Excellent point and shoot with some flexibility for other shots

I do love this camera, especially for what I paid. I scored the camera at a pawn shop that didn't know anything about it for $100 about a year and a half ago. For $100, it is a steal. I will go farther and say the camera is easily worth the $300 retail price as well, based on my experiences. The good, it does well in low light with the flash off (if you have a steady hand). I have gotten some good night concert photos out of it. Sure, a few are out of focus. The trick there is to have a large CF card (I have a 1gig and 2 512MBs). Shoot a lot of pics and sort them out later. You can't tell if the shot is out of focus on the viewfinder, it's too small, just shoot and sort later. Also, I've seen a very few complaints about duribility. Honestly, I have no complaints there. I have dropped it several times (though it's never landed on the open lens, that would be bad from what I've read). I am generally rough on things. This camera has been on vacation to Cape Cod twice, in canoes and kayaks, fishing trips, camping many times, to several music festivals and concerts and, well, it has suffered at the hands of my family a little as well. It has been banged, dropped, spashed with water, and generally just abused. Now I do try to take care of it, but lets face it, it does get abused. It has a few nice dents in the metal casing to show for it. It has been a trooper! The bad, the shutter is VERY slow on some settings. I don't know what you would call it, but on automatic, the time from when you push the shutter to the time the photo actually takes can be fairly long sometimes. When I want to get the shot as I see it when I push the trigger, I put it on the action setting. The action setting does work reasonably well and eliminates most of the delay. Also, sometimes after taking a photo the auto focus and the camera in general tends to freeze up for a few seconds. I'm not sure what causes this, possibly battery life going low and it's taking longer to record the last shot. I just don't know, and I haven't studied the matter. Overall though, I really have to give this camera high marks for a consumer level point and shoot. I will say that the macro feature is neat to have, but it doesn't work all that well. It's hit or miss whether you get a good clear focused shot or not. It's another case where you shoot several pictures in hopes that you'll get a good one. I had a few photography classes back in high school and college, so I do like that you can play with the settings and go somewhat manual. I will say that, on this camera, it takes a lot longer to do that than on a more expensive semi-pro oriented camera. But for a convenient snapshot and somewhat better camera, it's worth the purchase price, and it's nice to have the flexibility to play with when you have time.

The moveable LCD screen is wonderful as well. It makes it easy to get shots that you normally would have to climb on the ground or climb up on something to get, just by dropping or raising your arms. This has come in very handy at concerts, to raise my arms and get up over the crowd when I am in the floor seating/standing areas. It's come in handy just canoeing too, to take pictures of the kids in front of me without having to just shoot their backs, by reaching out over the water a bit for the shot.

All told, if you're looking for a good camera for vacations, nature photos, and just general family use, I think this is a great camera. As I think, by now, it's being phased out by newer models, you can probably pick up a deal on the A95 as well.