I own a Canon s230. 3,2 megapixels. Great gift to receive! Love the fact that I can switch to manual setting and play around with B&W, Sepia and a whole lot of adjustments for ambiant light, etc.
I'm an amateur photographer of the "father takes pictures of the kids, kinda". The Canon S230 turns out quite good pictures when printed on professional printers (over the Net to a drugstore eLab, for example). On my Epson c82... hum, ok for Grand-mère, but does not do the trick when compared to the silveries of my Canon Rebel SLR wit Fuji film, obviously. On screen, fabulous. Can take 2 minutes of video too !
Size and weight are quite favorable to this little wonder. Fits very easily in a pocket for walks with the kids.
By the way, true, the digital zoom is a misnomer. I never use it as the resolution drops tremendously. Maybe the only drawback of the S230: the optical zoom is only 2x. So don't be impressed by the combined optical/digital zoom factor of 6,4. You get an equivalent 70mm zoom. That's it. (Well... that's quite good given that it's the size of a business card !)
I would certainy appreciate having somebody's opinion who had this model and switched over to something else. This is my first digital camera, so I don't have a comparable in the digital world.
