Does anyone have one or are you all DSLR boys? I think being used to my compact is one of the main reasons why I'm more interested in a compact system than a DSLR. I've been taking holiday, informal and football photos/vids and can't imagine taking them with a DSLR without being raped, ejected, killing an informal moment etc. Also is there REALLY a need for a viewfinder (especially the electronic ones you stick in the hot-shoe) when you have an LCD screen?! Did anyone have this feeling when first buying a DSLR? It's given me food for thought as I'm in the market for a new camera - a step up from my old Lumix DMC-TZ3 compact which has served me so well. The main reason is I want one that's got better specs (7MP is pretty old!) and manual settings to really learn more about photography. Immediately I had my heart on the latest compact in that line until I made my mind up that proper manual aperture/shutter/etc. changing is what I want. I take lots of wildlife photography too, so interchangeable lenses would be really good, although when reading up about lenses I noticed that my current compact 10x zoom (or upto 40x but proper grainy) is the equivalent to a 28-280mm lens so I'm (uninformably) thinking I won't get much of a "wow, this is so much better/bigger/I can even see the girl 100 houses down getting undressed" feeling I thought I would with a big interchangeable lens.
I bought a Bridge camera in the summer - Fujifilm Finepix HS20 16 Megapixies 30x zoom Takes good pics. I also like it because it has a manual zoom - which means the batteries last longer
Is that the one that's pretty much DSLR-sized? I've pretty much made up my mind to get the Panasonic GX1 with the pancake lens. Next pay packet I should be good to go. Then I start saving up for a big-arsed zoom lens, filters...
I know this is a late reply but only just seen this section! Compacts are fine as a point-and-click carry-around camera but you simply will not be able to get the quality of pictue as you can from a dSLR with a good quality lens (i'm talking a minimum of £300-£400 just for the lens). This was taken with my Canon 600D and "70-200mm f4 USM L" lens. Don't be too swayed by megapixels. Unless you intend on doing a lot of photoshop type work or printing out large pictures, then 5-10mp is more than enough for anyone. Of course, most new cameras now come with 10MP+ anyway so focus on other attributes such as zoom, battery life etc. What makes a picture is the lens. A 'cheap' good lens is still around £300-£400 (as said above) but they can then start costing £2,000 (Canon 70-200mm f2.8 USM L IS) or even £5,000 and beyond! A 'bridge' camera would be a good compromise, hence the name, between a compact and a dSLR. The Canon 'G' series are very good.
