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I found THE low light little camera! (August 2006) It's quick and easy to use and you won't miss many shots with it. When I'm in a hurry I just switch it to Auto, although I prefer to work with more manual control. The battery life is just incredible. I took 196 shots the first day with it at an indoor dog show, several with flash, and the battery indicator still indicated full. (Click on the thumbnails to see larger images) Just a suggestion: As with every digital camera I've owned, there is a tendency for highlights to get "blown out" on bright sunny days, so I always take the precaution of use a minus exposure compensation of between 1/3 and 2/3 stop and then "lift" the shadow areas for detail in my post processing. For outside work, using full auto with the F30 is not going to yield the best results. Your pictures will probably be overexposed. By the way, the F30 does outstanding macro work! Update: Please note that the F31 has an Auto ISO of 800, which the F30 lacks (it offers only Auto 400 and Auto 1600)and that makes the F31 a better choice, if you can get one...it wasn't around long. The F30 tends to choose a higher ISO than you might need in auto mode, probably to compensate for the lack of stabilization. Later models in this F series do not have as good noise control as these earlier models, most likely because they offer high pixel counts with their small sensors. Update, August 2012: Still my favorite "purse cam" although my new Samsung Galaxy S3 Smartphone is relieving some of the necessity to always have the F30 with me. Update February 2015...still my go-to camera for quick macros! Phone has been replaced with a Samsung Note 4 - makes pretty good macros, too!