Yes its a good contender BUT if i throw in a little more money then the Lumix is in my price range. ALSO remember i live in England, we pay more for everything. you say the lumiz is around $350 in England the cheapest Z812 is £175 (and that's from a shady website, in store will be much more) thats $347, about the price of a lumix, so if im gona get ripped of i may as well just get the lumix lolz.
Buy a Camcorder instead a Camera if u really like recording. By the way, the S8000 wasn´t a SLR, its something between Compact Digital and DSLR calls Bridge Camera. According to your previous wishes, I think u really want a Bridge Cam with Superzoom. I would recommend the Panasonic aswell, because of its high qulaity Leica lense. Up to ISO 400 the photos are free of disturbing noises, starting from ISO 800 you will recognize some. With its IS (Image Stabilizer) you can get nice shots during the nite. And don´t forget the massive 18x Zoom. The Kodak is a bit faster than the Panasonic and gives you the oppotunity to record videos in real HD. It´s also cheaper than the Panasonic and comes with the FaceDetection Function, which will recognize faces and sharpen them autmatically. But remember, it only has the Standard 12x Zoom and has a cheap Variogon Lense. As i said before I would choose the Panasonic because it has more option for "semi prof." photgraphs. I forgot to mention that the Panasonic also can save files in standard RAW files, the Kodak one has its own RAW format (.kdc) which is incompatible to some ImageEditingPrograms. Hope it was helpful
^ Very helpful, yes the camera needs to have the option to store images in RAW format. its gona be the "Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18". im not fussy about recording video, my sis has a proper camcorder anyway so its pointless having two standalone camcorders in the house. also Panasonic has faceDetection too and a flash. check it out: [youtube]oocLs8BDrFQ[/youtube]
lol only reason why i want the HD recording is.. my camcorder even records worser than my panasonic lumix FMC-FX3...>.<
There is another problem with the Kodak ^^ The positioning of the micropfohne is really bad. If you zoom or press any Buttons during recording you will get loud disturbing noises. That means, no zoom, no pressing buttons, only hold with 2 fingers on each side...and record ^^ I don´t want HD video quality with crappy sound ...seriously =)
