Chantal:
No disrespect to you or Canon but high ISO is overrated. About 10-% of the photography population actually NEEDS high ISO. These are sports, action shoots, surveillance which often happens at night and other such specialty applications. Not sure why so many marketing men push "high ISO" just as the "megapixel war" is full of shit too ...
Most professionals choose to employ lighting in some form and when they want the light to blend, they just lower their shutter to match the ambient so that it's near indistinguishable. This allows the use of a lower ISO which ALWAYS equates to a better photo than a high ISO no flash picture.
Of course, there are a thousand scenarios. In fact many high end cameras made by Leica and the new Mamiya MF camera only shoots up to somewhere around iso 1000.
An fyi, many cameras, probably most cameras pre-flash to find focus when using the pop-up. So while it's listed as a con here it likely will be in just about any brand one decides on.
I hear more about Canon [lack of] quality control than any other, but mostly in some of their high end cameras. But still. Saying it's Canon is comparable to saying "it's a BMW?" ... yeah they are nice, but they ARE NOT the only option and they are subject to recalls like everyone else. One may be impartial to the BMW but the Lexus may have a better performance record or Lexus may put out a sleeker looking model. One should not choose a camera based on the lettering on the outside of the box but on the specs of the camera and if getting into photography should actually be researching different systems of cameras to gain some understanding, knowledge and a better sense of what they want. When I decided on a camera outfit, I researched ALL the major and almost major brands. I knew that just because Canon had the highest sales, followed by Nikon didn't mean they offered the best or what I wanted. I just knew instinctively, as a business person, that there marketing and positioning in the market was the best and largely responsible for their popularity,(every manufacturer today can make a good camera). They have a higher marketing budget and many camera mags cater to them because the mags survive by their checks received from these big companies.
This article is how I go about purchasing.
http://bitsofdata. blogspot. com/2009/12/7-tips-for-purchasing-camera-equipment.html
Again, no disrespect as I know this forum is first a Canon biased forum and next a Nikon biased forum ... but I wanted to weigh in and hopefully instill an objective look.
Oh no disrespect taken. I wasn't saying for him to get a camera with high high iso, I just wish that option was open for me so I could try it out, y'know? That's good to know though. The only bad part about the iso on my camera is that it produces noise sometimes, and that's only at iso 1600. The other iso works fine.
I wasn't sure if the pre-flash was just on my camera or all of them out there... that's good to know as well ... I've only had one camera before so no wonder I didn't know that. Wow haha I didn't mean "It's Canon" by that it's better than any other brand, lol, I was kidding!!!!!!!!!!