Panasonic is pleased to introduce a new 8.1-megapixel Lumix digital camera, featuring a 28mm wide angle Leica DC lens with an amazingly powerful 18x optical zoom (equivalent to 28-504mm on a 35mm film camera) with f/2.8 brightness. Panasonic LUMIX FZ series has been highly evaluated across the world, for concomitant realization of both high performance and ease of use, and the new DMC-FZ18 has also been developed with no compromise of picture quality, operational ease and portability. The newly developed 28mm wide angle 18x optical zoom lens in the DMC-FZ18 boasts notable optical performance and compactness, to open the door for the new world of expression that has ever been thought impossible with a single compact camera.