jurjan

Dear people,
I'm looking for a new camera to take on our bicycle tours.

We use two cameras: mine, a Canon Powershot s3 is
and hers, a Nikon D40.

now, she bought the D40 about a year ago, and since then I've been slowly realizing how SLOW my trusty Canon is (startup, shutterlag, lens (f-stops and motorized zoom)) compared to the D40.

This year we took a lot more pictures of wildlife than 'normal' and yes, shutterlag / motorized zoom prevented me from taking lots of pictures, the camera just wasn't FAST enough D**N it.

I've been looking around a bit and yes, compacts / superzooms have improved, but mostly in megapixels and zoomrange, NOT speed as such.

So I was surprised when I found about about the so-called micro four thirds cameras:
a bit bigger than the superzooms, but smaller than a D40, ANDwith interchangeable lenses, handzoom (YEAH!), a bigger sensor and faster than the superzooms.

examples are the Olympus Pen E-PL1 , E-P2 and the Panasonic GF1.

Now, we can (I should hope so) look at test pictures and decide if the quality of the images is enough better than that of the Canon to warrant a buy decision.

However, given that we tend to cycle on bad roads (think ripio in Patagonia etc.) AND that this year we had one of the lens elements of the D40-lens vibrate loose I would like to hear if people over here own one (or more!) of these cameras and lenses and what their experiences, both good AND bad are.

thanks!