Having said all that – the photos are mostly good, but not as consistent as I’d like them to be. This is trus of any of the newer cameras that I have played with, though. my other two concerns are the lens seems to make actual noise while focusing – i do not know if this is a defect or normal. Secondly, photos with the flash are interesting – a lot of edging do you call it? I took a photo in daylight and flash kicked in but background looks like nighttime (indoor). a little weird. Resolution is great! Low light photos with flash are awesome and crisp. can’t have a shaky hand with no flash. If you are a first time Canon user (like I was a few months ago) it takes a little time to get used to how to get clear shots, but then once you figure it out it’s good. All in all – I think this is going to be one of Canon’s best sellers. As far as comparison to the SD960 it very comparible in features and quality – but the design is very different. I miss the scroll feature of the SD960, but it’s easier to delete photos on this one. I did not own a SD780, I just played with it in the store on several occasions, but I could never get used to it – so I think the SD940 is better in design and ease of use as far as navigation goes. not sure on picture QUALITY COMparison.
Rating: 4 / 5

And I found this camera. I played with it extensively in a couple of stores and was tremendously impressed. First, it’s almost as thin as the Casio card cameras. Second, it feels solid, not plasticky. It’s responsive. The main controls are easy to use, and the screen is big enough and bright. The auxiliary controls (menus and stuff) are a bit challenging because they are flush to the camera body. And I was not able to find the scene modes that make the Casio cameras so incredibly useful (for example, the whiteboard mode or the eBay mode, both of which just work). Interestingly, there;s a cover in the upper right that has both a USB and an HDMI connection. Wow.

But this camera suffers fro the same fatal flaw as the new Casio cameras: you have to remove the battery to charge it. Here are the issues with that design decision:

First, opening and closing the cover. The cover was not designed to be opened and closed so much. Over time, the hinge will likely loosen, or worse, deform.

Second, it’s so much ore work to open the cover, take out the battery, find the charger, put the battery in the charger, wait for the charge, put the battery back in the camera. Some might say “well, it’s not that big a deal.” But usability isn’t just about big deals, about fixing big frustrations. It’s about the little deals, fixing the little frustrations, the little things that, by themselves uses don’t often notice, but that add up over time. This is one of those. And it doesn’t have to be: It’d be so easyto simply either provide a cradle or be able to just plug a cable into the camera.

Which brings me to, third, the battery doesn’t charge when you plug the USB cable in. Huh?? This is so mind-boggling stupid it defies description.

Let’s not that this Canon camera is not cheap. It’s not competing on price, but on quality (as Canon rightfully should). So to leave out this capability on such an otherwise high quality device completely undermines the trust in Canon engineering.

To be fair, having worked in high tech for so many years, I’d wager that this really was less of an engineering decision than a management decision. They didn’t want to add the small cost it would take, or they wanted to push the model to market before the engineering for it could be completed, something like that.

This camera is so new that the major camera review sites ([...]) haven’t given it a real run-through, but I’m guessing that the photo quality will be to the usual Canon high standards. And if it wasn’t for this incredibly annoying flaw, it’d have been in my cart and in my hands by now. But this is a real deal killer. My search will continue, with the very real hope that Canon engineering (or management) will pull their heads out of their…you know…and fix this in this camera’s successor, turning it from a 1-star product into very likely a 5-star product.
Rating: 1 / 5