Attended a photo contest presentation last night of which Panasonic Canada was one of the sponsors of the event. I had the chance to chat with the Panasonic representative about the FZ30 and here are the specifications that I was told:
- will be released in September 2005 while specification details will be released in August 2005 for marketing
- 8 mpeg with RAW and JPEG modes. I forgot to ask about TIFF as I am not a big fan of TIFF.
- same 12x optical zoom as the FZ20 with f/2 throughout the zoom range. I honestly can’t remember he mentioned f/2 or f/2.something. More importantly, it will still be a Leica lens.
- a bit smaller than the FZ20 due to change in lens design. He was talking about taking out the FZ20 motor that I didn’t understand. Only recalled it had something to enable full manual control
- flip-out LCD monitor

- will be listed at C$999

If what I was told are accurate, it is a real good upgrade particularly addition of RAW mode. I have been suppressing my impulse to get the FZ20 and the Canon S2 IS.

R.