06 March 2006

Hi-tech way into a man's heart

They say that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach. However my wife knows better. Look at what she got me for my birthday. My latest toy - the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9.

I really love my wife.



A have been looking for an affordable but good quality digital camera for quite sometime now. Our conditions were that: 1) it must be below RM1500, 2)take good quality pictures, 3) at least 5 Mega Pixels and 4) preferably weather proof. Yeah, we are really demanding customers.

I have been reading a lot of reviews and I must tell you that making a choice is realy tough - there are so many out there.

We went around camera shops asking their opinion. After seeing an billboard in PJ we nearly settled for the Olympus Stylus 600 Digital (mju 600 Digital). At RM999, it is the cheapest 6 Mega Pixel digital camera in the market right now. Besides this, what attracted us to this camera was the fact that it has a weatherproof body. However on doing further research, I read that it's LCD screen is broken easily and that the picture quality is not that good. Furthermore, it only takes movies without audio. I mean what fun is a movie without sound apart from Charlie Chaplin's.

Last weekend we were in Mega Mall, KL looking around some of the camera shops. In one of them, a guy recommended the Panasonic Lumix FX 9 and we were quite attracted to it. He was offering it at RM1399 with a 256 MB Secure Digital memory card thrown in for free (the camera comes with a tiny 16 MB card ). We decided to look around.

At one of the shops on the ground floor, we noticed a promotion for Pentax digital cameras. I was attracted to one which can take pictures underwater. However, on trying it out, the results were not that satisfactory.

The guy was quite nice (we hate attendents with an attitude problem) and decided we could see what they had on offer. They also had the Panasonic Lumix FX 9. What we really liked about this camera was that it comes with an anti-shake technology (Penasonic calls it "the Mega O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer) technology". The guy attending to us was offering the camera at RM1499/ with a 512 MB SD card, a camera carrying case and a LCD lens protector thrown in for free.

I have to admire my wife's bargaining skills - she asked for the camera with the 512 SD card minus the LCD protective cover, for RM1400. After a bit of bargaining he finally agreed. However as we were paying by credit card, we had to pay RM20 more. We also bought the LCD screen protector for RM30/. The total cost: RM1450/

They had two colour choices - black and grey (looks like lavender to me). My wife choose the grey one. She told me later it was because the black one was their display model. I must say that the cover really looks nice too.



Here are some of the features of my new toy in brief:

- 6.0 Mega Effective Pixels CCD
- 2.5 inch High-Resolution (207,000 pixels) LCD Display
- 3x Optical Zoom and 4x Digital Zoom
- Mega O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer) technology.
- Leica DC Vario-Elmarit Lens
- VGA movie with audio (30 fps)
- Consecutive Shooting at 2 fps
- Slim Alloy body
- Easy to use function mode dial, 15 scene modes
- Dimensions: 94.1 (W) x 50.5 (H) x 24.2 (D) mm
- Weight: 127g (not including Memory Card and Battery)
- Made in Japan

Read reviews of the camera here:

- Digital Photography Review

- CNET Asia

- Digital Camera Resource Page

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8 comments:

5xmom.com said...

Wow, lucky you! I tested the F8 earlier and yeap, nice camera, especially the anti-shake.

lucia said...

wahh! i'm jealous! adam has a new toy! adam has a new toy! :)

you are so lucky to have such a sweet and understanding wife... a wife who rather believe in the way to a man's heart is to get him a tech toy. :)

RM1450 in total. good bargain i see as it has great features.

i like the anti-shake feature. when i bought my digicam 2 years ago, they have not come out with the 'anti-shake' feature yet.

Anonymous said...

I am using olympus c-770, and for a 4 megapixel camera it produces impressive high quality photos... I was planning to buy Finepix 5500 but once I saw what this olympus could do I changed my mind.

see the picture I took with my olympus:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15559371@N00/

Anonymous said...

Well, our Canon Ixus 750 also does the job well. Anyway, many many many many many Happy Birthday wishes for you. Any chance of us meeting you in Europe ;)

mama23beas said...

A very lucky man, indeed...and I'm green with envy! Not in the position to spend money on toys at the moment.

BabyPink said...

wow! wow! wow!:)

and, happy birthday adam!:)

Dilip Mutum said...

Thanks for all the birthday wishes guys. Well now I have to pay the credit card bills. Just joking. I love my present.

Hardy: Hopefully we should see you by the end of this year.

Gazard7 said...

My belated happy birthday to you, man, you got a very nice present!

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