I went looking in person at the Panasonic cameras yesterday. I wanted to at least handle one prior to buying or making a final decision. Well the store said they sell very few and I would be much happier with a Nikon D80 since I can use my old lenses (manual focus) if I choose. Looked at Sony's and now I'm just confused. The FZ7 does not have a hot shoe and does not have the RAW format option. Problem is I simply don't trust the shop... I know that the Nikon D80 is a wonderful camera; but at a substantial cost increase over the DMC-FZ50 (10.1 mp) Panasonic model.... as Data said on Star Trek... computing, computing, computing ..... darn, I'm in a loop; approaching point that I can not make a decision.
I need to go back an reassess my present photographic objectives, not think in terms of pie in the sky cameras necessarily, consider Sony's, Fuji, Kodak, and Panasonic. I am not going to play professional photographer any time soon.
