This digital camera stands out because of its image quality, full set of manual controls and good battery life. Pictures from the A520 have saturated colors, good sharpness, little distortion and good resolution. The downsides are few (image noise, low-light focusing and slowness) but are common with most compact cameras. If  speed is important, you may trade some optical zoom and some manual controls by getting the Fuji Finepix E550 which also produces good looking pictures. For less noisy images it is necessary to get a higher-end (more expensive) camera, most likely a larger model.