New Digital Camera

I’ve been spending a great deal of time in the last few weeks reading up on the features, pros and cons of various digital cameras. I’ve had my current camera (Canon PowerShot A80) for four years, and it’s served me well, and given me a very high opinion of Canon digital cameras. Basically, after all my research it boiled down to a choice between the Canon PowerShot A720, the Canon PowerShot G9, and the Canon PowerShot S5.
I never really considered an ultra-compact like one of the cameras in the Canon Digital Elph series, because they simply don’t have enough manual features (or features, period) for my taste. I also never really considered a digital SLR, because while they’re obviously the best cameras out there, I don’t have any desire to be lugging around a bunch of lenses all the time, and the camera bodies themselves are really expensive (cheapest ones for around $700-$800, but most are well in excess of $1000), not to mention the lenses. Eventually I think I’d like to get a DSLR, but not at this stage just yet. I have enough point-and-shoot in me still that the DSLR would be slow and annoying to deal with currently. But now on to the three finalists I was considering.
The A720 is the one that’s most similar to my current camera, but with several advancements, as it’s in the same A-series family of Canon cameras. It’s an 8-megapixel camera with 6x optical zoom. It’s probably still small enough to fit into my pocket, as is the A80. It also has image stabilization, which helps a little bit of camera shake, but of course not excessive amounts. It runs on AA batteries, which I count as a plus because of the ready availability of them pretty much anywhere. Its LCD screen doesn’t fold out and rotate like the one on my A80 does, and it’s 2.5″ in the diagonal. And it has a good deal of manual controls that are pretty easy to access. Unfortunately, it has an utterly idiotic placement of the tripod mount — way in one corner of the camera. But overall, it’s a pretty solid point-and-shoot compact camera, and runs about $200 most places currently.
The G9 is a very sturdy ‘prosumer’ camera, packed with features (more than a point-and-shoot, but not to the level of a digital SLR). It has a 6x optical zoom like the A720, but has 12 megapixels. It has a fixed 3.0″ LCD screen, image stabilization, and a handy dedicated ISO dial, in addition to the plethora of other buttons and dials for quick access to manual features, more than are available on the A720. The G9 runs on a proprietary Canon battery, which has probably longer life, but is also more expensive to replace (and more difficult to find). Some downsides of the G9 are that it’d be too big to fit in my pocket, and also that it’s almost twice as expensive as the A720, at close to $400 currently. It seemed like the A720 would be a better value for the money than the G9, overall, especially since the image quality wasn’t really any better than in the A720.
The third camera to enter the stage as a finalist was the S5. It’s the latest in Canon’s super-zoom line of cameras, and features a fantastic 12x optical zoom to go along with 8 megapixels. Unlike any of the other cameras I was seriously considering (or almost any of the ones I even looked at), its 2.5″ LCD screen flips out and rotates, and it records movies with stereo sound. Those are both fantastic features, and huge pluses in my book. The movie mode can take 640×480 AVI files up to 4GB in size (about half an hour), and it also lets you zoom in and out while recording, unlike most other digital still cameras. Simply put, its movie mode is the best I’ve seen on anything this side of a camcorder. Its macro mode also has a 0-cm focus feature, meaning that the lens can focus on objects that are literally touching the surface of the lens. Granted, you’d need to backlight any objects you have this close to the lens, but still, wow. It also has quite a few buttons and dials for manual features, like the G9, it has image stabilization, it runs on AA batteries, and it has extra preset scene modes for snow, fireworks(!), aquariums and foliage, plus other cool modes like color highlight (where everything’s black and white except for one color in an image) and color swap. Also like the G9, it has a sensibly placed tripod mount, right in the center of the camera. A couple downsides of the camera are that it’s too big to fit in my pocket, and that the image quality is probably a wee bit inferior to the A720, with a little more purple fringing and noise visible at higher ISOs. It seems like that probably wouldn’t be noticeable on anything but very large prints or 100% magnifications, though. Current prices on the camera are around $310 at most places (cheaper than my A80 cost four years ago in an opened box!), up to around $350.
So what camera did I choose? The Canon PowerShot S5 IS. The big zoom, awesome movie mode, flip-out LCD, tons of features and well-placed tripod mount sold me. I finally ordered it today, along with a carrying bag/case for it, a “Gorillapod” (a tripod with flexible legs that can wrap around and grip poles, railings, and things, as well as being able to stand like a normal tripod on a flat surface), an 8GB class 6 SDHC memory card and a memory card reader that can double as a jump drive with an SD/SDHC card in it (so I got a 4GB class 6 SDHC card for that too). Sure, that’s all a fair bit of money, but I’ve had my eye on getting a new digital camera for some time now. I think it’ll be worth it, especially to get better videos and pictures of everything, from scenery to people to stuff on all the various trips I’m planning to take coming up (including Australia next year!). I’m really looking forward to having my new toy to play with, and to learning all the ins and outs of it over the coming months!
I’ll leave you with this SNL spoof of The Office (h/t: Josh). Hilarious! Has a skit that’s entirely in a foreign language ever been funnier?