After much deliberation and testing and comparing with the Panasonic DMC Z8, I have bought a Canon S5 IS as a replacement for my Canon A 640.

The S5 high points are it's genial and extensive manual controls, awesome video, excellent and rapid focusing ability. Picture quality is not as good as the A 640 (10MP without IS results in awesome detail but requires careful shot selection and sometimes either a stand or something to rest the camera on) but on par with the Panasonic. Indeed, I can take far more quality pictures with the S5 then I can with the Z8 in identical circumanstances simply because the menu features work so much better with the Canon model (in particular I use manual mode. In the Canon model the impact of aparture and shot speed is visible live on the lcd or in the evf whereas with Panasonic the process is more complicated and results in many un-intended takes). The Panasonic also did not focus as well or as easily indoors as the S5, though with a fair bit of coaxing the pictures are as good. I did not like the Pansonic intelligent shooting mode as it always pushed up the ISO and compromised picture quality.

On the downside, the Canon has highly annoying features which coversely the Panasonic has resolved: the Canon lens cap is rubbish and just falls off all the time and is just plain irritating on a camera of this calibre and cost. The clever people at Panasonic have one that clamps on quite tightly and software in the camera that prevents damage to the lens should the cap be still on when the camera is activated.

The S5 battery compartment door is flimsy and hard to open and even harder to close and since the memory card is in there too, I'm afraid it'll be prone to damage if only through wear and tear. The Panasonic equivalent is a model of good and sensible design and robust construction.

Last, but not least is bulk: the Panasonic is nearly 30% lighter and perhaps 10% less volume and if I was not interested in indoor photography with limited use of flash, I would have picked the Panasonic. The S5 is clunky brick of a camera with few places to comfortably grasp it because of the plethora of controls (which on the other hand are useful) and the design of the lcd. Actually the S3 is much more user-friendly from an ergonomic perspective because it has the smaller screen and therefore more room on the back.

I also looked at the Olympus 500UZ (focus challenged, X-cards) and A 650 IS. With regards to the A 650 IS, the shot to shot time is indeed long and the reason I rejected the A 710 IS earlier. Also, I have come around to the view that the optical lens finders that are offered on the various Powershot models are not very useful compared to decent evf's. The S5's EVF is not the best in the world (the Panasonic one is better and the Olympus one is the best of the three), but it makes shot composition and exposure, ISO, timing etc. etc. a snap. Optical viewfinders will not work at 15X zoom (too small) and at 6X zoom it's already a stretch for someone with older eyes.

The G7/G9 options are flawed products in my view: hopelessly un-ergonomic, over-priced and feature for feature, the S5 (with the exception of RAW and now up to 12 MP on the G9), is a better all purpose tool. G9 is smaller and will fit in a big pocket, and that has its merits, but RAW doesn't interest me (yet).

Also, I wasn't actually looking for a 15X zoom, but I'm happy for the flexibility and I find that shooting from the long end of the lens, even for objects close up, it performs very well if not better than from the wide end of the lens.

So, if anyone is looking for an all-purpose camera or even a second camera and you have an SLR inclination or history, it's hard not to like the S5 over everything else in the market. The S5 involves plenty of compromises for sure, but for me at least, they are ones I can live with and ultimately the goal is to get a lot of great photographs and have fun doing it and perhaps learn some things: and that the S5 offers easily.

By the way, I thought the S5 review on thsi site was rather harsh and perhaps too influenced by previous experiences with the S3 which most people raved about. S5 is an improvement on the S3 even with the minimal loss of photographical quality (which I couldn't really observe). ----- Mark