Nick wrote:
> I take it you have ruled out the 24-120mm SD980/IXUS200. This is direct competition to the WX1 - if you can live with the fashion colours and 16:9 touchscreen LCD. What it might lose in low light - maybe 1 stop - it could make up for in daylight quality together with the 'Canon colours' many like.

> The differnce between the IXUS and S90 IQ /in good light/ could be the same as between the LX3 and TZ7 - negligiible, IMO.

Yes, I have ruled out all Canon SD series cameras. From my perspective, they have "cheap junk" lenses. Harsh? Sorry. I actually bought an SD880IS about nine months ago -- after a week's worth of playing with it, I was really quite entirely done with it. Oh, it's a beautiful camera. Yes, it has "Canon color." But....

I hope to God that the S90 will be much, much better than even the best SD series camera. For one thing, the SD980 will have almost *twice* the pixel density of the S90 -- 43 MP/cm² pixel density vs. the S90's 23 MP/cm². That is an utterly huge difference, and the S90 even clocks in a click below the LX3 at 24 MP/cm².

But it's the SD series lenses that I think are the weakest points. If you can fill the image with a close subject, in good light, you can get some decent results. Anything not filling the image will be soft, anything using any zoom at all will be soft -- and so on. I think they are among the least useful lenses on any consumer camera on the market.

Harsh? Sorry. I've had several "Digital ELPH" cameras over the past decade, and this is the kind of image quality I've come to expect from them. Perhaps some day Canon will put a decent lens into these things, but they essentially have no financial reason to do so -- they're relatively competent "snapshot" cameras, and somewhat competitive in the market segment. They're well built, and usually utter things of beauty. But I want a far more serious camera than that.

The S90 is $100 more than the SD980IS -- "money extraordinarily well-spent" as far as I'm concerned.

Tom Hoots
http://thoots.zenfolio.com