Terrible Disappointment
Strengths: Wide Angle lens, Outstanding high quality 3 inch display, good battery life, convenient, easy to use controls
Weaknesses: Only decent quality photos, no better than Canon models costing half as much money. Really bad noise levels at ISO 400 and higher. New DiGiC 4 is less reliable in setting a good exposure
Summary: I cannot be more disappointed in this camera. I was really thinking that I would get something superior for this much more money. This is my 4th Canon camera, and the first to disappoint me. Image quality is no better than my SX100 IS or S3 IS. All of the extra megapixels seem to make sharpness actually WORSE. In fact, exposures are often worse, as the new DiGiC 4 in this camera appears to be far less reliable than DiGiC 3 in my other Canons in automatically setting a good exposure. I'm having to manually override settings often with this camera in order to get good pics. This is totally unlike my other Canons, and I can only attribute it to the new DiGiC 4 system. It must have bugs in the firmware.
The 28mm 35mm equivalent wide angle zoom lens is a great feature, as is the outstanding high quality 3 inch screen. Battery life is good, and ergonomics excellent. Canon did somethings very good on this camera.
But I wanted a camera that delivers superior images, and this one does not do that. Noise level is absolutely terrible at higher ISO settings. Even hurts ISO 400 image quality, and ISO 1600 is a total joke, it is so extremely noisy.
My Canon Powershots A70, S3 IS, and SX100 IS have all been good, easy to use cameras. But I expected more from this camera due to its significantly higher price, and it clearly does not deliver on that hope. It is definitely overpriced for what you get.
This is one Canon to avoid. I wish that I had purchased the Powershot SX10 IS instead, as it has a larger sized sensor. But I really wanted something more compact, so that is why I unfortunately bought this model. This camera crams way too many megapixels into too small of a sensor, the the result is a camera that does not deliver on image quality.
The Powershot SX10 IS really is not that much bigger or heavier. And here it sells for over $100 less. I sadly bought the wrong new Canon. This camera is one of Canon's rare misses.

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