Hi Baronda
Thanks! I was under the impression that the service technician himself has made some of his own tweaking to the software although I could not confirm this as he was vague on this. All I know he updated the firmware, the night mode no longer hangs.
As for my 2 cameras, I was curious as to what was the differences between the A30 and S10 which are essentially the same camera but in different packaging.
I am not very technical so expect a layman comparison here.
The A30 - Earlier launch than the S10 with optical stabilisation. Portrait mode has "Portrait" and "Kids" mode. Has manual mode as well as shutter priority (no aperture priority though)
The S10 - Most compact 10 MP camera. It feels so nice and small in your hand and slips into your pouch or pocket discretely. Adds date imprint function (i wanted this on the A30...sigh) . Portrait mode includes a "Half Body Portrait" mode although its use is dubious.
Having done a comparison under a variety of conditions, I concluded that the S10/A30 represents the maximum pixels that is acceptable with the 1/1.8" CCD size. I suspect the noise on the A40/S12 would be more noticeable (12MP on 1/1.7" CCD).
Summary of my findings :
1. The A30 SR rocks! I try not to use flash to lock in the natural colours although the camera seems to perform better with it. Without flash, the images were clearly sharper under lower light conditions than those of the S10.
2. Under outdoor daylight conditions, it is possible to get DSLR-like quality images although the quality drops quickly the moment the level of lighting drops.
3. Noise reduction on the S10 is more aggressive. That means for the same indoor shot, the A30 shows noticebly more noise but I do detect there were a little more details, so the improvement on the S10 was due to NR but I do have to admit the NR was done quite pleasantly. If only the A30 was as aggressive.
Conclusion : I really love the small sexy compactness of the S10 but the SR of the A30 has won me over and its not that much bigger, only less sexy. :-) Hence I am willing to overlook the higher noise and opt to keep the A30 if I had to choose between the 2. Will carry out more tests before I confirm. The battery life probably sucks with the SR though but I have not done any tests on this.