Below is a com­par­i­son of the Canon Pow­er­Shot G12, Nikon CoolPix P7000 / P7100, Pana­sonic Lumix DMC-LX5 and the Sam­sung TL500.  I am really excited about these Advanced Point and Shoot cam­eras.  First of all, they sup­port the RAW file for­mat which is what I shoot.  RAW files used in these cam­eras will keep all the  infor­ma­tion needed for  post pro­cess­ing and the data will  have more detail in the shad­ows and high­lights that are lost in the JPEG file for­mat.  JPEG files from your cam­era dis­cards a lot of use­ful infor­ma­tion that will help in post pro­cess­ing.  These cam­eras would make a great backup for a pro or advanced ama­teur and a fan­tas­tic light com­pact cam­era for travel.  Each of these cam­eras have their strong points.  The chart below the video com­pares the fea­tures  that I per­son­ally look for in a cam­era.  You may have your own opin­ion on what’s impor­tant to you, but this is a good place to start.

Com­pare Cam­era fea­tures Chart

Canon Pow­er­Shot G12 Dig­i­tal Camera

While remain­ing true to many of its predecessor’s fea­tures, the G12 comes bust­ing out of the gate with what’s fast becom­ing a stan­dard on dig­i­tal cam­eras: dig­i­tal video (with stereo sound no less!). Shoot 1280 x 720p HD video with stereo audio using this com­pact, yet ver­sa­tile cam­era. In addi­tion to rid­ing the video tide the G12 also stays com­pet­i­tive with its 10MP still image cap­ture. Shoot RAW and JPEG files to SD/SDHC/SDXC mem­ory cards, among oth­ers, with the help of the camera’s 1/1.7″ CCD image sen­sor and DIGIC 4 image proces­sor, oth­er­wise referred to as Canon’s HS Sys­tem. The G12 addi­tion­ally sports a 3200 ISO set­ting for excel­lent shoot­ing in low light set­tings. Another notable fea­ture on the G12 is its High Dynamic Range. Based on the prin­ci­ple of brack­et­ing, HDR helps you cap­ture a well bal­anced image that presents both high­lights and low lights (AKA: shadow) in an appeal­ing man­ner — giv­ing your images that pop fac­tor! This func­tion also has an aspect to it named, i-Contrast. i-Contrast lets the user deter­mine the amount of HDR cor­rec­tion that’s applied to the image, which can be help­ful in avoid­ing high­light blowout and keep­ing details from get­ting lost in the shad­ows. Canon’s Track­ing AF also comes into play here by allow­ing the shooter to select a sub­ject to ‘track’ in case of move­ment while shooting.

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Nikon CoolPix P7000 Dig­i­tal Camera

Note: Nikon has updated this Cam­era with a new model (Nikon CoolPix P7100) it is basi­cally the same cam­era. They fixed a few of the bugs, added a very angle dis­play, at Improve the auto focus and improve the shut­ter response. August 2011

The Nikon CoolPix P7000 isn’t loaded down with friv­o­lous bells and whistles–it’s got seri­ously awe­some bells and whis­tles like a 10.1MP CCD sen­sor, a sharp, wide-angle to tele­photo 7.1x opti­cal zoom lens (28-200mm 35mm equiv­a­lent) made with Nikon ED glass, 720p HD video, 1.3 frames per sec­ond shoot­ing at full res­o­lu­tion, 5-way image sta­bi­liza­tion for sharp pho­tos even in low light, and a beau­ti­ful 921,000-dot high res­o­lu­tion 3″ LCD dis­play.  And you can shoot using JPEG or RAW for­mat for ulti­mate con­trol over your images. But there’s a lot more. Fast auto focus and start-up, so you never miss a pic­ture wait­ing for your cam­era to catch up. Low Noise Night Mode for beau­ti­ful pho­tos with­out flash at night, with min­i­mal noise. Or Sub­ject Track­ing to auto­mat­i­cally track and auto focus on a mov­ing sub­ject; video record­ing with opti­cal zoom and stereo sound; and 18 scene modes includ­ing the Scene Auto Selec­tor, which auto­mat­i­cally rec­og­nizes any shoot­ing sit­u­a­tion and opti­mizes all the set­tings for that scene.

