Great Little Camera, till the lens barrel freezes.

I purchased this little bugger as a work camera, mostly for the articulating viewfinder. This feature is great. The camera is a good size for taking along, not too small or large. Feels solid and durable in the hand, of course most of the weight comes from the 4 AA batteries neatly tucked into a grip/ battery compartment. The camera takes amazingly good photos, especially when you know a bit about photography. Some people think "digital" means you dont need light.

The down side of this box is that it suffers from the same thing that most point and shoot digitals suffer from: Plastic used where it should not be. My A80 is now torn completely apart and I am looking at a lens assembly which cannot be taken apart and properly cleaned, due to soldered ribbon cables across the back of the plastic lens base. Mine stopped working today with the dreaded E18 Code, and I figured "what the hell, I have nothing to lose, and I want to see why it failed for no apparent reason.

I had an Epson 3100Z and it had the same flaw, A surprizingly cheap lens assembly, that terminated the life of an otherwise good little camera. After inspection, I suspect that all Canon had to do to eliminate most of the problems with the A series cameras was to put a better dust seal around the lens barrel, but that would have cost about .0373976 cents per unit, and yukomochi would have had to settle for fifty year old Saki instead of the century old stuff.

My opinion about these P&S cameras is that they are not made to take much abuse at all. They ought to make one with a fixed 24 or 28mm (35mmequivalent)lens and say to hell with the zoom, because that is what always breaks on the cheapos.

So basically, this was, is? a great little camera which takes great pictures, but if you are going on a safari, Buy an Olympus E1.