Need a travel Camera

A little background here - I have two PS canons - the most recent an A80. Until recently anything "serious" I did was on film - but now I have both a 10D and a 20D. I travel a ton on business and used to take a PS camera along with me - and was happy. I recently tried to take the 20D with me on a trip, and the way I travel I can see that isn't going to work. The pictures were great but I can see the camera is going to get the S&^$ knocked out of it - and I don't want to go back to the image quality of my other PS cameras. So what I am looking for is a briefcaseable camera to take on trips that is going to have spectacular optics. I have been looking at the Ni??? 8800, its little brother or possibly the G6.

Any of you all have any ideas on this. I know this is a canon forum so I fully expect the bent I am going to get. Is there something else I should be looking for or another model that I am not aware of? It has to be a decent looking camera. I can't open my briefcase and have it look like I am a tourist.

Cheers.

I think G6 is on the border of being functional enough and not so bulky. Took it to a recent vacation, not a problem, taking it with me everywhere, and a RAW quality is awsome for me!

but, recently bought a adapter and couple of filters .... seems to me a need a new bag for the camera.

Thanks Andrey for the reply... in what ways do you think the G6 is on the border.... remember i am using a a80 right now for travel so somewhere between that and the 20D is where I am looking. thanks again !

I'm not sure what you expect. This is a forum devoted to Canon G series cameras. Pretty much everyone on here loves their camera. I have a G6 and am more than satisfied with it. I upgraded from an A80 and there is no comparison. I think you would be very happy wiht the G6, but I am extremely biased.

if nothing else, the G6 has AWESOME battery life, especially if you're used to rechargable AAs. I was just on vacation for a week and shot probably 500 or so images, and reviewed all of them for friends a few times on screen. If I was using my old fuji finepix 4700 I would have probably gone through 20 or 25 charges, but I changed batteries exactly once the whole trip. Even if you are CONSTANTLY shooting all day (i wasn't) you could still get by with 2 batteries a day and then charge them both each night.

It's a little bulky and if you're going to end up carrying a flash, tripod, Lensmate, and a bunch of other accessories anyway, i'd just stick to a digital SLR, they're not THAT much bigger or heavier.

I've noticed more and more tourist attractions and events banning photography, for instance in Millenium Park in Chicago, police will pounce on you if you pull an SLR and a tripod out and you look like you know what you're doing, whereas if you pull a small digital camera out of your pocket they'll ignore you. My sister got her film ripped out and was almost arrested in Greece for taking photos with an SLR, but people all around her were taking mini digicam shots. And at Lollapallooza in Grant Park, the rule was "no cameras with interchangeable lenses." I decided against taking my G6 because it had the flash mount and the lens ring is arugably "interchangeable" and I didn't want it taken away, so maybe keeping the a80 around isn't a bad idea... Anyone else ever experience this?

thanks - that is the kinda response I am looking for. I travel to the orient a lot and the last thing I want to be doing is walking through the street taking pictures of the locals with a whopper 4k setup looking like the ugly american tourist. I want good quality, decent ISO performance, reasonable zoom but discrete. No tripod, no camera bag, were traveling light and stealth. I want to shoot and not draw too much attention to myself. And I want quality images too.... is that asking too much or are my expectations too lofty. Cheers and thanks again.

If you're used to an SLR or dSLR, you're gonna be bummed about the G6 at ISO 200 or 400. Not worthless, but certainly not great if you're used to shooting in the dark at 800 without much grain/noise. The autofocus is pretty useless at low light, too.

But it is an incredibly versatile camera in my experience, and the pros outweigh the cons by far. any camera is a trade off, if they made a camera that met *all* our needs, we wouldn't be able to afford it, ha.

Bb.