Troglodyte wrote:

I see you made no mention of the small sensor size of P&S cameras.
Otherwise I would agree with everything you said. I would rather have a
Nikon P&S with the swiveling LCD viewfinder than a DSLR any day but
first it has to match a DSLR image quality and due to the smaller sensor
it doesn't.

I love those swiveling LCDs like on the old Canon G series. Too bad
Canon dropped them on the G7 and G9, as well as worsening the lens and
not making it wide angle.

On my G2 I used some of those conversion lenses, with the adapter tube,
but the reality is that those adapter lenses are not good quality (they
vary from poor, to barely acceptable), plus it's a real pain to deal
with screwing on the adapter tube, removing and storing the ring that
has to come off the camera to install the tube, then screwing the
conversion lens onto the tube. Before I had a D-SLR, when I needed the
longer or wider zooms I simply used by film SLR (EOS-5 QD), as it's so
much more convenient to swap lenses on a bayonet mount. You can swap an
SLR lens in a few seconds, while the conversion lenses take a lot longer
to install and remove.

But you're right about the sensor size and the image quality, and
unfortunately you can count the number of large sensor point and shoots
on one hand, with several fingers left over.