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Let me start by saying I am a huge Canon fan boy. I brag about Canon like people brag about Apple or a Toyota Prius. I own two Canon DSLRs (5D and 40D) and several Canon point and shoots (including the S90 and SD800IS) and always recommend Canon to anyone buying a digital camera.
I bought this camera for my wife to upgrade her SD800IS and chose it because of the large screen, big zoom, and HD video capability (all great features). After four days of shooting, I returned it. Read on ...
The good.
Photos in bright light = 5 stars (normal great Canon photos like you would expect). The photos in brighter light were all fairly good and the screen is large and looks great.
Zoom = 5 stars. The camera zooms in/out REALLY fast which is great when you're trying to take pics of action shots or something that's moving fairly quickly. Loved having the big zoom.
The not so good.
Photos in low light (automatic mode) = 1 star. If the distance of your subject is more than about three feet, the camera would switch to shooting at 1/16th (bad) of a second and closer than three feet would shoot at 1/60th of a second (good). So when photographing my kids, that move frequently, many of the shots would blur because the shutter speed at 1/16th was just too slow. When I switched to program (manual) mode and put the flash to ON instead of to AUTO the camera switched back to 1/60 and the shots are fine but for an automatic user, this is awful when shooting subjects in the three to six feet range where the flash is still significant.
Screen = 2 stars. While the screen is very large, I think it's using a resistive display which is what the original touch smart phones used (now all using capacitive). This requires much more pressure when touching the screen than say and iphone or android phone. The touch interface itself is also fairly clumsy and needs some work when navigating the menus. One nice feature is the ability to touch the screen anywhere in order focus to that point of the frame (like an iphone does which is great) but by holding that point a bit longer, it also fires the shot and takes the picture which caused quite a few accidental shots (not so great). Similarly, to take videos, you also press the video icon on the screen so if you have the camera in your lap (which we did at one point) you may end up taking a bunch of accidental videos of your lap (which we did several times).
Battery = 1 star. I took the camera to Disneyland for the day and the battery lasted from about 8AM to about 3PM, that's all (compared to my 800IS that would last literally and entire trip). The battery itself is shaped like a tube and is smaller than a chapstick container. Not sure why they went with such a small battery when they have that big screen to power.
Video = 1 star. The video was the actual deal break for me and caused me to return the camera. While the videos looked great, the sound was horrible. In one video, all you can hear is background noise and not the people that are talking that are only several feet from the camera. The camera also lets you zoom in/out when shooting video which is awesome; however, when zooming while videoing, you can hear the buzz of the lens moving in/out which is horrible. With all my other Canon cameras, I've never had any of these video issues.
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