Panasonic DMC-FX40: a normal's review
Hello, I’m Stuart, editor of My Chemical Toilet, and I’ve volunteered to write this post about one of five Panasonic cameras whose details reached Susi yesterday. She couldn’t face even reading the press releases, so we did a little switcheroo – you can read her music-related post here.
Now, the Panasonic DMC-FX40. I might be a guy writing on a girls’ website, but this piece of photographic equipment will suit stalkers of either gender. It has a “face recognition” feature you see, which means that if you take several photos of the same person you can then “register” them so that next time you snap their features they will receive “auto focus and auto exposure priority”.
Presumably this means that if you’re strolling down the avenue – tum-te-tum-te-tum – and you coincidentally happen to spot the object of your affections having breakfast through the window of a nearby house, you can snap him/her with crystal clarity while leaving his/her spouse and offspring in the gloom where they belong.
You can also attach an icon to your registered victim friend. The press release suggests a love heart, but one would hope you have the option of a knife or a net as well.
I have a couple of questions about this face recognish stuff, though, neither of which I want answered:
– If you can remember someone’s face, and your camera also remembers their face, do you need to take pictures of that face at all?
– What if the person you register gets a bit porky, or loses their hair? Will you still remember them, Panasonic DMC-FX40, or will you erase them from your electronic mind, you cad?
I gather at this point I should probably provide some actual information, so here are some other things this camera has:
– a 25mm Leica DC VARIO-ELMARIT high-quality lens (?)
– an unevenly thick concave meniscus EA (extra high refractive index aspherical) lens (??)
– a Venus Engine V with twin CPUs to boast approx. 2.4x processing capability (?!?!??)
– lens cap
– button to press after people have said “cheeeeeese”
