DPReview is evidently on-board with the naysayers. In its just posted Compact 'Super Zoom' Cameras group test...
Wow, it is hard to imagine a test where the visual results diverged so wildly from the reviewer's conclusions. The HS10 is obviously the best high ISO camera in the bunch, and certainly not worse than the others in daylight or with flash, at first glance.
That's the problem with first glances for those that are big fans of a particular camera. In daylight/low ISO at 45mm equiv. it's pretty clear that DPReview got it right, the SX20 IS and FZ35 clearly did better than the HS10, but the difference isn't huge, just noticeable. At the long end of the zoom the HS10 does look a little better than the rest so it deserves credit for that, but with its greater focal length it's not a fair comparison. Zoom it back a little to match the focal length of its better peers and it probably would fall back into the pack.
At the bottom of this test page is the wide angle test and here the shoe's on the other foot. At 24mm the HS10 needs more magnification than the other cameras to compare similar crops so now it's at a slight disadvantage, and it shows, but this time it's quite a bit lower in IQ than the SX20 IS. There are a couple of surprises here but to see them you'll have to download the full images because DPR didn't include any crops. First, although the SX20's IQ remains impressive, the FZ35's IQ dropped considerably. I'm surprised that DPReview didn't mention this, but they had less to say about this part of the test . . . Another surprise is that the disparaged S2500HD did surprisingly well, even looking better than the HS10's wide image. Again, that's probably partially due to the HS10's 24mm handicap, but not completely since the S2500's wide shot looks better than the FZ35's. Not so much in having greater detail than that it looks cleaner and crisper, with the FZ35's shot looking like it suffered a bit from haze. Also (and you won't see this unless you download the images) the S2500's shot is a little harder to compare since it's reversed left-to-right. Somebody at DPR needs a dope-slap to wake him up.
As for the ISO 1600 low light comparison, here you're partially correct. The HS10 did much better than before but it really didn't outdo the SX20 (which looks kind of blah) or the FZ35. It looks more impressive than them at first glance because it's much brighter and contrastier, but it doesn't have the detail provided by the SX20 IS and FZ35, which should be able to surpass the HS10's high ISO image with a little post processing. For modest sized prints with no processing, most people would probably prefer the HS10's high ISO shots.
