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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kittykat23uk" data-source="post: 1470193" data-attributes="member: 55291">Well, I don't own a G1 but I do own a superzoom and a fuji for digiscoping and spend a lot of time on the panasonic forum at Dpreview.So I can say this:Digiscoping is a lot more fiddly than using a superzoom (I own a panasonic FZ18) or the G1. You eliminate the need to manually focus, you'll find that both options are a lot more responsive and that you'll generally get more keepers than when digiscoping. Its a lot easier to track smaller birds that don't keep still.The advantages of the FZ18 over the G1 are that, you have a fantastic lens with a wide zoom range, so its a lighter package and you can use it for Macro, tele and wide without changing lenses. Its really light and compact. You can buy third pary spare batteries. With a teleconverter and EZ modes you get almost the same reach as digiscoping with a 20x eyepiece. However, if you have time to set up a shot using a digiscoping rig, you can sometimes achieve a much better shot. The downside is that with the smaller sensor, low light performance is not great and the camera is quite noisy in anything but good light. It is also very difficult to track and shoot flying birds, though not imposible. The advantages of the G1 over the FZ18 are it should be easier to track flying birds, and some results I've seen look promising. It's also able to take more frames per secon. It has a larger sensor so low light performace should be better and it should be able to handle noise a lot better than the FZ18 (though the results I've seen have been quite variable). It has an articulating LCD which would be useful for low angle shots. it has interchangeable lenses. On the down side you'd need to get the 45-200 mm lens to get anything approaching the FZ18 range and even then it will fall short. The G1 also uses chipped batteries which means no cheap third pary spares. Agains a standard DSLR like canon, the main advantages of the G1 are obviously the compact size and weight and the articulating screen. The dowside is I understand that the EVF freezes which makes it harder to track flying birds (but not as difficult as with a superzoom) and the lens seems to be a bit on the soft side. Plus there are not very may fully auotomatic lenses available yet. If weight is not a major issue, there are probably better and cheaper DSLR options out there.</blockquote>

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