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Alright, heres my first impressions of the new camera I got for my birthday, the Canon SX120 IS, for anyone who may be interested in getting one of these.

Overall, very nice camera. It's not quite fair to compare it to my moms Canon 20D ($2500 camera), but even then it manages to hold its own pretty well. Its a very flexable little camera, capable of taking macro photos of objects 1cm away, to the full length of its 10x zoom, and everything in between. The controls are very simple to use, even the manual focus. One thing I found funny was that, when I had Image Stabilization on, and the camera was on a tripod, it blurred the image, so I typically leave IS off. Autofocus is pretty quick, with a decient amount of options for focusing.

Image quality is overall pretty good, but there is some noise even at ISO 80. However, I've been using the 20D for a while so thats not a fair comparison. With an ISO of under 400, you can easily clean up most of the noise with Neat Image, and if further problems arise from noise, reducing the image size in photoshop helps a ton, and there is plenty of room to do that. It shoots 3648x2736 photos. Aside from noise, the only other "issues" with the camera are small things like the lack of bracketing. However, unlike the 20D, this one has a lot more options when it comes to timed shots. I love having a 2 second delay, its just long enough to get away from the camera, so you dont spend half of your shooting time waiting for the camera.

Heres some images I took today and yesterday... large images ahead captian!

Full shot, widest angle. Filtered in Neat Image. Size reduced for uploading reasons and to not destroy the forums, lol.
ISO 80, f2.8, 1/400
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z18/Lambo_Diablo_Svtt/IMG_0121_filtered.jpg

100% crop of the image above, before noise removal:
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z18/Lambo_Diablo_Svtt/IMG_0121.jpg

Full shot, maximum zoom. Filtered and reduced size.
ISO 80, f4.3, 1/160
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z18/Lambo_Diablo_Svtt/IMG_0119_filtered.jpg

100% crop of the above, no filtering:
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z18/Lambo_Diablo_Svtt/IMG_0119.jpg

Handheld macro photo. Not perfectly in focus, due to my inability to hold perfectly still. Macro shots aren't easy without tripods. Really bright colors in the shot. No filtering, reduced size.
ISO 80, f2.8, 1/60
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z18/Lambo_Diablo_Svtt/IMG_0107.jpg

Tripod macro shot. The casing of the lens was physically touching the screen of my speaker, and it still focused in this clearly. No filtering, reduced size.
ISO 100, f2.8, 1/2
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z18/Lambo_Diablo_Svtt/IMG_0070.jpg

So, overall, I'm impressed with this camera. For the size and cost, it can do an aweful lot of stuff, and it does it well. If you're looking for a new digital camera, but can't afford an SLR, consider getting one of these.

*EDIT*

unembeded the images, they were way too big for the forum. Just click the links.

Yeah, the color surprised me. I think it handles that better than my moms 20D did, as far as vibrance goes.

that's cool

Wow that's awesome! Makes me not want to live in California.... all that open grass and trees that ACTUALLY CHANGE COLORS IN AUTUMN... really beautiful.

Another fun one I did the other night... took 18 shots, 2.5 seconds each, and combined them in a program called Deep Sky Stacker.

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z18/Lambo_Diablo_Svtt/Orion-1.jpg

Cropped and size reduced a tiny bit. I wanna try slightly longer exposures and more of them.

*EDIT* helps if I link the image.

Heres another one I just took today, full shot, reduced and de-noised, and adjusted the levels in Photoshop.

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z18/Lambo_Diablo_Svtt/IMG_0268-copy_filtered.jpg