So for a year now, I have been using the Canon S3!  I am guessing that with Christmas right around the corner, there will be several Digital cameras going out the retail doors so I thought I would post this review. Why?  Because the S5 is out and it looks to be even better than the S3!  What the S3 is, is a great camera that shares a lot of Digital SLR features.  What it isn’t is portable enough to drop in a shirt pocket.  What it does do, is take great pictures!

And the honest truth is, it takes a killer video too! I was totally blown away by the video ability of this camera!  I dropped a high speed 2 gig card in it, and haven’t looked back!  Maybe at some point, I will add another 2 gig card to my collection, but to this point, I haven’t needed it.  By the way, if you look at the above picture, you will notice two microphones on the camera . . This allows you to actually record sound in stereo!  The 12X Zoom is pretty fast to focus when you are tweaking it.  The viewfinder is pretty good in very sunny weather.  But it can be just a little slow to catch up to camera movement  

 

 

And the LCD Viewfinder is very awesome! The fact that it swivels serves as a way to protect it by closing it when not in use, but also allows you to say, hold the Camera over your head, but to position the viewfinder at an angle where you can actually take a picture and see what you are doing!

 

 

This camera can take killer photos as a point and shoot, but it has enough buttons right on the camera itself for a person to get very creative without having to scroll through several menu screens.  Of course, if you want to fine-tune one of these settings, you can access the menu, but the S3 seems to be intuitive enough to where you won’t spend minutes getting that setting that happened seconds ago.

   

 

I like the way the S3 feels in my hands!  Its heavy!  But its also big enough to where you can actually hold it next to your body to steady it to grab some great shots!  Battery life is really excellent as well!  If your looking for something almost as good as a Digital SLR, that is about half the price, you really owe it to yourself to check this one out. I spent quite a bit of time over at dpreview before deciding on this one.  If your looking for a great camera to stick in your pocket, this one isn’t it, however . . .