To start with, this is a very comfortable and balanced camera to hold.
Ordinary Alkaline AA batteries can be used but good NiMh rechargeable are cheaper in the long run.
Main reason for purchase was the ’’Image stabiliser’’ as I am getting a bit shaky in my old age and the lovely 10X zoom pretty blurry without this feature.
(The other camera with this feature is considerably more expensive)
The abilty to swivel the LCD viewfinder I find useful for say passport fotos etc.
Most of my fotos are very satisfactory on Automatic but a lot of keen photographers will find features like the ’’Manual Focus’’ and time exposures up to 15 seconds very useful.
A huge bonus for me is the ability to take short (5 min) movies (@30fps) with a decent sized memory card say, 512 Mb to 1 Gb.
On the ’’cons’’side the lens cap is a bit silly and falls off easily.
Anther thing is the camera need a good supply of batteries. (PLEASE Mr Canon, produce a Lithium-Iron rechargable for this lovely little camera!)