Jim wrote:
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I don't own one. If one of these cameras forces you to manually focus
on the LCD on the back of the camera, its a very good reason to leave
it on the shelf in the shop. Useless.

Jim,

The manual focus on the Panasonic FZ20 (and certain other cameras I'm
sure) works very well with the LCD screen, and is far from "useless".
Their clever touch is to automatically magnify the centre of the image
when the manual focus ring is adjusted, so that you are seeing about a 1:1
pixel magnification image, and hence finding the exact focus point is no
problem. As soon as you stop adjustments, the normal full LCD view is
restored. Clever, and very effective!

Cheers,
David