Canon Powershot G10 14.7MP Digital Camera - Review

I'm a hobbyist who long ago owned a Konica SLR and shot lots of slides.In the digital age, I've only owned point-and-shoot cameras and have become frustrated by their lack of flexibility and quality. I looked long and hard at SLRs but don't yet feel I can spring for the price. I also wanted something more easily portable.But I wanted complete control over shutter speed and aperture, and I wanted to be able to shoot in RAW for more post-processing flexibility.I decided to spring for the G10.
Since purchasingthis camera about a week ago, I've taken about 2,000 shots. (I went a little nuts!)Here's what I've learned so far:
-- Although the auto settings produced very good pictures, this camera really comes into its own when you shoot in Manual mode.I was able to routinely get some vivid fall sunset scenes on a lake with beautifully saturated color and contrast by tweaking shutter speed and aperture settings separately.
-- I'd say that the noise at 400+ without post-tweaking is considerable, though nowhere near what I used to see on 400 ISO film back in the day.It was easily reduced post-processing using a noise-reduction program that works within Photoshop, and I ended up with some beautiful indoor shots with minimal effort. I even took some night landscape pictures with a bright moon at 1600, and was pleasantly surprised at the results after tweaking them afterward.