[Leica] Suggestions for a travel P/S digital cm under $500?

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 6:09 PM -0400 8/1/06, Digiratidoc@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 8/1/2006 4:58:15 PM Central Daylight Time, 
>henningw@archiphoto.com writes:
>
>>Direct out of camera quality seems to favour the Canons, but the 
>>Panasonics aren't bad. If you have a strong interest in low light 
>>shooting where the subjects might not stay still, there's the Fuji 
>>F30 which has about 3 stops better high ISO performance, but no IS 
>>and no 28mm.
>
>I tried the Canon SD700 IS and didn't like it. Perhaps mine was just a bad 
>sample but the pictures did'nt seem as sharp and the IS didn't work nearly 
>as 
>well as the Panasonics, but the Panasonics all suffer from noise, noise, 
>noise. Took the Canon back and got the Fuji F30. Pics are much sharper and 
>working in low light at ISO 400 or 800 the noise levels are amazingly low. 
>You
>don't miss the IS when you can shoot up to ISO 3200! My 2 cents.
>

The one thing about the F30, and the F10 before it is that in bright 
light it sometimes overexposes, so you have to fiddle with the menus 
to dial in a bit of compensation. Then you realize the Fuji has 
stupidly laid out menus.

In spite of that, the F10/30 is very good. We've had an F10 for about 
one and a half years, as well as a Canon SD500, so we've had a chance 
to compare them.

What I would like ;-), is the lens of the Panasonic and its image 
stabilization, the menu system of almost anything except the Fuji, 
the sensor of the Fuji and an optical viewfinder.

Someday....

-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
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