I really love the D90, but sometimes it’s just too big to carry. For those times it’s nice to have a compact point & shoot camera that will fit in my pocket. As much as I love Nikon DSLRs, I don’t care much for their Coolpix point & shoot cameras, since the image quality isn’t that great and they’re very slow.
I decided on the Canon A2000 IS based on its image quality. I’ve always liked their A-series, since they use standard AA batteries. I noticed some really great pictures taken with the A1000 IS & A2000 IS, but I chose the A2000 IS because of its larger & brighter 3″ display and longer 6x optical zoom. It’s also a lot smaller & thinner than older A-series cameras. It normally sells for just over $200, but I found it for $150 at buy.com last month.
The A2000 IS doesn’t provide any manual controls and the battery life isn’t great, but the image quality is excellent. It also takes great videos. I started getting a battery warning after shooting 80 pictures & 2 videos with a set of fresh AA alkaline batteries at the Polynesian Festival today.
I posted more pictures here.