its a simple question...

well i'm a big nikon fan, sine thats what I shoot professionaly, but I'd say my nikon S6 has excellent image quality, and a gorgeous 3" LCD Screen, all for ~200$

Panasonic FZ-8 is my camera and i like it size of an d-slr but not d-slr

Canon G9

with regards to pure image quality...megapixels not withstanding....they are all the same, seriously.

I would highly disagree with that, and I think anybody who knows a thing or two about cameras would as well.

thanks. that camera has the best image quality i have seen yet

well you're right because obviously not ALL non-slrs are built equally. But still, competing models are usually pretty darn close in image quality...which is what the original poster probably wanted to know.

And if you beg to differ, then why isn't there any useful information in your post to contribute to the discussion?

I obviously know a thing or 2 about a thing or 2, while the only reason you posted was to take a jab at me, apparently...

Your original statement was vague, so my response was vague. With your statement, you could say a camera on a RAZR phone is the same to a P&S Canon... If you were more specific like "All cameras in a similar price range are about the same" then that would make sense. There's a reason why you can buy a 10mp camera for $100, while other 6mp cameras are $300.

Leica M8
Epson R-D1
Sony DSC-R1
and, if it ever gets released, the Sigma DP-1

All other cameras use much smaller sensors and therefore have to use strong noise reduction even at lowest sensitivity (except the 6mp Fujis which wouldn't have to but do anyway*).

*in Raw mode and using a 3rd party converter the S6000fd/S6500fd at ISO 100 comes pretty close to SLR quality (roughly comparable to an SLR at ISO 400 I'd say)

Thank you...an excellent answer indeed. It took an extra post to yank it outta ya but we did it