I tried out my new ZS20 at my grand niece's christening and took pictures of my family and wow, all the pictures came out beautiful and the videos were great, better than my ZS6.

More important, the ZS20 is much skinnier, easier to use (subjective), much much faster, and has lightning quick and accurate focussing as well as the exceptional image stabilization that I believe will result in more usable shots for casual users.

If I was traveling and outdoors more I would keep the Lumix - there are SO many other features on the Lumix ZS20 that I love, but if I'm always going to be disappointed by my indoor photos of people, I just can't keep it.

The Panasonic Lumix TZ30 succeeds the (still available) TZ20 as the company’s flagship travel compact, providing a number of useful upgrades over its predecessor.

In all other aspects though, the SX260 HS is a fantastic little travel compact that's well worth a closer look if you're in the market for such a camera.

While this does make it a little heavier than some rival travel compacts such as the Panasonic Lumix TZ30 and Sony HX20V, the payoff is a camera that feels especially solid and well built in the hand.

The TZ30 also benefits from Panasonic’s ‘Light Speed’ autofocus module, which offers a claimed AF speed of 0.1sec in good light.

Autofocus is much better than Cannon SX260.

When shooting a high-contrast scene the TZ30 will tend to give preferential metering for whatever is inside the AF boxes (especially when the camera is used in single AF mode).

Regardless of which mode you use AF speed is a bit of a mixed bag – outdoors in good light it's almost instant as you might expect, although the Lumix TZ30's 'Light Speed' AF module still has the edge for speed.

In poor light, or indoors under dim artificial lighting the SX260’s autofocus is noticeably slower, although still generally quite reliable.

Autofocus performance is really where the SX260 (and most Canon cameras these days) lag behind the competition.

Using ISO 100 as the benchmark, the TZ30 has produced a pleasing twilight picture of Trebarwith Strand.

The first one was the high levels of noise in high ISO in the ZS3 (e.g. when you shoot at night or indoors with flash); in the ZS20 the noise levels have been noticeably reduced (although it might still be found some in very high ISO, like 1000 or 1600, but the outcome is not so terrible as in the ZS3).

At ISO 800, the TZ30 can still capture a reasonable image, although it is pretty soft.