Today Panasonic announced that it is upgrading the firmware (internal operating system) of the Lumix DMC-LX5 camera to version 2.0, which will provide several enhancements, and even one new shooting mode, a “miniature” effect, which has become popular in compact cameras recently.  You can read the full story at dpreview.com.  As pointed out in that article, the upgrade will be available for download on September 13 from http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/dsc/.

This upgrade sounds similar to the upgrade that Panasonic provided for the Lumix LX3 a couple of years ago, which added significant enhancements to that camera.  If history repeats itself, this new firmware version should also become available for the Leica D-Lux 5, the Leica version of the Lumix LX5.

I plan to download the upgrade as soon as it becomes available, and I hope to post an update here on this site with some impressions of it and with some tips on how to use the new features.  That will probably take at least a few days, or maybe a week or so, to get done, so check back in mid to late September to see if there is an update about the firmware upgrade.