Hi,

I have basically the same need and I ended up buying the Canon Elura 90 at a good price since it's just finished production.

Be careful with the "25X" and "30X" definitions as they only give the ratio from the shortest to the longest end of the lens. The Elura 90 is only a 20X cam, but it is actually about equal at the long end to a Panasonic GS35 (I think) that has a 30X zoom lens. The panasonic just goes wider at the short end. At the long end, both are about equivalent to a little over 1000mm on a 35 mm camera which is a pretty far reach. Also, I've bought the excellent raynox 2.2X teleconverter lens which works very well and is not very expensive. It gives me roughly about 2200mm 35 mm equivalent which is more than enough. More than that and you're basically using the Hubble telescope!

On the Elura 90, I've found that I have to actually *turn off* the image stabilization with the extender on it and rely on my very good tripod to keep the camera steady. The EIS doesn't work well with the extender since it makes the image jump around all the time.

Anyway, hope this helps and good luck.

Marc P.