The roster of new compact megazooms for spring 2010 is very impressive with all the major manufacturers coming out with hot new cameras. I waited to read the reviews from the earliest adopters (thanks all of you) before picking this Canon. The raw statistics were themselves impressive. The 14x zoom and 14 MP live up to the hype. I was super-impressed with how well I could "pull in" subjects across the field.

But the other features of the camera make it a tremendous little package. And it is indeed little. It fit comfortably in a cargo pant side pocket. Light and small.

The dedicated video button is a great idea and made me more likely to shift to video than I would have been without it. Also, I love the old style mode dial. Much more convenient and easy to use than a menu driven system. That being said, the menus and the navigation dial are very well put together and easy to navigate. A very bright, big and clear LCD screen.

I love having manual focus, Aperture, Shutter, and Program settings like on an old camera, and I was thrilled to see that the changes in settings showed up on the LCD to simulate what the shot would look like. Super cool for an amateur photographer and will help me take better pictures in the future.

The shutter speed is fast but still not SLR fast. The lag between shots is less than my previous camera but still not perfect. I like that you can shift back to the shooting screen before the previous image is finished writing to disk.

Strong low light performance. I was surprised at how well it did in pub lit mainly by Christmas lights. I got clear, balanced shots when every other camera at the table was producing nothing worth keeping.

I have not had much luck with the continuous shooting modes yet. I'll need to do some homework to understand why those are not working for me. Also, I have not had success with shooting fast moving objects. The kids and pets mode was not fast enough for the zoo and I could not "outsmart" it with any of the manual settings. Finally, battery life is a point of concern. On my first long day of shooting, the battery signaled it was getting low before evening. I have ordered a backup battery to be sure that I won't run out of juice on a whole day away from home. I would have expected the battery to last a whole day no problem.

Canon PowerShot SX210IS 14.1 MP Digital Camera with 14x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerShot-SX210IS-Stabilized-Black/dp/B0035FZJM6/ref=sr_1_1?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1276703086&sr=1-1&tag=best-price-sell-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325