Way more than I need, but I love it!

In the past I've always bought digital cameras based solely on price. I would get the best camera I could afford, which ended up getting me a couple of not-very-good cameras. The latest one died in the middle of a lovely evening full of prime photo-ops, and only 2 weeks before Christmas! So I rushed to find a replacement. I had to let my husband get the LCD monitor he wanted too, but it was worth it! This time I was able to get a great camera with everything I wanted, at an affordable price!

This camera has way more features than I will ever use. Not knowing much about photography I have no use for things like manually setting the aperture or shutter speed. But for those of you who know what to do with those settings, they are available for you to set either one at a time or all at once.

I will also have no need for the underwater case, but it's available for those of you who want such a thing. I will probably never buy additional lenses to attach to the camera, but those who are into photography can purchase an adapter that will allow you to do so. And I probably won't mess around with changing the start-up splash screen and/or camera sounds, but if you're into that you can do that too.

What I love most about this camera is the many preset scene settings that it has, making all of the manual adjustments unnecessary for someone like me. It was great to be able to set it to Kids and Pets to take pictures of the tykes opening their Christmas presents. The full auto setting works great too, although I'm having a little trouble getting it to focus where I want it to. It's a great point and shoot camera, with loads of settings for the more experienced photographer.

The video capture is fantastic, and allowed me to capture some really precious moments this holiday season. The 4x optical zoom is great, although it gets a little annoying that the camera warns you about moving the camera if you zoom in pretty much at all. I can't wait to get an opportunity to try some of the other scene settings. So far the only bad pictures have been because someone blinked!

One of the best features of this camera is the large 2.5" LCD screen. My previous cameras had much smaller LCDs, and the bigger LCD makes a huge difference! And maybe it's just because I'm used to a smaller LCD, but I have no complaints about the LCD's resolution like other reviewers.

The auto focus assist light has been a real life saver. I have always had trouble with my cameras not focusing in low light, or even medium light. This camera hasn't had any trouble focusing at all.

This camera also has a lot of fun settings I may or may not find myself using. It has a color accent setting that allows you to select a color in the picture to highlight, and all the other colors will be converted to black and white. You can swap one color for another. You can take pictures in black and white or sepia, you can lighten or darken skin tones slightly (weeee, I can make myself look less pale!), you can punch up the color. And one that will make sending pictures to my mother in law very cool when we finally buy a house, a photo-stitch function that lets you take many overlapping pictures in a panoramic fashion, and then use the photo-stitch software to stitch them together for you into one big picture. I tried this one in my living room and it made for a fantastic view of the living room not possible with just snapshots.

I've never been one to connect my camera directly to the computer and download the pictures that way. I've always removed the memory card and plugged it into my card reader to download the pictures. I don't even think I installed the included software with my last two cameras. With this one I thought I'd give it a shot. I haven't taken the memory card out of the camera since I got it. I simply hook it up to the computer via the included USB cable, turn it on, the software pops up ready to download my pictures, and with one click they are all transferred to my MyPictures folder. The best part is that it puts them in dated folders, keeping pictures from Tuesday separate from the pictures I took on Wednesday. I like that! And the Zoom Browser software is very easy to use, and I'm enjoying it a lot. My only complaint is that the redeye correction doesn't always do a really good job. Usually it's great, but sometimes it won't lock onto the red eye, and sometimes it makes the eye far too black.

This camera uses 2 AA batteries, either store bought alkaline or NiMH rechargeables. The batteries that came with the camera only lasted me about 20 pictures. Luckily I had charged up some of my NiMH batteries and brought them along. They seem to be lasting great. I haven't had it die on me yet, although I do make sure the batteries are fully charged before I leave the house with the camera. I see the AA batteries as an advantage over proprietary lithium batteries, like those that the Canon SD line uses. The proprietary lithiums make the camera much smaller, but with the AA's if I forget to charge the batteries I can stop at any store and pick some up. I wouldn't be able to do that with a proprietary lithium. And with only 2 AAs, instead of the 4 that my last two cameras used, it's really very light weight.

I really only have one complaint about this camera. The write speed is pretty slow. It is capable of taking advantage of high speed SD cards, but the card I have is not high speed. I'm sure that would make a difference, and maybe the slow speed I'm experiencing is simply due to the fact that I'm not used to a 6 mega pixel camera. But it is annoying to sometimes have to sit and wait for up to 10 seconds before I can take another picture. I'm not sure what causes it to sometimes write really slow, and sometimes it's ready to take another picture as soon as the preview is gone.

Other than that one complaint, I adore this camera. If you're looking for a good point and shoot camera that will allow you to take advantage of more advanced options if you so choose, this is the camera for you!