measekite wrote:
[]
I have always believed that the Leica lenses are better. It is just
that all of the reviewers claim that the S3 had better image quality
and that noise is an issue on the FZ8. And since I want to do heavy
cropping and print letter size that issue looms larger for me. I
really like the speed, menu system, and now the EVF of the FZ8.

It remains to be seen if the facial recognition and other new features
of the S5 would be valuable for me. But image quality is the
uppermost criteria.

If you need to do heavy cropping, I would suggest that either:

- you get nearer the subject

- you extend the zoom range

- you get a 10MP DSLR with a high-quality telephoto lens

If image quality is paramount, perhaps only a DSLR will do?

As far as I can gather, the basic image quality is very similar for any of
these small sensors (given similar area and pixel density), but some
cameras by default do more noise reduction or different noise reduction,
resulting in the reported differences in perceived quality. The
differences are subjective, depending on whether you prefer sharper
pictures with slightly more noise, or slightly less sharp pictures, with
slightly less noise! Different subjects will be a better or worse match
to different processing techniques.

Cheers,
David