Successor to the multiple award winning DMC-FZ28, Panasonic today announced the launch of the Alumni DMC-FZ38 digital still camera. The DMC-FZ38 packages a 27mm wide angle Leica DC Vario-Elmarit lens with F2.8 brightness and powerful 18x optical zoom together with a 12.1-megapixel CCD into a compact body. The lens unit comprises of 11 elements in 8 groups, including 3 aspherical lenses and 2 ED lenses. The 12.1-megapixel resolution allows photos to be greatly enlarged while still retaining outstanding detail, or edited by trimming and enlarging parts of the photo to print. In addition to Motion JPEG images, the DMC-FZ38 can record high-definition motion picture in AVCHD Lite. The AVCHD is a high definition (HD) digital video recording / playback format jointly established by Panasonic and Sony.The FZ38 also features Dolby Digital Stereo Creator to record high quality audio.The high-speed, high-performance Venus Engine HD has been re-engineered to support the recording of beautiful, high-definition motion images in AVCHD Lite. With its twin CPUs, Venus Engine HD boasts approx. 2.4x processing capability, greatly improving the speed of camera operations. Panasonic DMC-FZ28 digital camera with 40MB internal memory measures 118 x 76 x 89 mm and weigh 367 g (without battery). Taking advantage of the versatile 27mm wide angle powerful 18x optical zoom lens, the FZ38 allows users to record both photo and movie with exceptional creative freedom.