Ah! I see where you're coming from. The lag you're referring to comes from a shooting style that I never use, and is indeed unacceptable at nearly half a second. That style is looking through the viewfinder, saying "Oh, yeah, that's a nice picture", and pressing the shutter button, waiting for it to auto-focus, set the exposure, and finally take the picture. I always compose my picture using the half-press on the shutter button to do all the pre-exposure setup, and when I press the rest of the way the exposure is virtually instantaneous. But, your point is well taken, Mark, I suspect most people don't shoot the way I do, and a half-second pause before exposure would be unsettling. I had actually never noticed it until now, when I tested the camera to see the effect of non-preset lag.

Yeah, I'll give you that. Mostly. I do get some control over depth of field, but you're right, not like a full-frame 35mm camera, or even a DSLR. So far it has been manageable for me, but perhaps that's just a function of the type of pictures I normally take.

There's no delay, or at least not one that is perceivable by human eyes. And there are advantages to an electronic viewfinder. I can crank up the gain on my viewfinder and see things that would be difficult to see optically. Of course the quality of what I see will be pretty bad, but then so will the picture itself if I've had to raise the ISO to get the picture in the first place. The FZ50 is not a pocketable little point and shoot. It has the size and shape and the adjustability of a DSLR, but without the necessity of hauling around a wheelbarrow full of lenses and accessories. With the manual zoom control and no need to swap lenses it is operationally superior (IMHO) to most DSLRs. But as I (and many others on this thread) have agreed, the tradeoff is image quality. To me it's worth it, but YMMV.

tanstaafl.