Don't know which camera to buy- The Sony H9 or The Canon S5 IS ?

I'm looking forward to buying a digital camera, and i'm not sure which one to buy. I spent a lot of time researching on the computer and could'nt decide. Which one's better, the H9 or the Canon S5 IS. Money doesn't matter.

Easily, the S5IS is my choice.

Consider this an outside the box answer. But an important question is how long will the basic CCD sensor last? Two years, five years? And what about degradation in performance of the sensor over the passing of time. Considering this, I would say you would be better of with a camera like say the Canon A640 or any other camera of any brand like Sony, where the emphasis is on the sensor. All the glass is of no use if the sensor has degraded.

But the reality is that Moore's Law is going to have a greater impact on the technology long before sensor degradation. Failures, if they occur, are more likely to happen in the first year - absent any negligence of the operator or faulty design by the manufacturer. Cameras are getting better, cheaper, and faster. And as such, you are much more likely to want to buy a newer model long before failure of a CCD.

Amen.

I had the Sony DSC-H9. Exposure and color are excellent. It is a very responsive camera with accurate focus. I loved it. The only problem is the loss of detail due to the high compression factor. Sony does NOT let you change this. These images are so tweaked out there is very little room for editing on the PC. So, I returned it and purchased the Canon S5 IS. Exposure and color are excellent. It is a very responsive camera with accurate focus, but it will fail in low light conditions when zoomed on low contrast subjects. I think the sony was better in this regard. This is not to say the canon is not great under normal conditions, because it is.

Canon processing is more hands off. So detail is much better. Canon lets you choose from 3 levels of compression. File sizes are larger and there is much more room for editing on the PC. Difference between the sony and canon are evident when images are zoomed to 100%.

If you just want to shoot images and look at them on the computer or print them, the sony will serve you very well. That would be my choice in that situation. The sony's flash shots look better, and the flash range is much longer. I like sony's output in low light better too. If I could have changed the compression factor, to a super high quality mode thereby preserving detail, I wold have kept that.

If you want to preserve detail, tweak your images and have sharper prints, the canon is for you. I use super high quality mode. Any noise from ISO's 200 - 800 can be cleaned up quite well with a program called Neat Image. The low light output can be processed to exceed Sony's output. You can also use free software like GIMP or PhotoFiltre to clean and edit your images, but nothing beats Neat Image for noise removal, at least when the noise is bad. The canon is also easier to use if your are going to be changing settings on the fly. Canon also has a custom settings mode. That is a real nice touch and very useful as you advance a a photographer.

Bottom line, Canon's output is shaper but may require some cleaning at iso 200 or 400 and up. However, you retain control and for me that was what did the sony in. If I could afford both, I would have kept both. I can say, I am looking forward to Sony's next offering (DSC-H10?). I liked the night vision. Cool toy.

Lens flaring and chromatic aberration are an issue with both camera's so forget about that. That is the result of squeezing a big lens into a small package.

The only other camera i would consider in the category is The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7. Superior optics and stabilization, but for me the output is a little flat. However, there may be internal settings to change that. Both the Canon and the Sony have settings to add vibrancy to photos. The Panasonic may too.

I meant FZ8 not FZ7 in my reference to the panasonic in my previous post.