This is a very nice camera for beginners & for new experts. I took this camera for a recent trip to France and I found the following good and a few bad things.The good things are, it is very compact and easy to carry around, it has a lot of features for an advanced user, uses AA batteries, pictures are of excellent quality and resolution, produces amazing 4x6 prints.Bad things are, it uses a lot of AA batteries (every ~40 shots), no automatic image playback after every shot, with the flash on it takes almost 5 -8 secs for the flash to recharge to take the next picture and at this time you cannot operate the camera in any way (eg., to review picture or change setting etc.,)But the disadvantages are too small comapred to the value of the camera. I give it 5 stars and it is excellent purchase for any body who opts to buy this camera.