the A1100 complements the G9 or an SLR quite well in my opinion – it is very portable, and great for those times when you don’t want to overthing your shots and “compose” them.

the A110 seems to combine very capable optics, excellent electronics and one of those rare user-friendly interfaces thse days. you can hand it over to people set in auto mode knowing that they will not be murdering most of the shots.

in outdoors lighting, this camera produces excellent results – and that is irrespective of price point. at ISO 100 you will be hard pressed to tell an A1100 shot from a shot taken with a Canon EOS 50D that is 10x the price. indoors, to this date all electronics for some reason can not replace photographer smarts, so do yourself a favor: turn to manual (P), and define the focus area yourself with the usual (first) click to set (second) while keeping things down, move to compose. if you stick to that, the amazing inconsistency of camera electronics (it afflicts all of them, not just this one) can be easily kept in check.

with that in mind, the A1100 produces images that can only be labelled as amazing – price point aside, and even more so considering the fact you can get it for barely more than good Eau De Toilette these days…

the usability is great – people that complain about lack of manual settings ought to read the Canon literature, since this camera is designed to *eliminate* margin for error through experimentation. which honestly, when i look around, is what most people need, and what *I* need on many occasions (and i am a manual photography freak that is not shy to admit that often all i want and need is point and shoot, and i set the auto mode on my far more expensive “main” show-off camera, but would not admit to it as a rule ).

this is not the smallest, sleekest camera you can get, but it means you don’t need to train your hamster to operate all the tiny buttons that come with hyper-compacts, and also that you can get very decent battery life out of regular over the shelf AA batteries. once you pay the requiste $50+ for prorietary vendor batteries you will come to appreciate that, especially in cameras under the $200 range (which is all the vast majority of people need).

i think this is a totally amazing value proposition, and unless you are put off by the fact that you have managed to convinced yourself you MUST spend more than $300 to enjoy the pictures you take, hey, try this out, and be amazed by how advances in digital photography are changing the paradigm of good pictures…