Panasonic has announced details of the new LX5, which replaces the excellent LX3 prestige compact. With an optically stabilized F2.0 Leica lens, which has a 24mm wide angle from a 3.8x zoom lens and 1/1.63″ 10MP CCD some stunning images should be possible from the camera.
As with virtually every compact released in the last twelve months a HD movie mode is present, utilizing the same AVCHD Lite format as it’s predecessors, and the Venus FHD engine has three CPUs to reduce noise and generally speed up performance.
Since the launch of the LX3 the prestige compact market has become more crowded, as the likes of the Samsung EX1 and Canon S90 have made an impressive splash. Although there must have been a temptation to increase the megapixels Panasonic has instead opted for a bright, wide lens to insure sharp images. The 1.163″ CCD offers a larger surface area than lower spec compacts as well, making it able to capture more light from the Leica lens. Although there aren’t too many huge leaps forward from the LX3 from a specs point of view there were few issues to correct, although the slightly longer zoom is a welcome addition.
Rounding out the features is a 3″ 460k LCD screen and RAW shooting mode, so those after absolute quality will be able to save uncompressed files. Check www.panasonic.co.uk or www.whatdigitalcamera.com/news.html for more details
First sample images from the LX5 here