For ages my wife and i have been planning to embrace digital photography, having enjoyed our Canon EOS analog SLR camera coupled with a Tamron 28-200 zoom lens, but wanting to do a lot more photography without the per-shot expense.

We've already got a photo-capable colour printer (an Epson Stylus C65), and had been keeping an eye on Canon's EOS 300D and 350D, saying "when they get down below the AU$1000 mark retail, we'll take the plunge."  Well, we've been waiting for 3 years and they still haven't got down to that price point, despite ditigal photography really taking off.

So we decided to look at a wider range of options, and this Christmas we got each other a Canon PowerShot S2 IS as a Christmas present.  No comments about the romantic value (or lack thereof) of this gift, please! :-)

This is a compromise camera — it's somewhere between a compact digital, a digital SLR, and a camcorder: it weighs and costs less than an SLR but more than a compact, yet packs in 5 megapixel resolution, excellent optics, and good manual controls, and can take 640x480 video at 30 frames per second, with 16-bit stereo sound.  The video recording has no artificial limits on length of video (provided you use high-speed SD cards).

Here are some of the things i particularly like:

• The 6-72mm zoom lens (equivalent of 35-432mm in 35mm-speak, or 12x optical in consumer-speak) really gives a LOT of zoom, and this makes the camera extremely flexible.
• The super-macro mode is amazing!  It focuses between 0 and 10mm distance (macro mode is 10-50mm, and normal mode is 50+mm), and enables you to get extremely interesting photos of plants and animals (if you're quick or smart enough!).  See the photo gallery for a few examples.
• We bought a set of 2500mAh NiMH rechargeable batteries and a fast recharger with the camera, and they last a long time - on my first use, about 500 shots over a 1 week period.

A couple of things i don't really like:

• The lens cap falls off easily.
• There's nothing to protect the front surface of the lens. With our analogue SLR, we added a cheap 58mm UV filter easily.  You can add a 58mm lens adaptor to the S2, but it gets in the way of the inbuilt flash, and makes the camera a lot bulkier.
• The automatic ISO level setting doesn't always pick the optimal mode.  For example, today i took a few shots of the same scene at different ISO levels, and when in automatic mode, rather than choosing ISO 200 and 1/25 shutter speed and reducing the risk of camera shake, it chose ISO 100 and 1/15 and produced a shake warning due to the low shutter speed.
• ISO 400 is a lot grainier than Fujifilm ISO 400, almost to the extent of being unusable.  I often end up manually selecting ISO 200.