- Of course, the powerful optical zoom and optical lens, (combined with digital zoom gives you almost 30x zoom).
- For having an optical lens, this camera is really compact! It is easily held in one hand.
- Full automatic controls of shutter speed and aperture, but also the option of full manual (as well as shutter speed priority or aperture priority) should you want to do something creative. Though it does not have unlimited exposure time; you can't go past about one minute.

And a few cons:

- The necessary accessories will drive the price up. It only comes with a 4 MB memory card, and much more is needed (I recommend at least 64 MB, probably 128 MB). Also, rechargeable batteries are recommended, as well as a carrying case.
- Though it uses double-A's, most rechargeable double-A's don't last long. I often end up buying regular double-A's in the end anyway.
- Like other digital cameras, the camera must be powered up before taking photos but you don't want to leave it on at all times in order to save batteries. However, if you have a sudden photo opportunity it does take a minute for the camera to power up. The camera will go into sleep mode to save batteries and it "wakes up" a little faster, but still somewhat slowly. This is a minor drawback.
- And the biggest drawback, for me, is the difficulty in taking action shots. It is difficult for two reasons:

1) The auto-focus is slow. By the time the camera focuses and shoots, your photo opportunity easily may have passed. It does have manual focus but it is much slower! You have to use the up/down and left/right arrows on the back of the camera to focus. First, this is an inconvenient location especially if you are using the viewfinder instead of the viewscreen. And, the buttons are digitally controlled; each press of the button requires a short processing time. If you think you can manually focus on the fly with this camera while shooting sports photography, forget it! So, unless you are in a situation where you can focus manually once and take all of your photos at that focal length, you will have to rely on the moderately slow auto-focus.

2) After each photo, the image freezes to show you the picture you just took. This is a nice feature on most any digital camera nowadays, but since you can't turn it off it can really interfere if you are trying to take several photos back-to-back. The viewscreen does this, but so does the viewfinder, so there is no avoiding it. The only option, if you want to take quick back to back photos, is to turn on the "rapid-shooting" which will take 2 or more photos every time you press the button. Fortunately it's digital so you aren't wasting film!

All of that said, I will mention that I have managed to take some decent sports photographs. The drawbacks are a nuisance but can be worked around in ways like those that I have mentioned.

I recommend this camera to anyone that is looking for a digital camera at a very affordable price that will provide many of the benefits of a traditional 35 mm film-based camera. It is good for beginners as well as amateur photographers, but if you're planning to do action photography I recommend sticking to the 35 mm, or finding a different (though surely more expensive) digital camera.

Bottom line: it is hard, if not impossible, to beat this camera for this price.