Thread: Anyone with a DSLR also have P&S camera

Recently my wife purchased a mid-range P&S camera (Nikon S9300) to take with her on an overseas holiday.
She had access to a couple of DSLR's (our older Olympus E-510, and my daughter's Nikon D7000) but decided she wanted to take something small/light as she was going to be doing a lot of walking and public transport etc.

She's come back very disappointed as about half the shots are out of focus.
After an interesting discussion with the camera section manager of the large electronics chain she purchased from (including being told "we aren't a library - so we cant just take it back now you've finished your trip") a refund has been organised.

She's now gone off the whole P&S idea a lot.

I'd like to know if any of you camera buffs out there also have one to complement your DSLR equipment or if they are all disappointing after you've had a good camera.

Steve

Thanks for the replies everyone. Its good to know that those of you who are using them are finding that your P&S cameras are useful and are giving you decent shots.

After doing a bit of research myself, it seems that while Nikon produce good DSLRs, their compact cameras aren't anything startling. I'm thinking that my wife simply chose a poor camera.

Unfortunately its impossible to test drive a camera in a store and you really need to rely on reviews or finding someone that has a similar camera.

The mainstream reviewers pick the cameras to bits in such detail that you're left with the lingering thought of "the xyz bit in this camera is 2 fractions of nothing smaller than its competitor so therefore must be inferior" rather than any getting any sort of feel for its usefulness in the real world (possibly I've been looking at the wrong review sites??).

The problem with finding someone that has the same model camera is that the models change so frequently and if someone has a camera that they find really good they are likely to have it for a few years. The model is likely obsolete now - with no guarantee that its successor does as good a job.

To try and narrow things down for choosing one - what do you consider the essential or most useful functions/features in a P&S camera.
As I see it, the primary one on a completely automatic camera is that it focuses accurately (which is where her Nikon failed to achieve).
What else?

Steve