optical image stabilisation and Leica optics. There are different iterations of the company's Venus image processing engine in different models.
Panasonic staff were asked about the imminent announcement of the company's entry into the digital SLR field and no one was saying anything! Except that the camera will be revealed at the PMA show in the US on February 26th. It seems to be common knowledge now that it will be based on the 4/3s system which must be very good news for Olympus which was beginning to look like an orphan company.
The product presentation included a demonstration of a new, small video projector [the PT—P1SD digital SD slide projector] which, believe it or not, is being sold as the slide projector for the 21st century.
The tiny projector puts out a very bright picture and has the niftiest keystone auto-correction function. The idea is that the photographer drops a Secure Digital [SD] memory card into the projector, marks the pictures for showing, selects a transition effect and presses a button on the remote control and bingo! A nice night's entertainment.
We were all too polite to ask if the world really wants a back-to-the-50s slide projector. And it does its job so well and without the fuss of a computer connection that it seems churlish to raise objections. But just look at the picture they are using in their advertising brochure...
This little projector is ideal for PowerPoint presentations. It comes with software for converting PowerPoint files to a portable format and saving them to an SD card by simple drag and drop. Movement of the PP presentation is controlled with the remote control. No more embarrassing mismatches and setup stuff-ups trying to connect a laptop to a projector. Leave the laptop in the office.
To complete the still camera and equipment lineup we were shown a small dye sublimation printer,the PX1 [ similar to those from Kodak and Sony]. The Panasonic version has a trick up its sleeve -- it will make borderless prints in the 16:9 format. Most Panasonic cameras can be switched to the 16:9 aspect ratio and one model, the DSC-LX1,
is native 16:9, so a printer capable of that format is just about obligatory.
It is one of the mysteries of the commercial world that Panasonic should spend huge amounts of money to assemble writers from around the region and not show us the new SLR, which, after all, is only two weeks from launch.
Release dates for most items will be between now [Feb] and April with most going on sale in March.
[ Note: dpexpert aka Terry Lane, travelled to Sydney as a guest of Panasonic. He accepted two gifts from the company -- a 1gb SD memory card and a Panasonic audio player, SV-SD750V. ]
Posted by terry at February 17, 2006 04:02 PM
