I'm thinking about a Canon PowerShot S3 IS

[davidd]

I'd love a decent dslr however I cannot really afford it at the moment and if the truth be told I'll probably leave it on auto for 99.9% of the time.

I like canons (I had an eos 650 for a long time and I have an ixus 5).

What comments can you give me? Is is a good camera, is there something better for the cash?
Should I just go for a s2 is?

Thanks

D

[prelude4ws]

I've got one, Love it to bits!!

My wife has a EOS300D so if I ever need to use an SLR I use that, but I got the S3 as I travel a lot and wanted something more compact to take with me.

I have a feeling that one of the Panasonic Luminx cameras is better (the all black one certianly looks better) but as you say I like Canon stuff and all our other PC bits like scaner and printer are also Canon so it makes life a lot easier when trying to match colours and printouts.

[LongQ]

Bought one on Monday.

I am astonished at what it seems able to do. Even the digital zoom exceeds expectations. It is a lot of camera for the money you get it for. Even got my local Jacobs to come up with a quite competitive price for the camera and the Wide angle lens and adaptor. Now I've had a play I fancy the tele extender as well.

Took a shot in the late evening light last night from about 20 or so meters away at full optical zoom (432mm 35mm equivalent) plus 1.8x digital zoom. Hand held at 1/30th sec lens wide open. (Plus I had forgotten to unset the 'Wide Angle Adaptor' flag in the menu so I guess that would not help... ) A lovely old Morris Oxford grille with an old chrome AA badge on it. Engraved membership number clearly readable. Happily displays at 200% on a standard resolution 15" monitor.

Send me an email address via a PM and I will send some files for you to look at - they will all be between 2 and 4 Mb though so you can see the full results so best let me know if that is a problem.

Here are two taken last night - both resized to 750 pixels wide and crushed for the web.

This one was hand held with IS on @ 1/40th sec, wide open. Full wide angle.



This was a little later when the lights came into play. 1/8th sec at about 100mm equivalent zoom. Camera about 25 feet in the air on top of a mast.



PS. These shots are only here because I had already uploaded them as general interest shots for another thread, they are certainly not representative of the best of the evening.

Edited by LongQ on Wednesday 5th July 20:59