With digital cameras becoming so pervasive and the price of digital SLRs sliding, more and more households are becoming two-camera homes. For special occasions and planned outings, the DSLR is becoming a must item. But many shutterbugs don't want to drag a big camera around with them whenever they leave their abodes so they start looking for a second digital camera--one that's totable but doesn't skimp on performance. For those photographers, the Canon PowerShot A720 IS is the kind of image grabber they're looking for.

This Canon offering takes good photos both indoors and out, but its best work is done with natural light. The camera makes it very easy to change aperture and shutter settings on the fly and the impact of those changes are faithfully reflected on the unit's LCD display. However, seeing subtle changes in a scene on the display is difficult in direct sunlight.

Although the camera gives you a certain amount of control over its built-in flash through exposure compensation and varying light intensity, most of the time I found I didn't have time to fiddle with those settings before getting the shot I wanted. So I found that taking photos with the flash a roll-the-dice proposition, some photos were excellent, others needed a shave and haircut in a photo editor. Besides, I found that I could push my ability to use existing lighting conditions because the camera's excellent image stabilization allowed me to shoot at lower shutter speeds than I'd try with a hand-held shot.

Aperture: f4.0 Shutter Speed: 1/250 ISO: 80

Aperture: f4.8 Shutter Speed: 1/250 second ISO: 160

Aperture: 3.2 Shutter Speed: 1/60 ISO: 80 A fun feature of the A720 is its ability to create panoramas from a series of shots. Although it won't stitch the shots together inside the camera as some newer products are doing now, the stitching software included with the unit does a good job of recognizing and matching seams in a series of photos tagged for panoramic treatment by the camera.

As digital cameras become multiple commodities in households, no doubt many shooters will not only want to leave their DSLR behind when they need to travel light, but they'd like to leave their video camera on the shelf, too. If they do, it won't be with an A720. Its video isn't quite on par with a video camera.