Powershot S500 or Powershot SD300? Plz help!

[sculus]

I'm about to buy my first digital camera, and I've narrowed my options down to the above. I know that the SD300 has a larger LCD screen and better movie mode, but it appears to have a slightly worse lens, and the image quality is not as good as the S500. I don't care very much about the fewer megapixels in the SD300, but once I buy one of these two cameras, I'm going to stay with it for the next couple of years, so no possibility of upgrading. Has anyone on this forum used both cameras? If so, have you noticed any significant difference with the SD300 in terms of image quality?

Any info will be very welcome.

[Tremendo]

I own several Canon digital elphs. I've used the S500 and also re-search quite a bit. I decided last week to get my all purpose main use camera, and got the SD300. Picture quality is great, I'm getting some very nice shots. The flash is better than I thought it would be, and I'm familiar with the different Elph flashes. All in all, the SD300 is a smaller, lighter, faster functioning, and video that blows away the S500. Maybe in a laboratory the S500 picture quality might be better in certain circumstances, but then again, a 35 mm camera would be better as well. The SD300 is fine for me and my 8x10's, cropping and editing, etc. I think the SD300 is the best pocket camera out there.

[sculus]

Thanks Tremendo. However, I was able to get a very good offer on the S410 (the ixus 430, as it is marketed here in the UK), and decided to go for it. I suppose I was a bit put off by pictures posted on the web. Those taken with the S410 were slightly but noticeably better than those taken with the SD300. Now I have had the camera for a few hours, and I realise I would have liked the faster autofocus function the SD300 has -- the one I've got seems to take ages to focus! But then, again, everyone says the SD300 is overpriced, and the offer I got was better than any you can find on the Internet, so that was it for me. I wish, though, I'd had the chance to have tried both before settling on one of them.

[Need4Spd]

Sorry I'm too late responding but I agree with Tremendo and think the SD300 is the class of the Canon point and shoots, even over the S410 and S500. It also outclasses other makes in my opinion.

[humara]

I too have done quite a bit of research about the sd200/300. I've previously owned the s100,s200 and s400 at one point in time over the last few years. As you can tell I've always been a canon fan. I did buy the pentax optio s when it first came back and was sadly disappointed by its crappiness. the 2mp s200 killed it for image quality.
Anyway, I just sold my s400 and went with the sd200. 3.2 mp is plenty for me. I never print anything over 4x6. Image quality while slightly inferior to the s400, is simply amazing. the purple fringing is actually my biggest gripe. The camera is all around way faster now. that was always the weak spot for the elph line. I recently used an s110 and couldn't believe how slow it was compared to the s400. the sd200 is the best buy out there right now. $244 shipped via fedex. My s400 ended up selling for more than that on ebay.
The video mode is awesome. My 1gb card can record about 15 minutes continuously. The SD cards are so much faster than the old CF used in the sx00 line. Anyway, the sd200/300 are so much better to carry around. the s400 was never a huge problem but you definately knew you were carrying it around. now the sd200 is around all the time, i can't get rid of it. kudos to canon for making something the size of the optio s line finally. even the new optio s5i is a piece of junk compared to the sd200. the sd300 would dominate the optio s line even further.
why am i so bitter about the optio s?? look at the image quality at 100%. the noisiest sensor ever.