Compact advice to SLR user

[echinacea]

Hi everyone.
For all around day & night business, i decided to buy a compact camera. But as you know its hard to impress an SLR user with those noise producers
I searched a little bit, looking for a pocatable cam with HD video, wide angle lens, (i believe there is no such think as "fast lens" in compact world?) and found sony w290. Its smaller than canon's, and probably less noisier than panasonics. Though the macro mode (10cm) still concerns me..
Without the HD movie, i really liked the spec. of olympus stylus tough 6000 (to enjoy it underwater)
Any advice? thought?
Thanks very much ..

[AndyfromVA]

These days, lots of small cameras compensate for their noisy sensors by introducing an abundance of noise reduction, even at modest ISO's like 400, which makes the picture soft and dull. The Sony W290 seems to have that problem.

[mtclimber]

Either the recently introduced Panasonic ZS3 or the camera it replaced, the TZ-5 seem to fall nicely into what you are looking for in a compact. I noticed that the TZ-5 was selling for $(US) 199.95 this Holiday Weekend.

Sarah Joyce

[interested_observer]

Have you looked at the Panasonic LX3? It is jacket pocketable, has a f2.0-2.8 Leica lens 24 to 60mm (35mm equivalent), full manual controls, stabilized, and a very nice camera. Probably the closet thing you can get to a dSLR in a P&S. Its sensor is larger than most P&S so the noise is a well controlled as possible. There is not a big following here on steves site - for some reason, however over on dp there are a lot of folks. I have one and its great on business trips when I am unable to bring my Pentax K20/K100. Here are some examples....

http://forums.steves-digicams.com/pa...ego-night.html