Canon PowerShot S2 IS

Very User Freindly and Very nice Movie Clips but a little lacking in the Photo Quality Department (Cannon Lover's pls don't shoot me yet!)... I can see why this camera was (and is) so popular... very easy to use, acceptable results right out of the box, very nice Video clips and Image Stabilization to help get rid of all those fuzzy pictures too! For most people looking for a better than Casual family / vacation camera this camera does a wonderful job for the most part. For me however no matter how "Friendly" it is, I find that the end results don't really measure up to the "Pro-Sumer" level in picture quality (see Cons). So if you aren't someone who's been drooling over a true DSLR but aren't ready to take that $1,500+ plunge this isn't the camera for you... better off getting one of the Nikon or Panasonic pro-sumer super zooms imo. But for the casual family photogropher coming up from a point and shoot this camera is wonderful.

- Ease of Use and Learning Curve are Great
- 12x Zoom give's a lot of flexibility
- Takes Beautiful Movie Clips (but lots of room on your memory card too!)
- Image Stabilization does a good job of getting rid of camera shake
- Flip out Tilt and Swivel LCD is a Real Blessing! (Wish all camera's had these!)

- Found that this camera has a big tendancy to blow out bright reds, especially when using a "Vivid" color setting (I keep my camera set at color effect "Off" and exposre set at -2/3 ev to avoid this tendency most of the time).
- Very Noisy pictures when using anything but ISO 50 and 100 settings (400 is practically useless) This really limits your picture taking in any kind of low natural light situation, even with the in camera IS (my Panasonic FZ-20 was much better, but still had a lot of noise like all small sensor pro-sumer camera's do).
- Very Fussy about Batteries! for some reason the "low battery" shutdown is innacurate and often even fully charged batteries (NiMh) will not work and I have to resort to removing and wetting (read Licking- Yech!) the ends / terminals and reinserting for the camera to accept them. This isn't an issue on all S2's but after reading in the forums this problem is common enough for me to mention it.

Nikon Coolpix 5700 (older model but took the best pics!)
Panasonic DMC-FZ-20 (Better pics but not as user friendly)

never used

Very nice camera. Response time for start up and shutter release are both very good. Image quality from the 5mp is more than satisfactory. All of the camera controls are at your fingertips and are easy to use. Common camera settings (ISO, exposure compensation, colour balance etc) can be accesed through one button and the menu is overlayed on the image in the veiwfinder so you can see the changes you make instantly. Something else that I like about this camera is the very good movie quality and the fact that in any mode you can push the record button to record a movie. Although I do not use it ofton, it does work very well.

Very easy to use and fast for a digital camera. It has a nice long lens on it (12x optical) which allows for getting in close. There are also 2 add on lenses that allow you to widen the image or increase the power of the lens. Quality through these lenses are very good also.

The lens cap is almost useless. It is a friction fit cap that relies on a ring of felt inside the cap edge to hold it to the camera. I think they did this so that if you turn the camera on the lens can easily push the cap off without stressing the lens mechanisms. However what this means is that is also falls off very easily. Without the included cap strap it would be lost very quickly. Olympus solved this problem by using a spring loaded gripping cap that grips the inside edge of the lens (like many 35mm SLRs). This way if the camera is turned on the cap moves with the lens.

Also, there have been a couple of instances where it is a little slow to lock focus. I have not narrowed down as to why yet.

Due to the nature of the camera, the add on lenses are quite large and require a separate adapter to be able to mount to the camera. This is so the camera lens can still move in and out.

Olympus C-730UZ

I bought this camera because I was going to be studying abroad in Germany for the year and I wanted a digital camera so that I could rapidly post pictures to share with my family and friends back in the States (turnaround tie for my photos is usually rather long, consisting of developing my slides and then scanning them, if I can find a slide scanner). Until this point my main workhorse was my Canon T90 SLR (which I was also bringing with me). I chose the Powershot S2 IS because of its lens (still a helluva pieve of glass), its resolution, and its price. I didn't want to spend more than $500, and after looking around quite a bit (Sony and Panasonic make some very, very similar models), I decided on the Canon, because I just liked the feel of it better than its rivals, which were practically identical in every other way (the lens on the Panasonic Lumix might be a little better with a constant f/2.8 aperture, but it still suffers from the same problems I will outline below). It really outshines its competitors in video modes, which I didn't think I'd use before I bought it, but I was wrong. I also bought the 58mm lens hood/filter/lens converter adapter, as I wanted to use filters on this camera. Without a polarizing filter especially, the narrow exposure latitude of digital will result in rather paltry skies. The camera is good and does what it was meant to, but I still find myself using it very little, instead opting for my SLR rig, simply because it gives me better control, has better optics. Bottom line, if you were looking for something to replace an SLR, this isn't it. It complements a film SLR very nicely, but it won't be your main camera. It's simply not made for that. As for its competitors, the difference is really only in the feel (price and feature differences are negligible), so I recommend trying all of them out and picking out which one "feels" the best.

