too 'small', too automatic

Author's Rating:

Pros: small, light; good value; battery life (sometimes); good variety of automatic modes

Cons: terrible flash recycling; sometimes noisy pictures; too 'automatic'

The Bottom Line: 
good for a point-and-shoot, take-on-vacations, photos-of-friends kind of photographer. more advanced users will probably be disappointed by its inflexibility.

Author's Review
the camera is pretty small and convenient, and i got very good battery life out of it (scores of photos, i haven't recharged in a few weeks) with some batteries (rechargeable, 2300 mAh). with other batteries, this camera eats through them in about 10 minutes.

however there are some problems. the recycle time on the flash is unbearable. sometimes the picture quality is not crisp, or 'noisy' (like the damn camera itself). i wish there were more manual controls, as well.

still for a 'small camera' it has many features and different shooting modes (for example, it has shooting modes for self-portrait, museum, and more). strangely though, while it has a night-portrait mode, i don't see a night mode, and you can't adjust the shutter speed/f-stops.
also the 'digital effects' are pretty interesting. although you could really do them in photoshop with greater control, if you are not a photoshop user/don't own a copy, it's nice that you are able to shoot sepia-toned, b/w, colour-filtered photographs straight from the camera.

it is also very light...interestingly, though, the camera's body responds horribly to cold weather conditions. the camera is all-metal so you need to keep it hot or something, otherwise the batteries are rendered totally ineffective. it will go from a full charge to not-even-turning-on in about 2 photos.

in other words this is an excellent camera for people who really only use the automatic shooting modes. it is extremely small, light, and a good value.