Thanks, everyone! Sea, the Canon was $350 (CAN) before taxes. I'd say that was a fair market price, when considering the excellent build quality I was getting, in addition to advanced features like full manual mode and image stabilization. I give the A710 a big thumbs up. Based on my experience thus far, it has lived up to the good reviews it's gotten. Would you believe I've taken the majority of my shots single-handed? The A710 may be compact, but it's an ergonomically well-designed device. It feels solid gripping the camera in my right hand, plus the image stabilizer really works in reducing/eliminating blurred pictures due to hand shake. The only not-so-great thing about the A710 is its tiny optical viewfinder, which I've simply ignored. In theory, it's good for bright outdoors when sunlight might make it hard to see the LCD display, or when you want to conserve battery power since the LCD sucks up a lot of juice. But in reality I don't take pictures in bright sunlight if I can avoid it because that's the crappiest, harshest kind of light for photography. The tiny viewfinder is also just plain uncool next to the gorgeous 2.5" LCD screen.
So, overall, I'd happily recommend the A710 to anyone. Funny that it should be labelled as a "budget" model, since for me $350 wasn't exactly cheap! At any rate, the A710 is a solid piece of equipment that doesn't feel like a cheap budget thing. I would imagine you'd have to pay much more - getting into SLR territory - to get something that has appreciably higher quality optics than the A710. I'm just plenty pleased with this compact wonder.
Some vertical shots:
Eh? (Sorry, I am being a bit dense today)
)
)
