Panasonic Unveils New Lumix FZ-18 with 18x Zoom and 8.1 Megapixels
Clearly a rival of the recently released Olympus SP-550 UZ “Ultra Zoom” camera, which also features an 18x optical zoom.
Introducing the Panasonic Lumix FZ-18.
The Olympus got reasonable reviews, it’s not very fast, not very sharp and the pictures are ok - but it has 18x zoom! The ultimate travelling partner perhaps.
Now Panasonic counters with this, a massive 18x zoom to match and wider at the wide angle end with 28mm rather than the normal 35/36mm and of course the quality of the Leica lens helps. Plus the great Panasonic stabiliser. They just really need to sort out the image quality and noise problems with the Venus processor.
Looks to be a well specced camera.
- 8.1 effective Megapixel CCD
- F2.8-4.2, 18X optical zoom lens, equivalent to 28 - 504 mm
- Optical image stabilization
- 2.5″ LCD display with 207,000 pixels + electronic viewfinder with 188,000 pixels
- Full manual controls
- Intelligent Auto mode features auto scene selection, face detection (for up to 15 faces), and continuous AF
- High sensitivity mode can boost ISO to 6400 (oh, good)
- RAW image format support
- Records widescreen movies at 848 x 480, with sound
- 27MB onboard memory + SD/SDHC/MMC card slot
- Support for conversion lenses and filters
- Uses proprietary li-ion battery; 400 shots per charge
- Comes in silver and black
- Ships this September for $400
But please - ISO6400? On a Panasonic, they must be kidding!
And why can’t people make f/2.0 lenses like the old Canon G2!
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