The Z7U jumped back up from $5099 at B&H to $5399 today. Sonofa...

I have compared the Z5 thoroughly to the Z7 and for the money, the Z5 is amazing. Besides the detachable lens and the CF-recording unit (which can be bought separately for the Z5) there are no major differences. On the contrary: the Z5 has some distinct advantages over the Z7. Peaking adjustment in three different colours (much easier than in white only!), 20x zoom, less heavy - even with the CF attached. The biggest disadvantage of the Z5 are the rings for focus, zoom and iris: these have no fysical stop like a real videolens should have. And one grey density filter less...

The big big difference is the speed of the lens Luc, and most people plonk for the Z7 because it's lens loses a half stop as you zoom as against the two stops the (admittedly longer) Z5 zoom loses.

And a lot of people are very surprised by how little different the 20x looks after the Z7's 12x. If you fit a 1.7x telephoto converter to the Z7 you've got more tele teach than the Z5 - and an amazing byproduct is that your lens is a stop and a half faster.

Let's put that 1½ stops into perspective. If your Z7 needs two 100 watt lamps to give you correct exposure in the room, the Z5 will need six 100 watt lamps turned on to get the same exposure.

tom.

one thing the zooming speed of the z5 and z7 seems quite different. I would think z5 is more suitable for run and gun applications.

The maximum aperture at full tele is less important to me, as I shoot concerts mainly, where I use the full tele reach very seldomly. As I do everything manually, the 'full-stop-'rings are very important, though. Too bad we don't have the coloured peaking indication of the Z5 on the Z7. Still hoping Sony will offer that as a firmware upgrade!

In considering price increases you must factor in government monitization of the debt. The 2009 spending is at a level where there literally is not enough money in the world to fund it. In past years we have depended on the Chinese to buy the T-bills to fund government spending. Even the Chinese do not have the dollars to buy T-bills sufficient to fund the 2009 spending. Therefore, the Federal Reserve Bank for the first time ever bought $300 billion in T-bills last January with announcements to buy another trillion later in the year. This is radical because in theory it should be illegal as it dilutes the purchasing power of existing dollars if there is not an increased GNP to back it up. We will see inflation across the board this year and it must include the Z7U and Z5U. Can't say, though, if recent increases were inflation based.

Z7U down to $5349. Yipiee.

Found the Z7U at Newegg.com for $5099 today. I ordered it from them.