I ended up deciding on the DMC-FX01 from Panasonic which is basically the same as the Leica. The camera is small, light and fits pretty comfortably in a pocket. Overall I am pretty happy with it. It's strong points are:
1. light and small. Will fit in your front shirt pocket. Great for women to carry in their purses. My wife likes it.
2. easy to use default functions. i.e. star light, sports, underwater, flowers (for very close up pictures)
3. great day light pictures
4. good movies
5. well built with a rough texture to allow you to hold the small camera firmly.
6. Color is extremely accurate.
7. settings for 4x6 prints, email, and panorama.
8. Panorama came in great for those close up shots that required a very tall object.
9. image stabilization
Some minor gripes are:
1. when recording in video mode you can no longer change the zoom.
2. A 2 gig SD card is about the max the camera can handle due to software limitations.
3. very minimal manual settings which makes it pretty hard to take that great shot when conditions are not at its best.
4. You can not delete video from the camera settings but you can delete pictures and video picture thumbnails. This makes it hard when you accidentally fill up your SD card with videos and you need to make room for more pictures. You are basically SOL unless your SD card has a USB built in and a computer is near by. I got my money's worth on this little function at a wedding.
5. Zoom levels are pretty good at 3X but if you move to a lower mega pixel setting then you can squeeze 5X. Still not enough as sometimes I wish I had more zoom.
I think this is a really good camera/ video for those people wanting to have a quick portable small camera. If you use those disposible ones frequently then this would be a good very easy to use and carry camera. I found it great to take along at dinners, lunches, or in areas where you do not want to be noticed as having something of value. You can carry it very comfortably and no one will know you are a tourist.
If you are interested in taking long distance, low light, or have the use of manual settings then this camera is not recommended. I have not used a digital camera for years so this easy to use camera was great for me and took great pictures with out any fuss.
The DMC-FX01 is the same as the more expensive Leica. The Leica does come bundled with better computer software for picture cropping and touch ups after you have downloaded the pictures to your computer. I think it would be worth paying the extra money if you do not already have computer software for this.
My only recommendation for any type of SD card camera is to spend a little extra and get the USB built SD card. This is a great function that will allow you to pop the SD card, fold it in half and plug it into a USB port for picture download and viewing. Its all in one. I carried a 1 gig thumbdrive/memory stick so when I went to an internet coffee shop I would just copy the data from the SD card to the thumdrive/memory stick and this would free me up some space on the SD card. I also used it to copy the pictures to the thumbdrive/memory stick as backup.
You can buy a USB reader for an SD card but that would mean one more thing to carry around with you.
Hope this helps,
