Kyocera Japan has announced the three megapixel, three times optical zoom Finecam L30. At first sight this appears to be 'just another' three megapixel digital camera (indeed very similar in appearance to the L3v/L4v) however the Finecam L30 has superior video recording capability. The reason for this is that the L30 records video using the MPEG-4 video compression codec which should mean much smaller video file sizes and longer recording times. The L30 records video at 320x240 (15 fps) or 160x112 (30 fps) for as long as there is space on the storage card (SD/MMC plus 16 MB built-in). Lets hope this is the first of many digital cameras which will provide MPEG-4 as their video compression codec (almost all current digital cameras use Motion JPEG or MPEG-1).

Phil: it's worth noting that there have been other digital cameras (Panasonic) with MPEG-4 capability but they have mostly been marketed as compact gadget cams.

Kyocera Finecam L30 Specifications