Popped into Jacob's Digital yesterday and they've now got a list price of £899 body only for the forthcoming Panasonic DMC-L1. I don't think this information is widely available yet so I thought I'd post it here... Presumably, they'll be net-based sellers who'll be able to offer it for closer to the £750 mark...

Just announced over here: $1999 with lens. ouch. The electronics and lens better be overwhelming improvements over the Olympus!

This new Venus Engine III sounds promising. Building image stablisation into the lens rather than camera seems a little backward - but I suppose Leica's 14-50mm needs to distinguish itself from Oly's 14-54mm somehow... We'll see... Meanwhile, there's an interesting website which indoctrinates you into saving your pennies right here:

http://panasonic.co.jp/pavc/global/...es_l1/vol3.html

Seems a bit of a hefty price point? Wonder what kind of street price we're looking at... Personally, I'm not sure this is the camera they set out to make. The above website (part I) hints that they wanted to make something smaller - something more akin to an old film SLR in size. The L1 looks retro - but it remains significantly bigger... If they'd made it smaller and it produced fantastic images, they'd have my money (well, credit card) tomorrow!

Hi Hiding Pup

do you own a compact or are you completely smitten with DSLRs? I ask as I find myself completely perplexed about which compact to choose.

Katheric

Well! I suppose in terms of image quality then, yes, I'm totally smitten by dSLRs (but only when paired up with good lenses). I think dSLRs are a lot more portable than some people would imagine, and I think the world would be a better place if it was like the Canon advert where people run out of their houses, dSLRs clutched in hand, and happily take photos all day :-)

That said, I definitely think there's a place for compact digicams. I'm not sure about the dSLR-styled cameras - ones which seem as big as a small dSLR (and as expensive) but don't offer access to the fantastic lenses made for dSLRs. But the smaller, highly pocketable cameras do definitely have a place in any serious photographer's kit bag.

Why? Obviously, there's the scenario where you're some place you don't want to take a camera but end up wanting to capture a moment and so you whip out your little digicam and, image quality aside, you've got the shot. To me, this is a less important reason for owning a digicam, particularly if you've got a halfway-decent camera phone.

For me, where little digicams really come into their own are those circumstances in which you can make the most of the *huge* depth of field their lenses offer. Combined with their small size (hinged lcds with live preview are a bonus), this feature makes compacts fantastic, for example, for street photography.

As for which ones I own, there is a Nikon 5400 kicking around that belongs to my housemate which I can borrow whenever I want to. And, this week, a semi-pro friend of mine bought an Olympus C-5050 for £150. Should I ever buy another compact (I had to sell my Fuji F810 to fund my dSLR habit), I'd be tempted to get one of these two cameras or something very similar, just because of their small size, sturdy build, exhaustive feature set, and fantastic optics. Their age doesn't bother me: I maintain that expensive digicams of the past are better than many of their contemporary budget counterparts. Of the new crop of compacts, the Panasonic LX1 and the Ricoh GR Digital grab my eye, as does that Kodak twin zoom (which probably doesn't take fantastic pictures but does look like fun).