AlanM,
I bought an FZ50 about a month ago, upgrading from an FZ10. Panasonic has made a lot of improvements between these two models. Like you, I was looking for a relatively light and compact digital camera that at least gave me a chance to take half way decent bird photos. So far, I'd give the FZ50 a grade of "B". I've taken some OK photos with it, but still fight shutter/autofocus lag (too many shots with the bird's head turned away, or an empty perch). Low light photography definitely results in noisy images. Also, I'm having a problem getting autofocused images of birds against backgrounds--the camera wants to focus on the background rather than the bird, despite using the spot focus mode--which I hope is a matter of technique or settings rather than an inherent problem. Manual focus is almost worthless in this situation, I find.
The good news: it's a pretty capable camera with a lot of nice features. The image stabilization helps a lot. Most of my shots have been handheld at maximum telephoto (12x), and a reasonably high percentage don't exhibit blur. It's certainly a more practical--and cheaper--travel camera than an SLR with a 400mm lens. For the price, I think it's worth a try. You just need to accept that you won't get the autofocus speed, sharpness, and lack of noise that a Canon EOS offers.
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