Some old-timers might say that the new Canon S60 is boring. In an age when digital cameras are going the way of mainstream consumer electronics and popping up in every conceivable shape and colour, it just looks like a small, silver brick - virtually the same as its predecessors.
But underneath the rectangular metal-finished plastic housing is the usual technical competence that has come to be associated with Canon digital cameras. Indeed, I find it hard to think of any recent Canon digital cameras that do not take good pictures, and the S60 certainly does this job very well.
The S60's five-megapixel image sensor produces pictures that have the hallmark Canon accuracy and image clarity. The sky stays blue and the grass remains green. There are no ugly blue fringes, like with some of the cheaper cameras, and unless you take a very strong magnifying glass to look, noise on broad areas of the same colour is nearly indistinguishable.
People who are looking for more than a point-and-shoot camera will also find the S60 has a good blend of full auto-focus and more advanced features.
Another point worth mentioning is the wide-angle 28mm lens, which gives a zoom magnification of 3.6x and allows the camera to capture comparatively wider shots than most digital cameras on the market. This means you can take those large group pictures, say, in a Chinese restaurant without accidently leaving out the person standing on the edge.
Just about the only complaint I have is that, compared with other Canon cameras, the S60 seems to rely less on on-screen navigation and tries to put more functions at your fingertips with more buttons.
As a seasoned Canon IXUS user, I found the number of buttons a bit confusing, like when deciding between pressing the 'review' or 'display' buttons to look back at pictures I had taken.