I ordered the FZ18 and will receive it on monday I realized the cannon has better image quality but in the end I chose the pany for the high speed shooting that it has (relatively) cannon is also cheaper than the panny, I also didnt like the flip out lcd screen, altough had the cannon had a faster shooting mode I would have chose that in the end over the panny as the picture quality looks slightly better and their Image cleanup is less intrusive so it retains more of the detail something the panny doesnt do by softening the image too much