"If megapixels are what persuade you to part with your cash for a camera, you're a misguided shallow muppet of a sheep" ?

Quite probably one of Panasonic's densest (i.e. noisiest) sensors yet.

14mp camera with a 28-100mm (35mm equiv) focal length is like a Ferrari engine in a ford focus... Some parts are really good, but the overall drive is just not quite the same.

As pointed out in the article, pixels = zoom.

If you are ready to settle for a lower def image, crop the 14Mp one and voila. Zoomed.

Advantage of the pixels:

- you have choice to zoom or detail,

- telelenses need lots of light,

- telelenses make shaky blurry image likely

As pointed out in the article, pixels = zoom: just crop if you are ready to swap definition for zoom.

Pixels are better because:

- you have a chioice between zoom and detail

- telelenses need lots of light

- telelenses are easily shaken, resulting in blurry pictures.

The effect of not using a telelens are:

- more depth of field & expanded perspective due to a shorter focal length

- extra manual step to do the cropping afterward.

So no downside to speak of in most cases.

That's fine if you don't mind an effective sensor size about the same as that of a grain of salt. Bear in mind this sensor will be quite small enough already, without further cropping. What you are essentially talking about is digital zoom, which even PC World have stopped bragging about now.

Mind you, the optical zoom race is equally as mad as the megapixel race, with e.g. the new Fuji F100fs having a 14x zoom but the lens suffering some of the worst ever chromatic aberration of any camera, as a result of the compromises needed to get that in conjunction with a larger than average sensor whilst keeping the camera handleable.

Sensible megapixels (I recall someone did a study that determined that for compact camera size sensors, 6Mp was optimum with current technologies) and sensible zoom. IMHO, obviously!