Joseph Valdez said:
Well I am definitely going to use the camera to take pictures of friends and travels and what not BUT at the same time I'm a photo journalist so I need a camera that can take nice pictures for articles...so if your asking if I'm a professional photographer than no I just take the occasional picture her and there but I need them to be top notch.
Then I wouldn't go for a mirrored reflex camera, it's too expensive, the pictures are bar none but it's quite the investment for the occasional shot.
You know your own craft so if you feel you need the 30x optical zoom then I'd go for the Sony still, I have an older model that has served me so well I could cuddle it every day, Sony also has allot of experience with digital and mechanical stabilization because their mirrored reflex line has it built into the body instead of traditionally into the lens itself. The offset of the high zoom is the camera gets allot bigger obviously because you need more steps in the camera to make it zoom, the increase in steps also diminishes the light that's able to enter, resulting in longer shutter speeds or a higher ISO, which increases grain, especially in dim light situations.
If your not too sure about needing that amount of optical zoom, then I'd suggest a Panasonic Lumix TZ18 (or TZ20 if you like being able to GPS tag every shot). It's nice and compact, it has 16x optical zoom, remarkably less but the quality should be the same if not better. It's also allot cheaper. And as a side note, in my country it has been declared Digital Compact camera of the year, I've been using it for three months as my 'sidearm' and it's been invaluable for when I can't bring my 'real' camera with me.
