Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX40: Life begins

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX40 may not look too different from its predecessors, but it does boast assorted new features

Richard Trenholm

Richard Trenholm was CNET's film and TV editor, covering the big screen, small screen and streaming. A member of the Film Critic's Circle, he's covered technology and culture from London's tech scene to Europe's refugee camps to the Sundance film festival.

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Richard Trenholm

Jan. 28, 2009 7:54 a.m. PT

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If life begins at 40, things are looking good for the Panasonic Lumix FX series. The new DMC-FX40 is a stylish 12.1-megapixel-point-and-shoot camera with a wide-angle lens and long zoom.

That's a 25mm wide-angle Leica lens with a 5x optical zoom, adding up to the equivalent to 25mm to 125mm on a 35mm camera. Inside, it boasts twin CPUs to run its Venus Engine V brain. This powers up face recognition, which remembers people you've photographed and looks for them again.

Other features include a souped-up iA automatic mode, panorama assist, which creates panoramic images both vertically and horizontally, and automatic screen brightness audjustment.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX40 will come in black, silver or red. Click through the gallery for more, and to see how the FX40 rings the changes -- or not -- over its predecessors the FX33, FX35 and FX37.

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Here's the 64mm (2.5-inch) LCD screen, which is fine but a little underwhelming next to the whopping monitors on the FS25 and other new models. Still, at least it keeps the FX40 trim. Hmm, this looks familiar...

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It's time for the world's easiest game of spot the difference! Here we see the FX40 alongside its predecessors the FX35 and FX37. But which one is which? How many differences can you spot?

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The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that the FX40 is the one in the middle because of the 12-megapixel change, as well as the round playback selector instead of the square one. Good game, good game.