DSLR vs. nice P & S

[erikzen]

I have used two different Canon P&S cameras. The first one I had was a Power Shot S110 I received as a wedding present from my wife which I used with great results up until last year when it was unfortunately stolen. For Christmas I returned the favor and bought my wife the S1000. These are great little cameras that produce nice images for web and for 4x6 prints.

The Canons can take great pictures in their automatic modes but have the ability to tweak some of the exposure settings. I took some 4x6 worthy shots of the inside the Basillica at the Piazza San Marco in Venice without a flash. The biggest drawback to these cameras is the limited zoom function. Using the digital zoom to go beyond 3x is pretty much worthless in terms of being able to publish it, although if you want to save a memory it's fine. For the money, these cameras are really worthwhile and make a great introduction to digital photography. With a program like Photoshop you can really do a lot with your images, especially for web or 4x6 prints.

My wife who is not particularly enamoured with technology uses an HP printer that can accept numerous types of cards. The printer allows for some editing right on the machine, including zoom, brightness and red eye reduction.

For someone interested in digital photography on a budget this might be a good start. It's how I got started and was not tempted to get an SLR until recently, when I had a business need, prices came down, and I finally felt I wanted to take my photography to the next level.

I want to reiterate these cameras don't have great zoom capaiblity. I can't directly recommend any of the models with greater optical zoom as I haven't tried them, but I would look at something like the Canon SX100 with 10x optical zoom.

The Canons seem to have a lot of features that most users probably never touch. Get one of these cameras and master it and when you graduate college buy yourself an entry level DSLR as a graduation present. Prices will continue to come down as technology improves.

[dumpy]

I echo the previous poster on Canon P&S cameras, some of them are very capable. I went from a Film SLR to a Canon S2IS and then to a DSLR. None of these transitions were awkward.
I used my S2 in full manual mode most of the time, it let me work on my camera skills without paying for film and also gave me lots of practice with digital. It was a great "I want a DSLR, but can't afford one" gap filler for me. I also thought the IQ was excellent (check my gallery for some examples).
It (or more accurately the S5) may make a great transition camera for you, that is let you have more manual control and learn how to use it before plunging into DSLR land. I've also heard great things about the G9, but don't enough about it myself to comment other than it does have RAW mode.