oldbloke's mutterings

Soem of you may have noticed that I occasionally mention a movie called California Split (Altman)
Last night I discovered it's finally been released on DVD - but only in NTSC on a Region1 disc.
Columbia Tristar's UK site doesn't know anything about it. And sucks anyway.
Ah well.

I know somebody who's saving up for a Minolta Dimage Z3
I've read a review saying the pics are a bit noisy comapred to some Panasonics
But the Panasonics I've checked so far are rather more expensive
What's good under 300 quid, folks?
Personally I'd like it to be 200, but hey
I also insist it can do an ISO equivalent of 400
And have a good variety of metering modes
And good optical zoom rather than digital
What's the lowdown on the Fuji S5000 and S7000 ?