Canon IXUS 1000 HS

Amazing cam on the specks sheet.... not! – There's a very accurate review by JenniferMarie here. I'll second that. I got the camera for exactly the same reason and faced the same issues. But what’s significantly wrong with the camera is its terrible battery life. 150 stills with 30 flash inclusive photos and 10 mins of HD video will kill the battery Auto focus keeps going into macro mode for some reason.

Cannot quickly autofocus on moving objects.

Needs flash for a good moving photo in medium light.

In the end you get around the auto focus limits and work with the manual settings.... but you shouldn’t need to!!!! and the short battery life means you cannot use the camera to its full potential without carrying few spares..... gas guzzler this is :-)

But overall its a beautiful camera as the photos that "do" come out good are well over par.

The Zoom is amazing and sharp till 10x optical. Close up Flash, Zoom, Macro, Video Quick button Battery, extreemly slow autofocus, anti shake.

It's a good camera but has a few issues – It's a good camera but not the best. I have a Canon DSLR, the 550D, but I got the ixus 1000hs because I needed something small for situations where lugging around a DSLR isn't appropriate. The image quality is good, noise levels at higher ISOs arent very good but thats typical of a slimline compact digicam. continuous autofocus in movie mode isnt the best, fails to focus sometimes or is slow. I also realised my cam has a dead pixel on the sensor and it's pretty noticeable in movies but I only realised when it was much too late to take it back.

Cannot focus in very low light at all, fails consistently

Flash has a pretty small range but then again most compact digicams have the same. But also, the flash is a bit unreliable and will make subjects way too bright and contrasy a lot of the time. Good looking, compact, good image quality Contrasty flash, bad low light performance, autofocus in movie mode not the best