Panasonic has clearly become bored after the excitement of CES and has decided to put together a new range of cameras to wile away the long and rainy afternoons, so take a look at the new additions to the Lumix range.
DMC-TZ6
This 10MP snapper features a 12x optical zoom and an ultra-wide angle lens. This gives you the option of shooting at the equivalent of 25mm to 300mm on 35mm film cameras.
Using Intelligent Auto mode means the camera activates AF tracking, Intelligent Exposure, Face Detection, Intelligent Scene Selector, Mega Optical Image Stabilizer and Intelligent ISO Control at the touch of a button, and can also lock onto a moving object by pressing the button halfway down.
Available in April this year, you can nab it in either black or silver.
DMC-FS25
Sporting a 12.1MP sensor, this photography machine packs the same Intelligent Auto function as the DMC-TZ6. It also features a 5x zoom, a 3-inch LCD, a 29mm wide angle Leica DC lens, the camera can record in WVGA and it's compatible with 16:9 TV sets.
Same as before, head out in April to get this in black or silver.
DMC-TZ7
Next up is a hybrid effort from Panasonic, meaning you get not only a 12x optical zoom, 10MP sensor and the ability to shoot at up to 21.4x magnification at 3MP resolution, but AVCHD Lite-motion picture recording as well.
Basically, that means you can pack in twice as much HD recording time than usual, with Dolby Digital Stereo Creator on-board for decent sound.
If you were worrying, the TZ7 includes the Intelligent Auto function (seeing pattern here?) and a dedicated video recording button for when you want to switch between the two options. The images and videos are stored on an SD card for easy transfer between your devices du jour.
Guess what? It's available in April, but you can get it in brown, black and silver! Wow.
DMC-FX550
Get a load of this: a 3-inch touchscreen on a camera! It's like a Palm Pre stuffed into a Lumix-branded chassis, but without the phone bit, WebOS or a 3MP sensor...
Instead, this has a 5x optical zoom, a 12.1 MP sensor, the ability to extend the zoom up to 9.8x for 3MP shots and the clearly mandatory Intelligent Auto mode.
It also features baby mode, enabling users to tag each face with an age. When the subject is under three, the tagged photo is placed into a slideshow that can be used to bore the pants off someone nearby.
Black and silver rear their heads again with this one, but you can have it in March! One for the impatient Panasonic lover.
DMC-FX40
Very similar to the FX550, this camera differs only in the fact it has a 2-inch screen (no touchy). Intelligent Auto mode is back for yet more kicks and there's also a High-Speed Burst shooting mode, which fires off around 10 shots per second and features unlimited consecutive shooting so you can keep snapping until the memory card is full.
Availability? We're back to April again and we hope you like black and silver. Oh, you want more? Also available in red. How about that?
DMC-FT1
The Chuck Norris of cameras this one. Get ready to try and break it, and you'll find that you can't. Well, you could if you took it further down than 3m underwater, smashed it with a hammer, burnt it or ran it over.
But apart from those things, it has an airtight and shock resistant casing for bumps, scrapes and drops. Try and get sand in there. Oh, you can't.
And the features aren't too shabby: 12.1MP sensor with a 4.6x optical zoom, a Leica DC 28mm wide angle lens, AF, face recognition, burst shooting mode, a variety of scenes and like its TZ7 brother, HD video shooting in AVCHD Lite format.
And the best bit: it comes in blue! That's a whole different colour, though you can get it in silver too... and it comes out in March.
No word on pricing for any of these yet, but get ready to pay upwards of £200 for the range.
