Marie JonesIt’s intelligent, interchangeable and incredibly compact considering it’s not a traditional point and shooter. The new Limix digital Micro Four Thirds shooter from Panasonic has a 16MP Live MOS sensor and 1920×1080 full HD video recording and comes with all the benefits of an interchangeable lens camera in one small package.
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With a 25 percent reduction in size and weight from its G2 model, Panasonic’s redesign of the high sensitivity signal processing results in stunningly clear ad sharp images even when taken at high ISO sensitivity.
An articulating 3 inch touchscreen replaces the dials on the G2 giving more intuitive control of menus by touching and sliding your finger to get the desired focus, playback and effects you want. You can even trigger the shutter from the touch display.
Panasonic claims the DMC-G3’s high speed touch focusing and shooting achieves a 0.18 second speed, and mechanical frames achieve four frames per second consecutive shooting at full resolution.
Budding photographers can also get more creative by adjusting colours more intuitively, and a ‘Photo Style’ feature gives finer control of contrast, sharpness, saturation and noise reduction.
The camera body itself is made of light aluminium, and gives an ergonomic grip. It’s due to arrive in Australia in July, in black, red and white.
The DMC-G3 is compatible with Panasonic’s 3D lens, the H-FT012E. In addition to the eleven LUMIX G Series lenses, the DMC-G3 can use any interchangeable lens that complies with the Four Thirds standard via an optional mount adaptor. Adaptors for the Leica M/R lenses are also available.
A variety of touch-control operations make playback quick, easy and more fun. For example, with Touch-Scroll Playback, you simply slide your finger across the LCD to scroll through images. And with Touch-Zoom Playback, you can simply touch a part of the image to enlarge it to as much as 16x.
Pricing and lens kits are yet to be announced.