Need some help buying a camera for the Mrs

[wasc]

My wife is quite a keen photographer - her previous camera got stolen so she wants a new one for Xmas. Her requirements are as follows.

- Must have a viewfinder (she hates the typical LCD screen as you can't view it in sunlight)

- Able to take photos in Raw mode is a nice to have (but not essential)
- Good Optical Zoom is essential
- Needs to be compact - she's not looking to carry around something massive.
- Needs to have manual settings. She's not a point and shoot person, she likes having access to the manual controls to adjust aperture, exposure and so on.

I'm having some difficulty finding one so hopefully you can make suggestions? The Canon EOS cameras look good, but they are hardly compact.
The Canon G series like the Powershot G16 looked good as it is marketed as a professional camera and has raw mode and a view finder but the zoom is only 4x - why, I have no idea.
The "Nikon 1" camera looked good as well but again, doesn't seem to have a good zoom. So, any ideas? Help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[wasc]

Do you know what her stolen camera was & would she be happy with a replacement/updated model, or is she looking at a `step up`?

Does she want a superzoom type, or an interchangeable compact system?

What does she mainly shoot?

Oh & the dreaded question....budget?

Hi - thanks for the reply. I've looked at the exif data from some pictures so I can confirm her previous camera was a "Fujifilm FinePix S7000". I guess you'd classify that as a bridge camera. It was about 8 years old though. She liked everything about it except the size - she wants something a little smaller, but I'm not sure she'd want a true compact camera as I doubt any of them will have all the manual controls on them.

Shooting - nothing specific really - scenery photography and also some macro photography.

Budget - don't really care at this stage. Her last camera was 8 years old and it's only becuase it was stolen we're forced into this upgrade. Whatever the right camera costs, i'll get. Anything less than £500 would be preferable. Something about the £250 to 300 mark would be awesome.

Don't think she needs a super zoom camera. To be honest as long as the zoom is respectable enough, i.e. 12x or thereabouts i'm sure that'll be ok.