I am replacing Canon A630 would I be happy with the A1000 or A2000?

My son lost my A630 which I loved. I a looking for a replacement and wanting to upgrade. Zoom capabilities are important.

Check out the new Canon G10 that's coming out, its a super zoom camera and is very good. But, if you decide you don't want a camera that big, the A1000 and A2000 are great compact normal zoom cameras, and produce phenomenal pictures.

I dunno, Aditya. I think users should guard against falling into the "more MP is better" trap. For picture quality, I think there's too much MP here to work with. Let me explain. I came across an interesting article today about how more mega pixels is not necessarily a good thing. According to Image Engineering – a company that does testing of digital cameras for photo magazines in Germany – the quality of digital pictures has steadily decreased since the state of the art was six megapixels back in 2004. And because they don’t have a “dog in this hunt,” they put forth a compelling argument for buying new digital cameras with less mega pixels and not more.

The argument is essentially this: CCD chips on point and shoot cameras a smaller and as such, fitting in more pixels causes them to lose light sensivity. Sure, there’s more data on the chip, but the chip can’t absorb the light data and what it ends up with is a picture that has more noise than image quality. In addition, the more megapixels a camera has, the larger the lens it needs to provide the clarity it deserves and prevent diffraction due to a loss of detail with smaller apertures. But since we’re talking portable point and shoots here, those large lenses simply aren’t being made.

Finally, with larger mega pixels comes longer saving time due to their requires huge storage capacity, or more compression if not storing images in RAW format. The result is a noisier image and a dissatisfied camera user who thirsts for high quality and speed but fell into the trap of "more must mean better."

Sure, the G10 has a larger chip, and that's a positive. But 15 megapixels? You'd need practically a full frame CCD chip to put that much MP onto the chip without making the camera less sensitive to light, not more.

And when you consider at 99%+ of pictures are usually snapshots, you don't even see the benefits of that much MP unless you're enlarging to 11x14 or above. So what's the point? I mean, it's like driving a Ferrari through town. Sure, you can do it and it's cool and all, but you don't get to experience any of that horsepower you've paid for.

In the end, relying on a smaller MP that can balance all these needs may indeed be a better answer.

I will add this, however, the G9 is a very popular backup camera for professionals. That does say something and it may be due to the larger chip it has over the CCDs in other models.

Well, a lot of people, including us here at digitalcamera-hq believe that instead of buying a good lower end model, its often worthwhile to invest the extra money in the higher up model, because that one will stay current with the technology a lot longer. If you look at its predecessor, the G9, it is still valued and used by many to do this day, even with the new G10 out. A lot of the A series, and even SD series are very out of date, and devalued, so its something we tell everyone to consider. As for the A1000 and A2000, they're great cameras for the price, and Canon's "flagship" models for the A series. Like I said above, I think they take great pictures, and if you want to stay within that price range, you can't find anything better.