Well, if that's your choice, then still take the FX35. Frankly, they both have too much MP to work with. Let me explain. 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.

Don't get me wrong. Both come highly rated. Both are probably fine cameras. My issue isn't with who makes them so much as they have too much MP for the average shooter whos only going to be making 99.9% snapshots. And people tend to fall for the "more MP is better" line when the math clearly doesn't support that without more and more noise creeping into the picture at high ISOs. It really doesn't matter who makes them.



However, there is an argument that cameras with larger chips, like the Canon G9 ( digitalcamera-hq.com/digita...  ) make up for that and put those 12MP to better use than smaller chipped point and shoots. But there's also the Canon SD ( digitalcamera-hq.com/digita...  ) line, which yields some impressive results and are quite popular.

I think almost all camera now have a CCD, as opposed to a CMOS, sensor. The camera that I would recommend you checking out is the new Nikon P80. I think the P80 is better than the Pansnonic in terms of picture quality and features, but it is a bit bigger and a bit pricier, though you get what you pay for. As far as the K and S, I think the K is black and the S is silver, and that's the difference between the two. And as far as 30 shots per second... I don't think anything shoots at 30 shots per second.... The Canon EOS-1D Mark III shoots at 10fps, and that camera is $4000-8000.

Well as far as SLR cameras, the Nikon D80 is pretty good, not the best in my opinion. For DSLRs I definitely like Canon best of all, just because they produce better picture quality than anything else I've seen. I would take a look at the Canon XSI, a fairly new camera that came out, and probably satisfies your needs, and is a great buy, the price is considerably less than what I would pay for a camera of that caliber.

Well, honestly what it comes down to is how it feels to you, controls, focusing, and the camera in general. The picture quality of the Canon is probably going to be better, but I also think it happens to be a bit more expensive. The xSi will be a lot more manual controls and give you the ability to do a lot more with photography, while the Olympus in general is probably easier to use.

HD with a camera doesn't really mean too much, I believe above 3 megapixels and above is technically HD capacity. The Lumix should be able to take "HD" pictures, but the difference is that the Lumix may not come with an HD cable (the component) as opposed to SD cables (composite), so check to see if the camera comes with component cables. If it does, it also outputs in HD, as well as takes HD pictures. Hope this helps, if you have any other questions feel free to ask.