One of the gifts I got Alli for her birthday a few days ago is a new digital camera, the Canon G12.

I am not a digital camera expert and I don’t want to be.  I knew she wanted something more than a pocket point-and-shoot, and we have our iPhones for that anyways.  I kind of wonder if we’ll ever buy another small point-and-shoot camera again.  Is that era quickly coming to an end?

At the same time, I didn’t think she wanted to mess around with changing lenses and buying lenses and cleaning lenses and carrying them around in a big padded bag.  That was too much work and effort.

So I did a bunch of online research, and got some great advice from work colleagues.  Sam Clemens was particularly insightful, and after verifying his Canon G-series recommendation with others, I went ahead and bought it.

Alli has now been using it for about a week, and we both absolutely love it.  We’ve been taking great pictures (or so we think ;)) indoors and outdoors, of nature and of people, in low light and in very bright conditions, and they’re all coming out great.  We love it so far.

It’s still early days.  I’ll probably post another review about a year from now.

You can also read this very detailed preview from Digital Photograph Review.  They cover all the specs and such.