I have been waiting for a point-and-shoot camera to come along that has a shutter speed fast enough for me to leave my DSLR at home in most instances. The problem I have with most point-and-shoots is that they can’t take pictures of fast action.

Panasonic has announced a new point-and-shoot called the DMC-ZR1 that puts the world’s first 0.3mm thick aspherical lens into a compact body. The thin lens means that the camera can be compact and have a 25mm ultra-wide-angle lens with 8x optical zoom.

The zoom range is 25-200mm and the camera has a 12.1-megapixel resolution. The camera has a full range of features like intelligent auto modes and face recognition. The camera also ships with software for editing and archiving images and will ship in September for $279.95.

Lumix