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Panasonic FX75 is wide, bright, extra Intelligent

It's always nice when the highlight of a touch-screen camera isn't the LCD. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX75, for example, has a 3-inch touch-screen LCD, but the main attraction is really the lens: a compact ultrawide-angle 24-120mm-equivalent lens with a maximum aperture of f2.2 and a 5x zoom. The 14-megapixel ultracompact features the company's Sonic Speed AF system, too, for fast focusing and low shutter lag.

Unlike some previous FX models, this one doesn't appear to have semimanual or manual shooting modes; it's got a whole lot of automatic and scene modes. Fortunately, Panasonic's … Read more

First Take: Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5 is a step down from the company's top-of-the-line compact megazoom, the ZS7. The 12x f3.3-4.9 25-300mm-equivalent lens and body size are the same, but the ZS5 sheds the ZS7's GPS receiver, stereo mic, and ability to record HD movies in AVCHD Lite format (it records in Motion JPEG at up to 720p, though). The ZS5 also has a lower-resolution, smaller 2.7-inch LCD.

However, all those cuts lead to a $100 worth of savings, so if you don't need or want those extra features, the ZS5 is worth checking out.

CNET … Read more

GPS, manual controls added to Panasonic 12x megazoom

Replacing the very popular Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3, the company's top-of-the-line compact 12x megazoom, is the DMC-ZS7. The 12x f3.3-4.9 25-300mm-equivalent lens stays the same as in the prior model, but gets a bunch of new extras including built-in GPS.

The GPS will add latitude and longitude to the EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data and display real-time location information during shooting and playback. Stored in the internal memory are more than 500,000 landmarks, covering 73 countries, that will be displayed on the 3-inch, 460K-dot LCD while taking a picture of the landmark and tagged in the … Read more

Panasonic 8x zoom compact gets a little fresh

Before you get all broken up and angry 'cause you just bought a ZR1, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZR3 is a fairly minor update to that camera. The key ingredient--the 8x f3.3-5.9 25-200mm-equivalent lens--is unchanged from the ZR1, as is the compact body, advanced Power O.I.S. image stabilization, and fast AF system.

What's added is the ability to record video in AVCHD Lite format as well as Motion JPEG HD-quality video and a couple of new image-processing options. One, Intelligent Resolution, is designed to improve the results from using the digital zoom (aka Intelligent Zoom) or … Read more