What Photo Gear

Panasonic today announced a new ultra-zoom camera - the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ50. Specs wise, it boasts of a 10x moderate wide angle lens (28-280mm in 35mm terms) with Panasonic’s OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) system and the big news is of course its Wi-Fi capabilities. (You even get the word “Wireless” emblazoned on the camera’s grip) :p

With the TZ 50 you are able to wirelessly upload your photo’s to Google’s Picasa Web Albums straight from the camera. You also get 12 months worth of free access to T-Mobile’s Hotspot services (T-Mobile US Only)

Pretty useful I’d say, though I almost always run my photographs through a bit of post-processing in Photoshop or Lightroom before publishing them, there are times when I’d definitely want the ability to just wirelessly upload them straight from the camera.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ50:

• 9.1 Megapixels
• 10x optical zoom with image stabilization (28-280mm equivalence)
• 3 inch LCD
• 720p HD Video Capture
• SD and SDHC support
• Allow automatic uploading of images to Google’s Picasa Web Service via 802.11 b/g Wireless

I’m still not clear on this - but from what I understand the wireless uploading option is limited only to Google’s Picasa Web Albums, so no direct wireless uploading to any other services such as Flickr. The Panasonic TZ-50 will be available in May with an MSRP of $ 449.

Full Panasonic Press Release after the jump!

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New York Times resident tech guru David Pogue has published his hands-on with Casio’s very very interesting shooter - the Casio Exilim EX-F1.

The more I read about this camera, the more interesting it gets. Now if I could somehow cough up that $999 street price, I would definitely be in line for one. The high-speed 60 frame-per-second shooting can definitely open up a lot of opportunities that I would’ve otherwise missed with a regular superzoom.

But unfortunately it’s not all good news though, despite the fast shooting speed, the camera seems to be saddled with slow start-up times, and if the EVF is anything like most superzooms, then it can get pretty laggy at times. And David complains about the sluggish lens as well.

The 12X zoom is nice to have, but it’s slow to react. And during video capture, when you turn the lens ring to zoom, it jerks spastically through the zoom range, effectively ruining your shot. The camera has great difficulty changing focus during filming, too.

All in all, this looks to be a step in the right direction for Casio, the price might put off quite a few people, especially since image quality isn’t really anything special, but comparable to other super-zooms - but for those of us who can find value in its shooting speed, it could be worth the pretty hefty investment.

Now if Casio can drop a larger sensor on the EX-F2 with a lens worthy of the shooting speed, without upping the price.. that could be quite something.

From: The New York Times via What Photo Gear

And the more interesting one out of Nikon’s 3 new camera’s today, is the Nikon P80 ultra-zoom digital camera. And this camera’s claim to fame, is going to be its 18x zoom lens featuring a whopping 27mm-486mm coverage (in 35mm terms.) So that’s from decent wide-angle to a paparazzi worthy telephoto range.

The camera looks suspiciously like a Canon S5 IS to me though, and I wish Nikon would’ve been a bit more daring with this one. Although this is a big re-design for Nikon’s P series (P stands for ‘Performance’) of digital cameras as previous P series models weren’t ultra-zooms - there are quite a few ultra-zooms out in the market right now. We’ve got the aforementioned Canon S5 IS, the Fuji S8100fd, the Olympus SP-560 UZ, the Sony H50 and the Panasonic FZ-18.

I wish Nikon would’ve thrown in an articulating LCD, or had taken the lens wider. (I’m still waiting for an update to the Nikon 8400 from 2004!) But all in all, specs wise, the Nikon P80 looks all set to rumble with all the other ultra-zooms. But will it be a case of too little too late for Nikon in this market segment?

The Nikon P80:

• 10.1 Megapixels
• 18x zoom lens (27-486mm equivalence) (f/2.8 - f/4.5)
• Vibration Reduction (And with a lens like that, VR is going to help a lot) (Nikon’s Press Literature only says that the P80 comes equipped with Optical Vibration Reduction, and interestingly, DPreview’s news article claims it comes with CCD-Shift VR, not lens based)
• Full Manual Controls
• ISO 64-1600 (ISO 3200 and 6400 only at 3MP and smaller)
• Available this April with an MSRP of $399.95

Hit the Read More Link to see the full Press Release.

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