Sorry to be a nuisance, just want to doublecheck again to see if anyone sees a preference of the Canon S2 IS over the Panasonic FZ5. I will need to decide shortly. I am mainly concerned with ease of use between these two.
Thanks,
Annie

Just returned from an Earthwatch project in Kenya. We had two cameras: 7.2mps Casio EX-Z750 and Canon antique at 2.1 mps at low resolution. Casio is amazing with largest LCD (2.5) on the market in this price range. It fits in shirt pocket. Zoom is only 3x so unless you are relatively close to game it may be unsuitable for prints. Many marvelous fetures. Digital cameras are mostly point and shoot in this price range, so there's no worries there. If interested in comparing shots email me and I'll send you the ofoto invitation.
Caution: be careful when recharging equipment with generator power--I almost burned up my laptop because of super high voltage. If practical, get a surge protector.
Hank, Chicago

Hi Annie,
Before I got my Panasonic FZ5, I had a Canon S1 IS. The Canon S2 is very much like the S1 but has more megapixels and more zoom power. I found both cameras to be very easy to use. The S2 and the FZ5 are very similar in many ways, 5mps, 12x zoom, etc, but there are a few differences between the two, such as weight and price. The FZ5 is much lighter and costs less than the S2. To compare the two cameras side-by-side, go to www.dpreview.com, an excellent website for digital photography. Jack :)

Hi Annie,
I like both the FZ5 and S2. Is there a store where you can see both? Here in California "Circuit City" has both.
Last spring three of us wanted a better camera for safari and we all picked the S2. Why, just felt better in the hand mostly. We then went on safari last Sept 2005, Zambia, Botswana, So Africa. and took around 4,000 photos, total three of us. We always, I mean always, used auto mode. Sure some of the photos could have been better by using the other modes. But, I have posted on the Kodak Gallery 58 pics if you'd like to see a sample. Go to - http://www.kodakgallery.com/tdgraham/safari_2005
regards - Tom
ps - we got a kick out of taking short movies, less than a minute. The S2 was great, excellent picture and sound.

Tom,

Love your pics!

I'm also in the camera quest and have a question: Unless you noted 'cropped' under a picture, were these unaltered? I'm asking because your close-ups seem quite clear, and, well, "close". In other words, either the zoom is more than adequate, or the picture quality (5mps) really holds up well for cropping.

Many thanks!

Cheryl

Hi Cheryl,
Glad you liked the photos. The only ones cropped were identified. And I did not do any PhotoShop to them (yet). (Well actually I did use PS to resize the pics for posting). Yeah, it looks close because we were close :-) I'll probably never forget the first night when the lions came right at us on the same little dirt road that our vehicle was on! One lioness looked right at me as she walked past about 4 feet away. The picture in the group of the lioness full face on the right was her. There are a couple pics near the end showing a vehicle, and you can sort of see how close the cats were. (These were taken at Mala Mala but same at the other camps).
The zoom on these cameras is equivalent to a 400mm lens on a standard 35mm film camera. Thats as "long" as the longest lens I have for 35mm film. The 5mp picture are sharp enough to make a good 11x14 print, which I am doing with a few. Some would probably look good at 16x20. There are many more things than mega pixels to consider. Lighting being the most important. Lighting isn't the only thing, it is everything.
Anyway, happy to share with you.
regards - tom