An excellent camera

The first reaction to the camera when you remove it from the box is that it is a cheap piece of plastic junk. I read the reviews before purchase and they wanted alligator housing, blah, blah, blah. True I compared it to my Sony F828, my Cannons and old Epson. The bottom line when all comparisons were done is you buy a camera for the pictures it will take not for it's housing. It is light which with a lot of shooting is a plus. It's feature of IS works very well and its' close up work is great. It picks faces of people and renders the colors with a broad spectrum of tonality. It excels at shooting flowers and if your limited in time, gives excellent results even with point and shoot rapidity. The battery is not a long lived as I would prefer and I intend to get another one to carry with me. The night vision is adequate for most shooting of that type but not designed for color work. Maybe ghost hunting if that's your thing. Its weight won't slow you down if you see one. Bottom line is this produces excellent pictures in all areas of automatic or manual settings and definitely belongs in the semi-pros's camera bag.