Which Canon Point and shoot??

[mjbehnke]

Here's my question. My wife loves taking photos of the grand-daughter and as she does not like to get the DSLR out every time, I bought her a cheap point and shoot last year (Cheap as in Nikon ...$79 at Walmart). What I want to do now is upgrade her to a better P&S. Is their a P&S that can focus and shoot fast? The current piece of junk will focus and when you push the button the rest of the way down to shoot, you lose the shot, as the subject (Grand-daughter) has moved. I don't want to buy any advanced P&S like the SX40, as they are a little to big to put in her pocket.

Thanks for the Help.... and for those who are going to ask... about $250 price range.

MJBehnke

 

[elflord]

Here's my question. My wife loves taking photos of the grand-daughter and as she does not like to get the DSLR out every time, I bought her a cheap point and shoot last year (Cheap as in Nikon ...$79 at Walmart). What I want to do now is upgrade her to a better P&S. Is their a P&S that can focus and shoot fast? The current piece of junk will focus and when you push the button the rest of the way down to shoot, you lose the shot, as the subject (Grand-daughter) has moved. I don't want to buy any advanced P&S like the SX40, as they are a little to big to put in her pocket.

Thanks for the Help.... and for those who are going to ask... about $250 price range.

MJBehnke

It's a tall order at that price point. Even the big sensor mirrorless cameras aren't as snappy as a DSLR. Anything with a point and shoot sensor is going to be a dog compared to a DSLR.

Something like a previous generation micro 4/3 camera (Olympus Pen or Panasonic GF series) would be a good fit but will probably be over budget (about 250 body only)

Next step down would be a "high end" compact point and shoot like the Canon S90/S95, Panasonic LX3/LX5, and olympus XZ1. You will be able to get one of these for under 250 (ebay or even keh.com). But I'm not convinced that these would be good enough.

 

[pdirestajr]

I'd go with a Canon S95. Bought one for my wife for X-Mas and she loves it. She doesn't know much about photography, but she did notice that the S95 can actually take indoor photos of our daughter that weren't blurry! Her camera phone and older Point-and-shoot couldn't do that.

 

[neuroanatomist]

Point-and-shoots are going to have a longer shutter lag. The S95/S100 is shorter than many others, but still noticeable. If you can stretch your budget to the S100, the shutter lag is shorter - I also find that the fast burst rate of the S100 allows me to get shots that other P&S cameras would miss.

FWIW, the Pentax Optio VS20 has about the shortest shutter lag of any pocketable P&S, and the Panasonic DMC-ZS10 and several of the Sony CyberShots are pretty short as well. But...none of those are going to offer the IQ you can achieve with the S100.