OSNews

With a wide angle leans equivalent of a 28mm in the 135 format and optical image stabilization, this could have been the perfect party camera. It would have been nice with an optical view finder but that probably doesn't matter all that much if you intend to use it on parties where it is often better to shoot from the hip to capture the moment before its gone.

The problem is that parties often means low light, and that means high iso setting and that means much noise. Even in broad daylight there seam to be a slight noise problem.

My guess is that the sensor is too small. The problem with digital cameras is that vendors try to compete on who can provide the most megapixels, but never tell the customer how large their sensors are. Most consumer cameras have sensor sizes where it is not meaningful to have more than five or so megapixels before the noise becomes to apparent.

On the other hand, that is a good thing if you are shopping for a digital camera as you could save a lot by selecting the model from last year with fewer pixels but with equal image quality. If you really need more pixels go for some of the semi pro DSLR from Canon or Nikon, they have larger sensors, and subsequently less noise problems.