Pros: easy to use, Simple controls/menu, Nice features/settings, Bright LCD, excellent image quality, Good Low-Light Performance, Lightweight/Portable
Cons: Short battery life, need easier way to delete pictures, display is easy to scratch
We bought this camera with an upcoming 19-day vacation in mind. Price, size, and capabilities seemed right, so we took a chance.
Likes: We used the camera in full auto mode most of the time, taking pictures from mountaintops to caves. It made excellent shots for the most part, with much greater detail and color fidelity than our Digital Rebel XT. It performed amazingly well in low-light conditions, considering that its lens is barely a flyspeck on the big f2.8 zoom lens we keep on the Digital Rebel. It does not do as well grabbing quick shots as the DRXT because of a focusing lag, but it's still much better than any compact camera I've used in the past. Pictures are excellent at any zoom level. There is a little bit of barrel distortion at macro focus distance.
A 8GB memory card has room for over 2400 pictures. The file size at best quality is slightly smaller than the DRXT at best quality even though it has 1.5 times as many pixels, and the detail is better.
The new menu system is clear and easy to navigate. There are tons of options, yet it's not too complex. The new touch wheel control system on the back is easy to get used to and is very effective.
Movies were decent with full 30 fps at 720p in bright light; they were a bit grainy and noisy in dim light. Sound is not the best, but this is not a dedicated movie camera. There is no sound on playback because the camera does not have a speaker, but it's fine on the computer. Movies are in QuickTime .mov format, which can be easily converted to other formats.
Dislikes: the battery only holds about 230 pictures' worth of charge, so get a spare. There is no easy way to delete pictures; you have to go to a menu item, mark the pictures you want to kill, back up, and kill them (or you can delete them all at once). When connected, the camera does not show up as a volume on a Mac (does on Windows). You have to use the included software to download pictures; there's no alternative, even with a card reader.
Bottom line: this is a great little camera that was a blast to use. It's not perfect, but I have no regrets over buying it and would do the same again.