Great Camera for the Novice

I bought this camera when it was relatively new to replace my aging 2003 Kodak DX3900 3.1 megapixel. At first, I was completely enamored with this product. It's so much smaller and lighter than my old one.

The camera is easy to use right out of the box which is a very good thing because the manual isn't very informative at all. There are various easy to use settings, such as beach, snow, night, text, close-up, sunset. I've tried them all and I think that letting the camera choose it's own setting produces the clearest pictures when motion isn't involved. I have taken nice close-up pictures of bees on flowers, a small leaf on gravel, pollen on a stamen of a flower and have been very pleased with them. Zooming in and cropping doesn't take away from the 12 megapixel clarity at all.

I've used the camera at the beach in full sun and captured waves breaking with a faster shutter speed. I've used it in full sun in the mountains and captured the gorgeous colors of a sunset without a tripod but the picture was slightly grainy. I've used it outdoors in full sun to take pictures of my children and the quality is very, very good.

As for ease of use, it's cake! The menus are laid out nicely and there are alot of options. Basically, this is / can be used as a point and shoot camera and take great pictures. It's great for vacations!

The drawbacks of this camera are many. The autofocus is slow. The battery life is short. Sometimes, you can tab through several of the menus before you find what you're looking for, all the while eating up battery life. On vacation, I was going through 2 - AA's a day! The night pictures don't really come out all that nicely and are blurry without a tripod. You can take a few pictures rapidly but may miss a shot while "processing" is displayed for a good 15 seconds.