Digital Home Thoughts: C|Net Reviews the Canon PowerShot S3 IS

"I went car shopping awhile back--the first time I'd ever looked for one on my own--and, accustomed to the rapidly changing pace of the tech sector, I innocently asked the salesman what the differences were between last year's model and the new versions slated to come out soon. He looked at me blankly, blinked, then responded, "The shape of the headlights." Well, Canon changed a bit more than the shape of the headlights between the PowerShot S2 IS and the S3 IS, but not much. The newer model integrates a 6-megapixel CCD instead of 5 megapixels, and Canon tosses in a few new features, but ultimately, it's the same camera. That's not necessarily a bad thing--the S2 remains a great camera, and the S3 carries on the tradition."



I am so annoyed that a camera this size and competing directly with DSLRs still doesn't support RAW format. I can understand that they missed it in the S2 but not adding it now is inexcusable IMHO. Anyways, overall the camera gets decent reviews and will set you back only about $500 (which is good because you are essentially getting a DSLR type of camera). A couple of the sentences in the review pretty much summed it all up for me - 'True, a cheap dSLR will provide better performance, and a moderately priced one will deliver better photo quality. But the Canon PowerShot S3 IS's combination of features, performance, and relatively compact design certainly gives megazoomers a compelling alternative.'