Panasonic is replacing its headlining compact camera for travellers, the 14.1 megapixel Panasonic TZ30 (ZS20 in the US) with the Panasonic TZ40 (Panasonic ZS30 in the US).

Although this new camera has the same Leica 20x zoom lens covering a focal length range equivalence of 24-480mm, it has a new 18.1MP High Sensitivity MOS sensor and a new Venus Engine that is designed with improving low-light images in mind.

This is backed up by an improved Power Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) system that works to correct accidental movement around five axes to enable sharper images in low light and at telephoto focal lengths.

A clever new feature in the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ40 called Level Shot has also been introduced to help improve video footage. This automatically corrects a sloping horizon by rotating and cropping the image.

However, because the pixel count of the sensor is significantly more than what is required for Full HD video, the resolution of the footage is not reduced. Panasonic is staying tight-lipped about how big a correction this system can make.

Perhaps one of the most interesting features of the Panasonic TZ40, however, is that it has an NFC (Near Field Communication) chip. This enables the camera's Wi-Fi system to connect with other NFC devices such as a smartphone or tablet by just touching them together rather than having to follow a series of steps and searching for the correct network and so on. It's a big step forward in making Wi-Fi connections easy.

As well as being able to transfer images wirelessly, a key benefit of connecting the Panasonic TZ40 to a smartphone is that the phone can be used as a remote viewfinder and controller.

Like the Panasonic TZ30, the Panasonic TZ40 has GPS technology built-in, but Panasonic has now also added GLONASS technology, the Russian equivalent for improved coverage.

Although the Panasonic TZ40 has a resistive touchscreen like the Panasonic TZ30, its resolution has been boosted from 460,000 dots to 920,000 dots, improving the image in the screen significantly.

This new screen is also multi-touch sensitive, so it can be used to pinch-zoom to magnify images and swipe through from shot to shot in review mode.

In a bid to expand the creative options available to the travelling photographer, Panasonic has added a Creative Panorama option to the Panasonic TZ40. This enables you to apply the digital filter effects found in the Creative Control mode to Panoramic images.

Build and handling

Apart from the improvements to the screen in terms of resolution and touch-control and the addition of NFC technology to connect to a Wi-Fi network, there's not really a huge amount to report about the handling of the Panasonic TZ40 (ZS30).

The camera feels a little lighter than the Panasonic TZ30 (ZS20) it replaces.

At first we were unsure whether this was a good thing, since it makes it seem a little less solid, but a quick look over the body confirms that it has high build quality, so it should have a reasonably long life.

Panasonic has improved the TZ40's battery life over the TZ30's, taking it from 260 images to 300. Naturally we will be looking at this and seeing how much impact using the GPS system has when we get a full production sample in for review.