Okay here is the "problem", 7 years ago an accident left me with a damaged spine, most of it was repaired and I was able to walk with no pain, even go on and become a pretty sucessful photojournalist. 4 months ago, a piece of cartilage slide into my nerve canal, causing pain, motor control problems etc.. and is inoperable with my loosing the use of my left leg. I used to carry around 2 M6's and lenses and a nikon fm2 plus 85, now I have difficulty lifting a 6 pint container (3 litre) of milk. I may eventually in the next year be able to walk around and lift a bit more. 6 months ago, I got as a toy an olympus digital compact, its fantastic, has spot metering, lots of overrides etc.. but the file sizes aren't going to be big enough. I see that leica/ panasonic has a model with aperture from 2.2-2.4 and does 4 million pixels, in a nice metal body. Now the real questions begin, is its lens any good at full aperture, is it suitable for pro work, (as the original D1 nikon only had 2.7 megapixels, I'm assuming that it is since none of my friends had any problems), are there any known issues with this camera, and how wide is 7 mm in 35 mm format, what have the reviews been like for it, (as I've been out of the loop for a while), and are there any other models that are worth looking at with the same kind of aperture, metal body, and range to the wide angle ?