CES is over, but Panasonic has no plans of letting the camera announcements end — they’ve just announced four new Lumix compact cameras in addition to the eight they introduced at CES earlier this month.
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“Keep it simple, Stupid!.” That’s a principle exemplified by Apple’s industrial design, but sometimes is nowhere to be found when it comes to compact cameras. Panasonic, however, seems to be on the same wavelength with the Lumix FP7 they just unveiled at CES 2011. The physical buttons normally found on the back of point-and-shoots are missing, replaced instead with a sleek 3.5-inch touchscreen LCD. The only physical buttons that remain are found on the top of the camera — power, shutter, and zoom (dial). With the simplicity comes 16.1 megapixel photographs, 4x optical zoom, and 720p video recording. No word yet on pricing or availability.

Update: As @valerietherese points out, this is also taking a page from Sony and the DSC-T200 camera released in 2007.

Panasonic has just pulled the wraps off the Lumix DMC-GF2, the company’s smallest and lightest Micro Four Thirds camera. The cameras has a built in flash, employs a 3 inch touchscreen on the back, shoots stills at 12.1MP, captures 1920 x 1080 HD video, and has an ISO range of 100 to 6400. It’ll start shipping in January 2011, with the price secret until about a month before then.
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Here’s a pretty clever ad by Panasonic promoting their Lumix G2 camera. It’s fun seeing photographic terms appear in a commercial, and understanding what the terms mean make the commercial even funnier for photo enthusiasts.

Thanks for the tip, @mondostic!

Panasonic has pulled the wraps off its new Lumix branded phone that we first reported on last week. The website set up for the phone now has photos and diagrams, though it’s in Japanese. We now know that it’s a slider phone that looks like a stretched out compact camera, with “13.2 Megapixels” etched on the front to remind everyone that your cell phone packs quite a punch.
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We might soon have a hard time distinguishing between camera phones and phone cameras. Next week Panasonic will be unveiling a new Lumix brand cell phone, a brand previously reserved for digital cameras. According to the pre-announcement press release, the phone will have a 13 megapixel CMOS sensor, a microSDHC slot, Wi-Fi capabilities, and a 3.3 inch LCD screen.

As large CMOS sensors and high quality extendable lenses start moving into cell phones, there won’t be much (if anything) separating them from compact cameras. Keep your eye on this dedicated website Panasonic set up recently. The full announcement will come on October 5th.

(via 1001 Noisy Cameras)

Panasonic decided recently that it would be a good idea to put up a giant inflatable balloon of their spokesmodel, Japanese actress Haruka Ayase, to promote its new Lumix camera. Apparently passersby reacted with fear and confusion rather than enthusiasm, though we can’t imagine why…
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Panasonic announced the Lumix GH2 today at Photokina. Here’s the low down: the GH2 is a 16.05 megapixel Micro Four Thirds EVIL camera with an ISO range of 160 to 12800, 23 autofocus points, face detection, a 3-inch swiveling LCD screen, and HD video recording at 1080p (60i/24p). You can also use the 3D lens Panasonic announced recently to capture 3D photos with this camera. This camera will ship by the end of this year at a price of $900 for the body only.
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There’s the old adage, it’s not the camera that makes the photographer, but according to a by-the-numbers study by dating site OkCupid, the nicer camera might make you look more attractive.

Based on a random “snap decision” survey hosted by the site (two juxtaposed photos with the question, “Who would you rather date?”), people tended to favor photos of people taken with Panasonic Micro-4/3s, followed by Leica point-and-shoots. DSLRs ranked pretty highly as well, followed by big-brand compacts. Certain camera phones like the iPhone ranked as slightly less, though still producing attractive photographs. Minolta DSLRs and the Nikon Coolpix fell below the attractive standard, along with most other camera phones. Kodak really takes it hard, ranking third lowest with the EasyShare next to the Windows and Motorola phones. Read more…

Panasonic just announced the HDC-SDT750, touting it as the “world’s first 3D consumer camcorder”. The exact claim is slightly dubious, since we featured a different one last month, but it’s definitely the first 3D camcorder unveiled by any of the major camera corps.

The camcorder uses an included 3D lens to record two separate images on its standard 1080p sensor, meaning the resulting 3D video only has a resolution of 960 x 1080. If you’ve got a spare $1,399 lying around, the camcorder will be available starting in October 2010.
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