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“As with most industries producing consumer goods, digital camera companies will often make the most of their investment in research and development by launching several very similar models, reusing the same basic design and sharing most of their components and features, but differing in a few details to produce a range of distinct products. Sometimes the result can be surprising. For example the Panasonic TZ3 differs from the TZ2 only in the size of the monitor screen and an extra megapixel of resolution, but the result is a significantly better camera. However sometimes the surprise works the other way. Samsung has two very similar cameras in the 8.1-megapixel NV8 and today’s camera, the 10.1-megapixel NV15, but in this case adding more megapixels has not produced the desired effect.”

“On the fun scale, the Nikon Coolpix L14 scores big. It’s light enough to take anywhere and compact enough to fit anywhere, too. Controls are so simple you won’t forget them. And the menu system is the clearest and easiest to use I’ve seen. If you don’t understand an item, there’s a very easy to use help system available, too.

Digital zoom was annoyingly slow and image sharpness too soft for our taste. But color rendition was exemplary and in-camera editing features like D-Lighting really worth getting to know. Movie mode even offers a stop-motion option.”

“While certainly not the thinnest camera in the world, the Canon PowerShot A720 IS is compact enough to meet the portable requirements of most shutterbugs hungering for a camera they can stow on their person and keep out of mind until it’s time to capture a moment. If tight jeans are your thing, the A720 at 3.83-by-2.64-by-1.65 inches and weighing a tad over seven ounces, pocketing the camera may be challenging, but for flannel shirt types like myself, it will nestle comfortably in a breast pocket.”

One of the latest “A” series models from Canon this year, the PowerShot A470 is one of the best deals available for an entry-level digital camera. The combination of excellent quality images, increased performance from previous models and the all around ease of use makes this camera perfect for anyone looking for their first digital camera or someone needing a simple camera to keep for use on a moments notice. With an estimated price of US$130 or less, the A470 is almost impossible to beat when looking for quality and affordability. 

“The Canon SD1100 is physically attractive, but its images aren’t always as beautiful. Images look good when taken in bright light with the ISO set low, but images taken with high ISO settings are noisy and can look somewhat unpleasant. They are hardly suitable even in low-resolution formats for blogs and e-mails – much less for prints that will sit in an album for years to come.

The $249 price tag is inexpensive for a trendy 8-megapixel Canon digital camera, let alone one that has an optical image stabilization system. But the image quality is the big trade-off here; in anything other than bright lighting, you get images that have a serious amount of noise. Whether the portability of the camera is an acceptable trade-off for this is up to you, but it does detract from the attractiveness of the camera.”

“The H3 is essentially a long-zoom point and shoot camera that performs well as long as you let it do its thing in Auto mode. Once you develop an ambition to set your own shooting parameters things get a bit more tricky. This is partly because some manual settings are simply not available, but also due to the fact that changing the settings that are actually there can be a fairly time-consuming process. This is owed to the slightly counter-intuitive menus and user interface in general. The lack of a manual White Balance option is particularly unusual on a modern digital camera. It is even more painful if the white balance presets are not particularly reliable (as we experienced in our studio tests). The H3 does not offer Aperture or Shutter Speed Priority modes although there is a fully manual ‘M’ mode. But, with only 2 possible aperture settings at a given focal length, its use is seriously limited.”