Thank you so much. I will be going there tomorrow.

While I appreciate and plan on doing that, I am still wondering why so many people are saying to get the TZ5 over a Canon these days, especially given the sample photos.

Steve - i hear what you are saying but how do you explain how much obviously better all the pictures are in the imaging-resource.com/IMCOMP...  site as Jordan referred to. doesnt make sense to me as the TZ5 has such a larger optical lens ( i always assumed that this translates into better pictures.???)

jon

Often times, lackluster photos can easily be attributed to user unfamiliarity and an over-reliance of automatic settings. When you say you're avoiding high ISO settings, how are you doing that? As for lag time, that's easy to avoid. Just prefocus and pan with the action. This is a simple matter of pressing down half way on the shutter to get the focus and then recomposing the picture and pressing the shutter the rest of the way. Somebody moves, you re-prefocus. But often, especially when shooting action shots, just hitting the shutter button will result in alot of lag. But prefocusing and panning will cut that lag by as much as 80%.



Also, faster sd cards will speed up the picture writing process from shot to shot. That will help, as will using flash - even in daytime (it makes your subject "pop" in the picture.)



As for what camera, I agree with Phil that Canon has some really good cameras that rely on optical image stabilization, which is what you really want. Digital IS adjusts the image and compensates for shake using software. OIS adjusts the lens and therefore, you get a much sharper picture.



Recommend the SD890IS ( digitalcamera-hq.com/digita...  ).



One other thing, however. You may be falling into the falacy that "more megapixels must be better." Often, it isn't.

I came across an interesting article today about how more mega pixels is not necessarily a good thing. According to Image Engineering ( 6mpixel.org/en/?  ) – a company that does testing of digital cameras for photo magazines in Germany – the quality of digital pictures has steadily decreased since the state of the art was six megapixels back in 2004. And because they don’t have a “dog in this hunt,” they put forth a compelling argument for buying new digital cameras with less mega pixels and not more.



The argument is essentially this: CCD chips on point and shoot cameras a smaller and as such, fitting in more pixels causes them to lose light sensivity. Sure, there’s more data on the chip, but the chip can’t absorb the light data and what it ends up with is a picture that has more noise than image quality. In addition, the more megapixels a camera has, the larger the lens it needs to provide the clarity it deserves and prevent diffraction due to a loss of detail with smaller apertures. But since we’re talking portable point and shoots here, those large lenses simply aren’t being made.



Finally, with larger mega pixels comes longer saving time due to their requires huge storage capacity, or more compression if not storing images in RAW format. The result is a noisier image and a dissatisfied camera user who thirsts for high quality and speed but fell into the trap of "more must mean better."



In the end, relying on a smaller MP that can balance all these needs may indeed be a better answer.

If it's an issue with autofocus speed, I'd vote for Sony over anything else.



When I bought my camcorder years ago, the first thing I noticed when comparing the brands was that the Sony autofocus was waaaay faster than anyone else.



I own the S700, and the autofocus is - ok.

As a previous poster mentioned, prefocusing helps a lot.



Don't bother mastering the manual focus unless you are doing macro work - it's just too slow for anything else.



I do like the S700 - it's a lot for the price.