GDMitchell

At $300 less i'd say hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Have I made my point. It's a fancy point and shoot.

For that price it ought to come around to your house and process the shots for you and bung them in an album too

Why would anyone who is not barking mad pay $599 for a camera that is as big as this with such a slow zoom lens. The 14-42 offerings of Panasonic and Olympus are very poor with a maximum aperture of 3.5 at best . The benefits of a large sensor will be overshadowed by poor glass. These modern GFs are pretty poor by comparison to the excellent GF1 and to some of the recent Olympus offerings too, dispensing of nearly all of the manual controls was a real act of arrogant naivety from Panasonic. Only the GX1 has prevented their miniature Micro 4/3 cameras becoming a laughing stock.

I don't think we really want politicians deciding the standards for cameras. Remember they made the rules that governed the banks and financial institutions and look at the mess that ended up in. Leave design to the designers. It's up to the consumers to decide what to buy but if we all bought with our heads instead of our hearts we'd not commit to anything until the manufacturer did. M4/3 cameras were pointless before the 20mm pancake from panasonic because the kit lenses are disproportionate to the camera size and they are utterly average or worse in performance. The lack of a good quality viewfinder on the smaller cameras renders them useless unless you have good short sighted vision and/or use auto focus lenses out of direct sunlight. I cannot understand why it is beyond the ability of Sony, Olympus, Panasonic etc to put a quality viewfinder in the rangefinder styled cameras. The bolt on ones look ugly and bulky and disable the hotshoe