I bought one for my parents and I have the older s1000 which is almost exactly the same. They are a pretty good camera. If you look in my fire thread and the sunset/sunrise thread you can see photos I have taken with it. Its no slr but its a lot smaller and lighter and you can still take some pretty damn good shots. Has a lot more controls than a standard point shoot. My only gripe is that you can't open the shutter for any longer than 8 seconds, but then that may not be an issue depending on what sort of photos you want to take. For the price of it though you can't beat it.