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The FZ50 is a great camera, and I almost purchased it used instead of the G1 when the G1 first came out. I opted for the interchangeable lenses in the G1, but my brother has the FZ50 and it’s a lot like a fixed-lens GH1. Still sells quite well on the used market, although the prices have dropped since the G1/GH1 came out. If the FZ100 does come out, and if it’s a successor to the FZ50 I think it would be quite a nice camera.

Of course it will be a FZ38 replacement, the best we can hope for is the articulated screen and possible a hot shoe from the FZ50. There’s no way that they will increase sensor size up to FZ50 level again, and you just can’t fit a really large zoom range lens into the fixed sized lens of the FZ50.

I just hope that they will manage to keep the image quality of the FZ38 and not use the backlit CMOS sensors that keep appearing in other superzoomcameras, along with poor image quality. I’m not against CMOS-sensors, but so far the image quality haven’t been able to compete with CCD-sensors in small sensor cameras.

It will be really interesting to see if Panasonic can come up with a 20+ zoomrange end still keep the image quality OK, so far no one has managed that.

@spam
Well, I hope they don’t go for the 20x plus range, I don’t find very useful such a big range. 20x is the maximum they should put (25-500 would be great), but if they put a bigger/better sensor I would settle with 25-400 mm too. Indeed CMOS small sensors are not better than CCD, but provide the speed needed for Full HD and 10 fps continuous shoot.

If they make a 24-30x lens with f/2.8-f/5.6, CMOS 1/2.3″ sensor, tilt screen and Full HD I would be very disapointed, it would be like another Nikon P100 (not bad, but not good enough to be better than FZ38).

I would like a bigger sensor (1/1.8″), CCD, even faster autofocus, 16-20x lens starting at 25 mm, faster lens at f/2.0-f/3.5 and eventually Full HD and tilt screen. Now that would be my perfect camera (assuming the IQ would be even better than FZ38) And maybe a mechanical manual focus (not necessary mechanical zoom, but mechanical focus ring would be cool)

Probably too much to hope for for Panasonic to pull it back to 8 or 10 megapixels, huh?

I think the reference to “huge lens” maybe a reference to use of the Leica 13X 28-370mm/f1.6-3 used in the HPX170 camcorder. Using this lens with the larger 1/1.3″ sensor size would retain the same focal length but reduce the lens speed by one stop to f2.5-f4. The camera would in effect be an updated FZ20 with its large zoom lens which retracts better into the camera body then the FZ30 did with its larger sensor. This new camcordercamera will most probably have the new CMOS HS sensor with 1080HD/60P and high speed operaton mode capability.