Good picture quality (at low ISO): on par with any of its competitors in this category. Amazing zoom range: the lens on here is quite a feat of optical engineering. It's also fast throughout as well, with a f/2.7-3.4 maximum aperture. Image Stablization: Works very well, it's a boon in low light, because you have to set the ISO so low. The camera is also light enough that it can sometimes be hard to hold steady, which is more than compensated for by the IS. Good interface: I've always liked Canon's interface. It's easy to navigate and has the controls you need easy to find. Has a good amouont of manual control: Aperture and Shutter-priorty, program (though not shiftable), and full manual. It has some other automatic modes, but I've never actually used them. Has a reasonably tight spot meter: I can't live without my spot meter. Wish it was multi-spot, like my T90, but that's not even available on a lot more expensive cameras than this now. Metering: good selection of metering (spot, centerweigheted, and evaluative/"matrix"), and flash metering, and exposure comp, and so forth. High speed shooting: can shoot at highest fps mode until card fills up. Same for video. It'll take a while to buffer, but you can shoot until your cards fills up without pausing. LCD: I'm willing to put up with the small LCD for the tilt and swivel. I don't really use the LCD anyway, though. It has MF. TAKES AA BATTERIES!!! I cannot stress how wonderful this is. Too many of my firends have had their proprietary digital camera batteries die on them, leaving them stranded. With this camera, you will almost always be able to find replacement batteries in an emergency. Video: Didn't think I'd use it, but exceptionally good (better than competitors). High resolution and can go forever (can also take a full-res picture mid-video, though I can't figure out why this is useful)

Must buy the filter/lens converter/lens hood adapter seperately. Competitors come with it. Filter adapter: using more than one filter on the filter adapter (polarizer + UV/haze, in this case) will result in vignetting at full wide angle. So will using the hood with any filters at all. Using filter adapter will resulted in flash vignetting at almost all zoom ranges. Noise, noise, noise: Anything above ISO 100 will result in unacceptably obvious noise. It's the same with all of its competitors, though, so I can't knoch this camera too much for it. Lens: Lens shows exaggerated chromatic aberration away from picture center, especially in blown out highlights (which the AE system will create for you). Again, it's there in the competitors' cameras as well, and it's necessary for this kind of zoom range, but if you're a real perfectionist, you will hate the purple underlines in your white off-center highlights. Lens: Would like it to go wider angle than 36mm (35mm equiv.) without a converter, but then again there's noticeable barrel distortion at the wide end already. The converter only makes the distortion and the chromatic aberration worse. EVF: This is more of a knock agains the EVF system in general. EVF has some lag (though canon is better than Sony in this regard) and is simply not as good as an optical viewfinder. For this reason, this camera can never replace an SLR (though it can supplement). Meter: meter generally overexposes scenes (at least for my taste), often highlighting hte weaknesses of the lens. Exposure comp can easily be set to counter this, however. AF: I'm not a fan of the AF system. It can be hard to lock on to what you want, it's often a pain to change the location of the sensor, it just doesn't do what I want it to do more than I would like. To compound this, the MF is a pain to get to, and with an EVF, extremely difficult to use (must hold one button while pressing another to adjust focus). Would have much preferred a rotating barrel (a la Panasonic). Difficult to operate with large hands, especially while wearing gloves. Small and can be hard to hold steady (the filter adapter helps greatly with this). Original cap came off too easily, but was not an issure for me because I use a standard thread lens cap on the filter adapter.

Tried out the equivalent Sony and Panasonic, my main rig is a Canon T90, have also used AE-1, A-1, EOS-20d, EOS-300D (Digi Rebel).

Full featured camera. Manual control if needed. Wonderful 12x optical zoom. Fast shutter speeds 1/3200, ISO only to 400.

Daylight zooming, great color balance, motion stabilized, manual control options. Manual focus via d-pad on back. I'm used to Canon's menus as I also own a S410 (which I LOVE for keeping in my pocket at nearly all times!)

Night sports photography... forget it at 12x. Blurry action shots. Get great shots while the team is waiting for the snap, but once the action starts, forget it from a long distance. I will be trying some different settings this Friday night and will post a follow up review. Also, flash pop up is manual only. I actually like this better than a button to turn off the flash. Most would find it a weakness. Auto focus at 12x at night is pretty slow. Use the manual focus feature. If it had faster ISO or just some way to catch those action shots on the football field, I think it'd be an SLR killer.