Hasta La Gadget!

It’s tempting to call this information a leak, but when Panasonic posts a new camera in full on its store, and then leaves it there, its more of a “stealth launch” than a leak. The camera in question is the LX5, the successor to the well-regarded LX3.

The LX3 is Panasonic’s high-end point and shoot, characterized by a high-ISO, low-noise sensor and a fast, wide Leica lens, opening to ƒ2.0 and 24mm. The new LX5 keeps the same 10.1 MP sensor (although adds a wishful ISO 12,800 to the top end of sensitivity) and the same fast and wide maximum lens settings, but makes a lot of tweaks to an already very good camera.

First, the lens can now zoom out to 90 mm (against 60 mm) but the maximum aperture drops from ƒ2.8 to ƒ3.3 at the long end (still better than the widest aperture on most point-n-shoot cameras). The shutter speed now tops out at 1/4000th sec (previously 1/2000th sec), there is an option to use an electronic viewfinder (the LX3 only had an add-on optical finder), a jog dial instead of a nubbin for manual-focus, and the LX5 gets HDMI-out and VieraLink outputs.

There are other small changes, but they are incremental and incidental. What about price? As the LX5 has yet to appear in the Panasonic store, we can only guess. And my guess is that it will replace the LX3 and cost the same $500 RRP.

LX5 product page [Panasonic]

See Also:

• Lumix
• A Month With the Lumix GF1, And Why I No Longer Use The Nikon D700 …

Another entrant has entered the Micro Four Thirds ring, and it’s Panasonic delivering the Lumix DMC-G2 — a new shooter with similar still performance but, this time, some rather nice enhancements, the most major being a three-inch articulating touchscreen. You can control some aspects of the camera with a touch, perhaps most useful being tap-to-focus augmented by the camera keeping focus on whatever you tapped on, even if it moves around. But, a full suite of physical buttons and dials still await your fingers, enabling you to tweak settings without fiddling with menus. The 720p video recording now supports AVCHD, giving your SDHC or SDXC memory card a break, and there’s an input for an optional stereo mic. Ultimately still performance here is said to be identical to Panasonic’s more budget-minded DMC-G10, which clocks in $200 cheaper than the G2’s MSRP of $799, but lacks 720p video and the fancy touchscreen. Worth the extra cost? That depends on how deep your pockets are.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-G2 reviewed, premium features warrant its premium price originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Jul 2010 08:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Panasonic has released more details of its upcoming Micro Four Thirds (M4/3) camcorder, the mysterious AG-AF100, which was originally announced back in April. And while we have no price or firm launch date (we’re still looking at the end of the year), there is a lot for videographers to get excited about.

Most important, the camcorder will work with all of Panasonic’s G-series lenses, those made for the existing M4/3 stills cameras. This, by extension, means that you’ll also be able to use the available adapters to put just about any 35mm lens on the front.

Then come details of the shooting formats. The AF100 will shoot AVCHD video in 1080 and 720-line sizes, at frame rates of 59.94, 50, 29.97, 25 or 23.9p (this last mimics the frame rate of traditional film cameras). Up to 12-hours of footage can be captured to the twin SDXC card slots, and the camera will talk to microphones and other video hardware via standard XLR and HD-SDI sockets.

For a (presumably) budget-friendly price, a large-sensor camcorder with access to thousands of great lenses is a sweet prospect. It might not have the flexibility of video-shooting DSLRs like the Canon 5D MkII, but neither will you need to bolt on so many accessories that it ends up looking like a Borg. The (PDF) link to the product details is dead right now, but in the meantime you can read a little more at the intermediary DP Review page.

AG-AF100 details (PDF) [Panasonic via DP Review]

See Also:

• Panasonic Announces Micro Four Thirds Camcorder
• Hi-def

The Panasonic GH1 can do some great video for its size, thanks to that fancy micro four-thirds optical setup, but it’s been held back the low bitrates it uses when recording. Now some enterprising hacker named “Tester 13” has reversed engineered the GH1’s firmware and unlocked the true power of the camera (much like Magic Lantern has done for the 5D Mark II). In fact, the main trouble now is that Tester 13’s firmware uncovers too many options: users are trying out different configurations to maximize quality without bumping into the camera’s buffer limitations. The current flavors of choice include 50Mbps MJPEG at 1080p (the stock camera caps out at 720p in MJPEG), to be augmented by 32Mbps AVCHD when the crazy high-end MJPEG causes the camera to buffer overflow. It’s all very technical and video-nerds-only in theory, but results speak for themselves: check out a sample video after the break. And try out the new firmware if you dare.

[Thanks, Steve]

Continue reading Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 gets firmware hack for higher quality HD video recording

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 gets firmware hack for higher quality HD video recording originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Jun 2010 07:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s kinda hard trying to keep up with the litany of models in Panasonic’s Lumix family, though placing this one near the top of the point-and-shoot pile shouldn’t be so difficult. It’s equipped with a 14.1 megapixel sensor, a wide-angle F2.2 lens with 5x optical zoom, and the now obligatory HD video (we presume 720p) recording and intelligent picture processing options. A 3-inch touchscreen hogs the majority of controls on the back, including a neat touch-to-focus function that we think all these little shooters should have, which is augmented by the camera’s AF tracking a subject once selected. Slick. We’re still no big fans of the AVCHD Lite format used here, but Motion JPEG recording is on offer as well, which is kind of nice. No price or availability just yet, but we know it’ll be at least a month before you can slather the FX75 with loving fingerprints.

Continue reading Panasonic Lumix FX75 takes evolutionary step forward

Panasonic Lumix FX75 takes evolutionary step forward originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Jun 2010 06:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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