Canon S3 IS or Panasonic DMC F27

[ken.morris]

My beloved UZ2100 has finally bit the dust and I am in the market for a new ultra zoom.

I take mostly outdoor scenes, wildlife and family pictures. Don't want to start a war, but need some good feed back before I spend the money. Thanks in advance.

[TDN]

First off: A lot of us use a different theme than the black one for this forum, so please don't use that yellow font, it's quite unreadable.

Now, as for your question:

Depends on what your focus is.

The Panasonic will give you a very nice Leica lens. I have the FZ3 and its performance is great for such a small camera. Only problem is noise in low light situations. Outdoors in decent weather it does great.

The Canon is very nice too. I doubted between the FZ3 and the S1 IS when I bought my first cam, and chose the FZ3 ultimately because a lot of the improvements werent made on the S1 yet.
I believe the S3 IS has fixed all the negative points, so I think that's one hell of a camera. Movie mode is spectacular I heard. (might be interesting for filming your kids)


Although I love my little FZ3, nowadays I think I would go with the Canon.

I think the biggest differences are:

Panasonic -> Leica glass

Canon -> better movie mode.

Both are very versatile cameras.

Why not go to a camera store and try them both out? Then you can see which one feels best.

TDN