I'm with Viper. I'm a big Oly fan, and the SP-550 is a very tempting proposition. I would probably have gotten it if not for already have picked up the very camera you are looking at, only in black. The FZ50 is a great camera for all round use. The pros are it has a nice long zoom range (though not as long as the SP-550), a super lens, image stabilazation, moveable LCD, 10MP, manual zoom ... and the list goes on. It is not the greatest for macro photography, though does take a good close up. It is not on par with my Olympus C8080wz though. The big downer for me is the noise and noise reduction. 10MP on a small sensor and you are going to get noise, even at lower ISOs. In bright sunglight and using the whole image you probably would not notice it. But in low light and if you crop your image, it becomes a problem. And Panasonics noise reduction is very heavy handed, giving images a very watercolory effect the that become more pronounced at higher ISOs (lower light). Here is a 100% size crop from a low light image from the FZ50. The speckling around the edges is the noise and noise reduction.

Kort Kramer - Kramer Kreations