P&S advice

With all the amazing photos of flashlight posted here I thought I could find some answers here as well.

Please recommend a pocketable camera for someone w/o an interest in photography as a hobby. We're planning out first trip to Europe for this summer and would like to bring home some memories.

There won't be action shots (no sporting events) so I guess that leaves stills of people and places with an occasional indoor shot where allowed.

Something that will fit in a shirt pocket that produces usable pictures straight out of the camera. Price and brand are open.

Thanks in advance.

I think just about any from the major players would be good. A few years ago I wanted one to take on a trip to Italy. Found a Samsung that has worked quite well. It was cheap, used 2AA batteries, and had a 5X optical zoom. I didn't want to have to mess with a charger and wanted as much zoom as possible.

Geoff

Canon S90

Another vote for the Canon S90.
Very fast lens on the wide side, low noise in high ISO shots (considering it's a P&S).
Might be too small if you have big hands.

+1 on the Canon S90.

Just got one a week ago and it takes beautiful shots. Still not a DSLR but way better than any cheapo P&S I've ever used.

The G11 takes a slightly sharper picture, but if the size is too big then the S90 is what you want.

When it comes to digital cameras, I've been a Canon fan for awhile now. For non-hobbyist, I typically recommend the Powershots - they take nice pics and are easy to stuff in a shirt pocket.

Whatever you choose, here's a couple of good review sites for you:

http://www.dpreview.com/
http://www.steves-digicams.com/camera-reviews/

dpreview is a great site.

Although many pros and semi-pro amateurs knock him and don't like his style because he pushes his camera more towards very vivid and slightly over saturated colors - I personally find Ken Rockwell's reviews http://www.kenrockwell.com/ to be enjoyable to read and informative in their own way.

Be careful with some of the lower end Canon P&S cameras. With the current move to 14MP sensors these cameras have had to employ a lot of noise reduction to make the pictures look good - the end result is jpeg file which look very soft.

I purchased a SD1400is at the same time as the S90 and I returned the SD1400 because the image quality was overprocessed to the point of very little remaining detail.

Here are two clips from the same picture of my LR I took with both the SD1400 and the S90 when I was testing to see which one I wanted to keep. Both pictures taken at widest zoom setting (about the same) in same lighting, distance, conditions, etc. Crops made using Photoshop CS and saved at quality level 10. Absolutely no other processing or image resizing applied to the pictures - just a straight 100% crop.

SD1400:


S90:

Here is the full picture from the S90 for size/crop comparison.

+1 on the canon s90

I just got one for when I can't be bothered lugging around my DSLR. I wish I'd got one sooner is all I can say. I think it's the best small compact you can buy today. Obviously the high ISO performance doesn't come close to my DSLR but at base ISO 80, the performance is not that far away.

these are my pros/cons:

pros

-small size with good sensor for a compact. (uses larger 1/1.7" sensor)
-High ISO performance is better than most compacts.
-fast lens, at the wide end.
-the image stabiliser is excellent and it works well at all zoom settings.
-full control over camera settings.


cons

-in certain situations, it tends to overexpose and blow out highlights.
-rear control wheel turns too easily
-short battery life
-expensive; same price as an entry level DSLR + lens.

Canon, though I use old Nikon Coolpix's

The Nikon P6000 is definitely worth considering too although it's more of a competitor to the older Canon G10 rather than the latest G11/s90. It has all the features of the Canon G series but in a smaller body. In terms of size, it fits in between the G10/11 and the s90.

One big advantage to the nikon is the software: Capture NX (CNX) is way better than Digital photo professional (DPP) in terms of RAW editing and conversion. CNX has much more powerful editing capabilities and better quality end results too, although you do have to pay for it.

(I've never been happy with 3rd party RAW converters but that's OT)