After some research and consultation with camera repair facilities, the consensus of opinion is that "It's broke, would be cheaper to buy a new one than to fix it."

As it turns out, this is not the case. A new one will run in the $400-$500 range, and Panasonic has a fixed-fee, flat-rate price structure in place for repairing all DMC series Panasonic digital cameras.

For $161.50 (which includes return shipping costs) they will fix whatever is wrong with a DMC camera, provided that the failure was not caused by moisture, impact, or mis-use.

So, on Monday my 12x-zoom baby gets shipped off to Illinois where they promise to make it as good as new.

tanstaafl.