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

Tags: Digital Camera Gadgets Lumix Panasonic