Today Panasonic announced the Lumix DMC-FX500, a 10-megapixel point-and-shoot with an emphasis on control: the camera not only includes a joystick for menu navigation, but also features touchscreen control on its 3-inch LCD viewfinder.
Panasonic is also touting the camera's HD-video capability, which records at 720p resolution; photos can also automatically be matted-down to a 1280x720, 16:9 aspect-ratio, making the camera easily suited for HD displays. Capturing all this high-definition action is a 25mm wide-angle lens, which Panasonic notes can "almost double the photo area... compared with a conventional 35mm lens," thus providing for more expansive landscapes and denser family portraits.
Rounding out the Lumix DMC-FX500's innards is optical image-stabilization, red-eye correction, and face detection, in addition to automated scene-detection, which purportedly adapts shooting parameters to the environment at hand.
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500 will be available in May 2008 for an MSRP of $399.95 .
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