Having spent "weeks" trying to decide on which multi-zoom camera to get, it comesdown to this:Sony or Canon.

Sony; H1, H2 or H5

CANON; S2 or S3

I've looked at all others; the FZ range by panasonic, kodak's & fuji's etc, I've visited countless shops, read countless reviews and played with countless cameras and quite frankly there is nothing "better"than a Sony H series or aCanon S IS series.

I need a long zoom range camera with good light low performance, capable of good fast action photography, the abilityto use filtersand capable of producing at least 15x10 photos with no noise.

My Current fave is the S3 however at £370 complete with 512mb sd & case it's£70 dearer than the s2 and at that price (£370) i could "almost" buy a Sony H5 which has a 7.2 mega-pixel count, the other thing counting against the Canon is that for it to be able to fit a polarising filter I'd have to buy an adaptor, which adds at least £30to the price, The Sony's come with an adaptor / hood as standard.

I would be willing to pay the £400 and buy the camera if I knew it was the better cameraand producedbetter photo's, if it's not, why waste money and either go for the S2 or one of the Sony's instead:

Package deal wise; I can get a H1 for £310, an S2 for £290 (without the adaptor), so price wise the Sony shades it because it comes with a lens adaptor.

The H2 is about £350 & the H5 about£390, which is neartheprice of S3.

Apart from the S2 and H1 all the other cameras are brand new as a result reviews are scarce to say the least.

So heres the questions :?

1) S2 or S3 , is the S3 worth the extra £70 over the S2 ??.

2) Arethe H2 & H5 worth the extra over theH1.

3) If you had £400 which would you buy and why ???.

Any info or info would be greatly appreciated.

Hello,

Here in Holland there is a guy looking for the same thing....yes that's me.

What I missed in your story is the extra cost of the Sony memory cards versus the SD cards Canon uses.

I had the Sony H2 in my hands last saturday and I was realy impressed. Unfortunality they don't have the Canon S3 around here.

What I'm also been missing are the reviews off the H2 and H5.

The new ISO settings of the H2/H5 are very nice in combination with the best flash performance in this category. I would like to see some pictures made with these camera's. This because the difference in MegaPixels (H2/H5) will absolutely give more noise with the H5 because the chip is the same size!

Canon S3 has a improved videomode, which I don't use.

The Panasonic FZ20 is also on my list.

Furthermore The KonicaMinolta Z5 is something less interesting in performance but very, very cheap!

acer wrote:
Rootkit-virus-Sony prefers using own proprietary and expensive scheisse formats everywhere they can.

Don't count on using those high ISOs, noise removing of those destroys colours quite throughly but still leaves lof of color noise.
http://www.quesabesde.com/camdig/not...H2_ISO1000.jpg
And H5 has even more megapixels in same small sensor size... (those bricks should be red)
But same sensor is very propably used also in Canon.

Fortunately getting your hands on both the Sony H2 & Canon S3is very easy in the UK, i have played with both cameras, i do have to say that the S3 is the more comfortable of the 2 tohold and the H2 is better looking and "appears" to be smaller.

I have spent literally hours agonising other which one of these 2 cameras to get, people go on about the Panasonics & Fuji's but personally the reviews they receive are'nt as consistent as the Sony or Canon, The Panasonic is big cumbersome and by all accountsno real improvement over the FZ5, Fuji's i longer touch with a barge pole thanks to the "VERY" poorE550 i've had & if you read other Fuji reviewsyou'll discover an alarming amount developing faults (My e550 went back within 2 months with a faulty lens).

So at the moment thereare only 2 mega zoom cameras to go for; the H2 and S3. When Olympus finally realizes it needs to put image stabilization into a 10x plus zoomed camera it'll be 3.

How did i finallydecide which to get?, in the uk the Canon is at least £30more expensive than the H2, add the fact that i like to use a polarising filter andthe fact i'd need to spend at least another £25 to get the adaptor for Canon, that makes the S3 at least£55 more expensive than theH2, bottom line for me is; is the Canon £50 better than the H2; NO.

The countless "tied" arguments between the H1 & S2 prove that there is little to no difference between Sony and Canon's excellent cameras & I have no doubt in 2 years timecanon and sony fans will still be fighting over which is best !.

well, performance wise i'm pretty sure H2 and S2 would be close. however, the H2 is priced the same as the H1 at 399, where as the S3 is marked up to 499... and the S3, unlike the H2, doesn't include lense adapter ring, nor does it supply you with rechargabel batteries and charger... sure cannon's bundled software is a little better, but i use photoshop anyway...

last week Office Depot had a sale on cameras and the H2 dropped to 309, that pretty much made my decision for me

You bought the H2 for $309? I called and searched Office Depot's website last week for the H2. I could not find it on the website and when I called it was $399. Please tell me where to find it.... Thanks!!

The Canon is slightly skinnier, but other wise I think they're equal.