Torn between Canon S10 and Panasonic FZ28

[dman777]

I am looking for a point and shoot camera with a large lens. I don't care about video and features, I just care about photo quality, low light, shutter speed.

Right now I am torn between two cameras, the Canon S10 and Panasonic FZ28. I like the Canon because the pics have more color and image detail is sharper. What I don't like is that the color is a little to much saturated, and for many photos(depending on what it is) it just ruins the pic(to me...make look to unreal..no personality). I heard using an editor to take away saturation drowns out detail, so that is not an option. \

I like the Panasonic FZ28, but it's image detail is not as sharp as the S10. Also, in some photo's the color is perfect because it's so neutral, but in others it is to muted. I know the FZ28 has a saturation and sharpness adjustment on it, but I don't know if it would look as good as the Canon's sharpness and color saturation(when appropriate depending on the photo).

What do I do?

[Photo-John]

I wouldn't worry so much about the color. You can make in-camera color, contrast, sharpness, and saturation with both cameras. So you can fine-tune the camera so the images look the way you want. In my experience, the Canon image quality is much better than Panasonic. I like the Panasonic cameras a lot but I always end up disappointed with the overprocessed images. Canon compact camera images have a very smooth, natural lok. And Panasonic's always seem mushy and noisy to me. For more on that, see the image quality portion of my Panasonic Lumix FX35 review. I really liked the camera's design and performance, but the image quality made it impossible for me to really embrace it.

Panasonic Lumix FX35 Pro Review >>

Don't get me wrong, I took some great photos with the Panasonic. But I just ended up disappointed with the image quality.