I had £150 to buy myself a decent camera. After hours searching for the specs I wanted I came across this gem. Not only does it take a cracking picture the extra features it has are amazing!

The camera fits nicely into your hand, looks well made and durable and the controls are all easily reached and feel smooth. In addition, there is an extra button on this model compared to old models which starts recording video straight away... A nice feature which means less fiddling.

A cameras mega pixel size doesn't really matter any more. Any super fine image of 3 mega pixel or above would suffice for point and shoot pictures. This does have 14.1 though so if I ever try my hand at something more fancy, I know it has the power!

However, what I like about this cam its the extra features you get. Let me list them and explain:

x16 optical zoom: not the rubbish digital one! Means I can be 30 feet away and still get 100% quality on a zoomed in face.

Up to 60 second shutter control: Great for blur photos or writing your name in the dark with a sparkler!

HD filming: it films in full 1080p High definition movies @ 30fps!

Rapid fire: Can take 10 pictures in one second! Great for capturing the ball hitting that cricket bat perfectly!

Slow motion movies: Can record at 220fps! This means 1 second in real time equals about 8 seconds when played back! The quality is not amazing with this but a fast and powerful SD card help improves things.

GPS locator: records the GPS coordinates of every photo you take for added memories!

There are a tonne of other features I have not even got round to yet but the ones listed above are what make it great for me!

So far the only fault I have found is I can not add an external microphone. From what I can tell the microphone built in is okay but when recording at a concert it can not handle the bass very well.