I suggest that you be very in accepting the dpreview evaluations at face
value.  They seem to have a policy of using the camera default settings for
internal image enhancement rather than playing with them to get the best
possible results - or at least comparable results from comparative cameras.
I can understand that, since that would be a lot of work and requires
subjective judgement of tradeoffs between, for instance, sharpness and
noise, but the resulting comparisons are often bizarre.  Different
manufacturers seem to have much different philosophies on how much
sharpness, contrast and saturation boost to apply as a default.  This can
usually be seen by comparing dpreviews' examples at high magnification.  One
comparison they made two or three years ago between a G2 and a  comparable
Nikon credited the Nikon with sharper, but noisier, output.  If you blow up
the examples you can see pronounced light ghost edges alongside the dark
edges in the Nikon, and none (or almost none) in the Canon.  That indicates
a definite difference in edge sharpening.  There were also noticeable
differences in saturation and contrast.

I don't mean to knock dpreview.  They do a good job and fill a great need.
I do wish they would point out the above in their reviews, however.

These effects are why many of us shoot in RAW with the enhancements turned
off.  We can then choose the "best" (whatever that means) settings in post
processing.  Of course, that means we have to post process every
image.......

Don


"stewy" <anyone4tennis1@lycis.com> wrote in message
news:c42pbn$2lp$1@newssv.kcn.ne.jp...
>
> "Chris B" <chris.brogan@thefreeinternet.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:c42cvn$2c68ao$1@ID-100935.news.uni-berlin.de...
> > I was about to buy the Canon Powershot G50 but then the IXUS 500 came
out
> > and I cannot decide.
> >
> > Any recommendations?  Cannot get much info on the latter at the moment.
>
> Try http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Canon/
>
>