Wow, as usual, you have far surpassed the ‘norm’ for excellence in communications. If you are so thorough then you must also be very exclusive, else you will exhaust yourself to the point of nervous breakdown. There is an endless mesh of entanglements which can all persuade so very convincingly, when their opportunity to speak arises.

He who plumbs depths, climbs peaks, walks gardens, speaks not too often, and meditates on meaning needs extraordinary filters, greater solitude, more substantive contact with others, beyond the necessities of mundane survival. Thus occasional unnecessary trivial talk becomes the exception, less than the rule and a generosity rather than a pursuit. Thank you for your generosity Samir.

~p

Yes the G9 is my current camera of choice. It was only my second digital camera after a lovely old 4-megapixel Olympus C4000Z, so I took my time in choosing and didn’t mind spending a bit extra for the more professional features. I don’t change hardware often, and I like it to be enough to satisfy me for a good amount of time.

The superzooms, like the ones you mention are great choices for an all-in-one camera to meet every need. And some of them have some pretty great features. If the Canon customer support is good, I guess that is a big selling point. And, after looking at some specs and reviews of the others, I would say that is the best over-all buy anyway. The Canon doesn’t have the greatest features of those in the list, but it’s almost sure to give you the most consistently good results for everyday use.

The others all have some outstanding features, but also some major shortcomings:

- The Sony has a brilliant CMOS sensor (like found in DSLRs), and super-fast shutter which allows fast burst speeds, and also completely new features like creating a panorama with a single sweep of the camera across the horizon.

BUT, being Sony it will use the MemoryStick storage which is more expensive, and image quality will be far from the cleanest.

- The Nikon has an attractive price, and has some innovative features like an HDR faking mode of sorts.

BUT, Nikon non-SLRs are almost universally bad. This one is cheap because they have gotten rid of all manual control. You can’t even chose an ISO setting which is bound to result in muddy or noisy shots in anything but perfect daylight settings.

- The Pentax I would be very tempted by. My brother has their entry-level SLR which is gorgeous in its tank-like utilitarian way. This one has a super-fast shutter and many other bells and whistles, including HD video.

BUT, I hear the actual video quality is lousy which is a shame. Part of the fun of a do-it-all camera like this is the ability to take decent video.

Ultimately the Canon S series is an extremely reliable choice. Even though it has only 640-pixel video, it has a stereo mike, and this series is know for it’s pristine video quality. The G9 shares the same video DNA (without stereo recording in fact, or zooming) and I can testify to the excellent video.

So, I would suggest the Canon. Not the cheapest, not the most expensive, not the most feature-laden, and not the most anything really, but very dependable and it should serve you well for a long time.

Hope this helps,

Samir

GREAT PHOTOS! Lots of really deep green everywhere, and the sheer density on the trail and some of the other areas is awesome.

Ok, so you like the Canon G9. Cool. Too expensive for me though. Everybody loves Canon for the pics (and their smart on-board new processor stuff), but would you believe that a really big reason why I’m considering them for my next camera, is because of the fabulous stories I’ve heard about their phone support? You get a real live human being, and they really respect their warranties.

Just the same (in keeping with my cheap nature) I’m also considering a few others, such as:

1. $399.00 – Sony Cybershot DSC-HX1 9.1MP Digital Camera with 20x Optical Zoom with Super Steady Shot Image Stabilization and 3.0 Inch LCD

2. $217.00 – Nikon COOLPIX L100 Matte Black 10.0 MP 3.0″ 230K LCD 15X Optical

3. $338.00 – Canon PowerShot SX10 IS Black 10 MP 2.5″ 230K LCD 20X Optical Zoom 28mm Wide Angle Digital Camera

4. $337.00 PENTAX X70 Black 12.0 MP 2.7″ 230K LCD 24X Optical Zoom 26mm Wide Angle Digital Camera

Tough decisions, but this is really at the upper limit of my budget (and I’m not serious at all about photography at this point in life). I addition to customer support, I’ve spent time looking at comparison tables for the various total shutter lag, burst mode (continuous shoot) specs, pic-to-pic cycle time, and time to first shot. I think for me priorities are reputability and support (Canon wins), then action-speed performance, zoom, and quality last. If I could get super close-up shots with an ultra wide lens, that would be great (and would make it OK that the lens is permanently fixed to the base housing).

Regards,
~p