Originally Posted by MickeyMaguire

The primary reason for a digital SLR is the size of the sensor. The APS-C sensor is about the size of a postage stamp. The Canon G1X is just a tiny bit smaller than that. Typical point and shoot digital cameras have sensors roughly the size of your little finger-nail. That means, the more "pixels", which really are called "photo-sites" on the sensor, the more electronic interference (noise) is created in taking the picture. That noise is what looks like grain when you see your images on the computer at 100 percent size. They look great when small, but, zoom to the actually size and they can look pretty bad. That translates to very poor image quality on anything over a 5x7 image or anything for print publications.