Which P&S is best at FULL AUTO...

A lot of my shooting is in the "street/candid area". Often I simply have NO time to view through an optical viewfinder...let alone peer at an an LCD screen. Often, I'm literally "shooting from the hip."

Most of the time, when I'm on one of these walking expeditions, and shooting this type of "fleeting moment" stuff, I set the camera at wide angle, on FULL AUTO, and hope that I can salvage the shots via post-shooting software.Surprisingly, it often works well for me.

My question is really quite a simple one....which P&S, (Canon preferably) would produce the best results in FULL AUTO mode?

Cheers, del Sol

Seems like if you are going to depend more on "chance" and post-processing, you would WANT to use a mode that provides maybe RAW? So a full-auto mode is probably not the best choice in that situation.

Well, in order to answer that question one would have had to try every camera around. But then you still would have a subjective answer. In my opinion the best camera is the one you have with you and that works with what you do, that said I would suggest you go to a store and try a few just to see how they feel in the hand and how they shoot using your style. I have had 5 digital cameras so far. The first one was cheap but OK, the next one was better, and each new one I got was performing better then the one I had earlier. Right now I have a Canon S90 and I am really happy with it. I have not had much time to learn any setting etc. so have shot mostly in Auto. There are some things I would have preferred different but overall I can say that for me, it is the best camera I have ever had. I can shoot photos without tripod and with uncertain light that I would never been able to before.

The wide lense is awsome. There are a few issues but ultimately one can cope with them. I doubt that Ansel Adams had a camera nearly as good as any one you can get today. Yet he could take breathtaking pictures. It is the photographer who take photos and the camera is a tool. Whatever works best for you is the camera you should get. My opinion is that a S90 or S95 would be great. But you might have a different view point.

Many street and candid photographers use a similar style as you have described; I've been shooting street candids that way for over 40 years, but with a (D)SLR and a wide angle lens set to hyperfocus.

The best kind of camera for this work has an articulating viewfiender. That allows the camera to be operated discretely at waist level where the up-facing viewfinder makes composition much more precise.

Since the subject must be centered (or on an auto-focus point), poorly composed grab shots with a P&S on autofocus will likely be OOF since there is usually more distant background than there is up-close subject matter. The net result is that - unless precisely composed - the autofocus is likely to register on the background, and your intended foreground subject will be out of focus.

A camera with manual focus, wide angle lens, and an adjustable iris should allow hyperfocus: By stopping way down, and manual focus set to the sweet spot, the DOF is increased to the point that most normal subject matter will be in focus. This is a preferred technique for candid shooting.

Both the S90 and S95 have manual focus, manual aperture control, and wide angle capability at the bottom of the zoom range, but neither has an articulating viewfinder. For that you need to look at the G's.

Pick a PS camera that has the AV, TV modes. AV is aperture priority and TV is shutter priority.

TV mode is very useful for those kinds of candid shots. I used TV mode on my S90, set it to maybe 1/400 so moving people would be sharp. That is the big problem with auto or p mode... Shutter speeds under these modes often are too low which leads to blurred pictures.

So... Just look and see if the camera has AV or TV modes. The S90 and all G series cameras have them. My father's SX120 had it. Its on the dial, the same one you see the green AUTO on...