Not the type of company to get caught in the You Snooze-You Lose Trap Panasonic is all set to expose its Lumix DMC-L1 – its first digital SLR camera. And they didn’t scrimp on this, either. Pre-prod preview buzz described DMC-L1 as a lightweight SLR with a robust, streamlined metal body that is functional and very “Leica-like.” It is, in fact, equipped with the new Leica D 14-50 mm lens with a fast maximum aperture of F2.8 to F3.5, a technological marvel in its own right.

This camera shares some components with the Olympus E-330 (including the soon-to-be standard SLR feature: Live MOS sensor) but its creators say it’s going to be very much a Panasonic camera with its own 'backend' image processing, features and user interface. Panasonic is yet to come up with the final assembly-line version of the DMC-L1, but looks like it’s going to generate a lot of Dear Santa letters in the near future.