djc1026, the panasonic lumix are always a very good choice... I make a lot of reportage with this light equipment, compare to my DSLR suitcase... I began with FZ20, now kept my FZ30. They are very good, incredible macro distance (1 cm), all the modes available (manual, aperture, speed), the possibility of doing a manual focus, the RAW file recording, the video mode...
The bad sides are: cranked images with grain of high ISO settings, and not so good white balance possibilities.
but it's definitely a good choice when you don't want to go into DSLR!