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Pana­sonic Lumix DMC-LX5 Dig­i­tal Camera

By com­bin­ing a high-quality lens and sen­sor ready for a vari­ety of shoot­ing con­di­tions with a wide-range of acces­sories and man­ual con­trols, the Pana­sonic Lumix DMC-LX5 is ideal for pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers and seri­ous ama­teurs look­ing for a com­pact dig­i­tal cam­era that allows for a full range of cre­ative pho­tog­ra­phy capa­bil­i­ties. The cam­era incor­po­rates a wide angle f/2.0 aper­ture Leica DC Vario– Sum­mi­cron lens with 3.8x wide-angle opti­cal zoom (equiv­a­lent to 24mm — 90mm on a 35mm film cam­era) and the MEGA O.I.S. (Opti­cal Image Sta­bi­lizer) sys­tem. The cam­era also incor­po­rates an enhanced 1/1.63-inch CCD that is capa­ble of cap­tur­ing 10.1-Megapixels and has been designed to pro­vide more space for each pixel to min­i­mize image noise and opti­mize image qual­ity and dynamic range. The CCD is also capa­ble of repro­duc­ing images in 4 aspect ratios (4:3, 3:2, 16:9 or 1:1), and the Multi Aspect mode allows the cam­era to take an image in all three aspect ratios simul­ta­ne­ously. It also boasts the Venus Engine FHD high per­for­mance image pro­cess­ing LSI to dra­mat­i­cally reduce image noise (even using the high sen­si­tiv­ity set­ting of ISO 12800), and pro­vide fast shoot­ing per­for­mance with an incred­i­bly fast shut­ter lag, and burst shoot­ing capability.

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Samsung’s TL500 Dig­i­tal Camera

Sam­sung TL500 is their most ambi­tious point-and-shoot yet: a 10-megapixel cam­era with a F1.8–2.4 Schneider-KREUZNACH 35mm equiv­a­lent 24-72mm lens that is one of the fastest and one of the widest lenses in this category. This gives the TL500 a decided edge in shoot­ing under low-light con­di­tions and pro­vides a more pro­fes­sional look for your pho­tos (the 24mm lens is a work­horse for many pro­fes­sion­als, but rarely found in this class of cam­era). Cou­pled with ISO rat­ings stretch­ing up to 3200 and the Dual Image Sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem, the TL500 can han­dle almost any sit­u­a­tion that you encounter. In addi­tion to a wide range of shoot­ing and focus­ing modes, cre­ative color effects (Sketch, Defog, Soft, Vivid, For­est, Retro, Cool, Calm, Clas­sic, Neg­a­tive, Cus­tom RGB), auto­matic opti­mized set­tings for com­mon sit­u­a­tions (Night, Por­trait, Fire­works, Macro, Sun­set, Back­light, etc.), and a “smart” fil­ter that gives you fish-eye, vignetting, and “minia­ture” effects; the TL500 gives you pro­fes­sional tools like a hot-shot for an aux­il­iary flash (in addi­tion to the built-in flash), plus RAW and JPEG shoot­ing capa­bil­ity for get­ting the absolute best from your photographs.

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Con­clu­sion

All 4 of these cam­eras will take stun­ning pho­tographs, but in my opin­ion, the Nikon takes first place.  I really like the 5 expo­sure auto brack­et­ing (great for HDR), opti­cal viewfinder, 28-200mm (35mm equiv.) F2.8 lens and stereo input jack for video.  Canon takes a close sec­ond place with many of the fea­tures of the Nikon.  The Canon also has a cool under­wa­ter mode (requires under­wa­ter hous­ing), an HDR mode and a Vari-Angled LCD screen. Pana­sonic has a leg­endary Leica 24-90mm (35mm equiv.) F2.0–3.3  lens and you can get an optional Exter­nal Live View Finder. Sam­sung has a very wide-angle 24-72mm (35mm equiv.) fast F1.8-F2.4 Schnei­der lens. Depend­ing on your needs, any of these cam­eras will do the trick.  So do your home­work and get the cam­era that’s right for you.