Canon’s Powershot G10 offers a staggering 14.7 million pixels on its hi-def CCD sensor.

Pixel count isn’t the only indicator of quality, but in general more pixels is better and certainly gives you more cropping choice after the event.

The Canon A590IS model is more geared to amateurs whereas, the Powershot G10 is very much a prosumer model. The list of features alone make that clear.

Featuring a wide angle lens of 28 m.m. and couples that with a 5x zoom. Optical Image Stabilisation helps you to keep the image sharp even when using the long end of the zoom – pretty essential in the event that you can’t hand-hold a camera as steadily as before. The image stabilisation feature should mean that more of your shots will come out sharp.

The lcd screen is a 3.0-inch Pure Color LCD II screen. That makes it much easier to line up your shots – you won’t need to squint anymore to see what’s on the screen. If you’ve never used a large lcd screen digital camera before then you’ll be astonished at just how much easier it makes life. The Canon Powershot offers a really beautiful display.

Canon have also added their DIGIC 4 image processor. Digic4 offers faster operation and enhanced image quality – something that everyone will make use of.

Don’t forget that a digital camera is going to need some food and a camera that has extremely high resolution is going to need a lot of memory card to store its images. You can find a selection of well priced memory cards at places like www.digitalcamerafood.co.uk

That’s where cards like the sandisk 8gb sdhc secure digital card or the transcend 8gb sdhc card are so useful. An 8gb card will store a useful number of hi-res images and allow you to keep shooting for longer.

The Canon Powershot G10 is a stunning example of engineering and design.

For most people it will be a more practical alternative to an SLR. Although it’s not the smallest digital ‘compact’ on the market, it’s probably one of the best specified and well designed cameras currently available.