As a new member I have hesitated to join in, but I have both the FZ50, FZ18, and now the FZ35. I have taken about 30,000 wildlife pictures with the FZ50 and recently have started to compare it and the FZ35.
My 2-cents for what it is worth, is that the question of which camera is best depends on the type of photos you take, the lighting, the amount of low contrast detail vs. high contrast detail in the image, and your tolerance for always shooting RAW
The FZ50 is a great camera for a lot of reasons, and under good lighting, with lots of high contrast detail, and particularly with RAW it gives extremely nice images. There is indeed a quality of the images that is very pleasant, if you do not pixel peep.
However, under less optimal conditions - low light and important low contrast detail in the images, such as the feathers in wild birds at over 30 feet- the FZ50 falls down. The strong noise reduction was and still is a problem in the FZ50 in jpegs. Fine details in feathers and etc. tends to be smoothed out. You can partially get around this by exposing slightly to the right of center and/or using RAW. The hotshoe also becomes imortant, since for birds at a feeder, I can use an external strong flash to fire an external slave flash and get enough light to get extremely good detail even with jpeg.
In terms of resolution of detail in photos of animals out in the field, however, the FZ35 for me simply out resolves the FZ50 in jpeg images, and typically retains more detail in lower contrast areas like the feather pattern on an egret as compared to the FZ50. The FZ50 picture may be slightly more pleasant to the eye, however, as long as you do not look for too much fine detail in lower contrast areas. I am not sure exactly what happened in the pictures shown in earlier posts comparing the FZ50, FZ35, and the GH1, but from my experience the FZ35 pictures shown in that post are not typical in terms of sharpness, focus, and detail. The FZ35 is typically better than that and gives sharp detailed pictures as good or better than the FZ50 under many conditions. I have also taken pictures with the Panny G1 in the wild, and it does give the nicer pictures of all three cameras, but the 45-200 mm zoom is just too short for many pictures. You can crop more with the G1, but at 3 times the cost of the FZ35, I prefer the FZ35 with the TCON17 and EZ-zoom.
One final point, that may be important, particularly for those who say the optical stabilization on the FZ35 is no better or worse than earlier Panny's, is that I find it to be a different beast that requires some care. The optical stabilization on the FZ35 sometimes seems to be a little behind the focus in locking on to the image, and if you try to take the picture too fast it may not have locked on properly. You can tell when it locks on in the auto mode, because the jitter disappears and it will literally fight you in moving away from the central focal point.
I love my FZ50, but am gaining increasing respect for the FZ35 as well.
