Panasonic

Another sizeable stand, featuring a wide range of Panasonic technologies from video to HDTV and of course digital cameras. Pride of place goes to the Lumix range, with the FZ20 (in black and silver), FZ3, LC80, FX2 and FX7 all getting their first official outing. No real surprises here, though we were pleased to see a new High Speed CardBus PCMCIA adaptor for SD cards, which promises a 20.8 MB/s transfer rate. Two new 'Pro' SD cards (512MB and 1GBGB) were also shown for the first time, also offering an unprecedented 20 MB/s theoretical top read/write speed. As ever the lovely DMC-LC1 gathered a lot of attention. Two 'mystery' shrouded podiums in front of the main stage area seem to hint at a surprise announcement... we'll report back tomorrow!

Update: Ahh well, those mystery shrouds were for... wait for it... some new batteries. No new cameras, and certainly not the much-rumoured interchangeable lens system. Word from the top at Panasonic is that there are no cameras being launched at Photokina.