Panasonic's DMC-FX30 wide-angle 7.2 megapixel shooter

Panasonic is also unveiling their Lumix DMC-FX30 this morning which Panny claims is the "world's slimmest" to pack a 28mm wide-angle lens. Ok, but at 22-mm (0.87-inches) it's a full 0.2-mm thicker than the listed specs for Samsung's new 28mm wide-angle L74 which packs the same 7.2 megapixel CCD and 3.6x zoom but a bigger 3.0-inch touchscreen LCD around back. Thing is, the L74 has an irregular shape so who knows what to believe at this point -- it wouldn't be the first time Samsung fudged its numbers. So... hyperbole aside, the FX30 is thin and features a 3.6x LEICA DC VARIO-ELMARIT optical zoom lens, 7.2 megapixel CCD, Mega OIS optical image stabilization, Venus Engine III image-processing for shooting at ISO 1250, and a 2.5-inch 207k pixel LCD (the L74 throws down 230k pixels) with "Power LCD" to boost brightness by 40% (at the expense of battery life) when outdoors. It also records 848 x 480 video to SDHC cards at 30fps and shoots with a shutter release time lag of 0.005 seconds and a 2 frames per second burst mode at full resolution for a maximum of just 5 images. Rounding things out are a 280 picture battery and $349 price tag when these ship sometime in February.

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