There are, at this time, but a handful of high power zoom cameras on the market that are not
of the dSLR variety. The Canon 1S IS, the Panasonic DMC FZs etc. It is these cameras that
are considered ZLRs. Kind of a midway high performance camera between the regular digital
P&S cameras and the much more expensive dSLR cameras.

The lens.

The working definition most people here seem to use is a high(ish)-end
compact digital camera with a fixed lens capable of long zoom - there's
no "hard and fast" definition of what is and isn't ZLR but most of the
cameras people discuss here have lenses that go out to the equivalent
of anywhere between 280 and 420mm on a 35mm SLR.

ZLRs tend to be made by companies who know what they're doing optically;
Nikon, Canon and Konica-Minolta make excellent lenses anyway; Panasonic
use Leica lenses on their Lumix ZLR range, and Sony use Zeiss.

I think most of us who own ZLRs do so out of a mixture of convenience
and budget - certainly I recognise the superiority of dSLRs, but
a lot of my photography (particularly motorsport and railways) is done at
long zoom, and a dSLR and suitable lens would be bulky and prohibitively
expensive....

pete

Hi Dave, you say:

Two things: the EVF and the misnaming. That's why EVFs are called ZLRs.

Julio.