This had got to be the most nervous purchase I've ever been through, having to choose between two cameras switching features back and forth. (price aside)
I have an almost certain feeling I will buy one, and regret not getting the other, whichever it ends up being.
On one hand Olympus wins hands down the detail, especially DYNAMIC RANGE, which is noticeably weaker in the Imaging Ressource test results, for the A70. And this is exactly what the "muddy/blurry" problems are. On the other hand, feature-wise and even simply fun usability goes to the Canon for having sound options, background options and the myriad of features. On the special hand, Canon offers excellent night shots and has an AF Illuminator.
But the problem is, it's all great but in the end, the image quality is the most important factor in a digicam, and no feature in that Canon will fix the bad dynamic range AFAIK.
On the Olympus hand as well, you only need 2 batteries, which saves me some money. It does downsize the time of use by 2x , but I am no LCD surfer that stays for hours on it, so 102 minutes is plentiful for a "with LCD" mode. Heck, with no LCD, it lasts 190 hours, more than 10 times the Canon without LCD.
Not to mention it has a nice 1.8" LCD (I'll give it a test drive this weekend when I go to Future Shop and test the two digicams more carefully), though with 85K pixels only.
So, as you can all see, it is troublesome. I am really lost in what I should go for. I am tempted as hell to get the A70, despite the smaller LCD which I don't like, but the image quality suffers from bad dynamic range which muddies up trees and grass the most. (as well as having BAD red-eye even with Red-Eye reduction AND lots of purple fringing as seen clearly <A HREF="http
/www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_a70-review/IMG_9732-pp.JPG" target="_new">here</A> [you can see both the muddy scenery and the purple fringing.) One wonders if perhaps a new firmware version is possible and available that could help this.
EDIT: If some A70 owner could provide some shots (maybe he might have a better firmware or such), of nature and people in the picture (I've yet to see that in reviews for it, and my goal is to find more pics showing family pics or people in it to see how it displays their skin tones, brightness and detail), I'd appreciate it.
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<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Eden on 07/29/03 03:29 PM.</EM></FONT></P>