Panasonic has beefed up its line of premium compact cameras, introducing at Photokina 2016 the Panasonic LX15, with 4K video recording, an f/1.4 lens and 1in sensor.
Inside the Panasonic LX15 is a 20.1-megapixel, 1in MOS sensor and a number of professional features, such as raw capture and the company’s 5-Axis Hybrid Optical Image Stabiliser Plus technology for smoother video.
The integration of 4K video to the LX line is one of the Panasonic LX15’s key features, offering three types of 4K functions: 4K Burst Shooting, 4K Burst (Start/Stop) and 4K Pre-burst modes.
What’s more, Panasonic has included its 4K Photo functionality, which lets photographers extract their best frames from 4K bursts and save them as 8-megapixel files.
The Panasonic LX15 records high-resolution QFHD 4K video in 3840×2160 at 30p / 25p(50Hz Area) or 24p in MP4 in addition to the full-HD 1,920 x 1,080/ 50p videos in AVCHD Progressive or MP4 (MPEG-4 / H.264) format with practical full-time AF.
It also offers a 4K Live Cropping tool when video recording for stable panning and zooming.
The Panasonic LX15’s lens is another key selling point. The newly developed f/1.4-2.8 LEICA DC VARIO-SUMMILUX lens system with 3x optical zoom (35mm camera equivalent: 24-72mm) allows for better shooting in low-light situations.
The Panasonic LX15 also offers an improved AF system with DFD (Depth From Defocus) technology, which shortens the time to set focus. It calculates the distance to the subject by evaluating two images with different sharpness levels at 240fps. This improvement in speed and precision is even greater as focal length increases.
The LUMIX LX15 boasts high-speed burst shooting at 10 fps (AFS) / 6 fps (AFC).
Other features include Panasonic’s new Post Focus and Post Focus Stacking technology.
Panasonic LX15 price and release information were not available at the time of writing.
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