Hello,oleander wrote: I'm not terribly educated on cameras and camera settings, but have wanted very much to learn, hence the openness to getting a camera that does shoot in RAW format - which the S95 and the S100 both do.
many (most?) of the Canon P&S cameras can be coaxed into shooting RAW but overriding the default firmware with CHDK (http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; modification is comletely reversible). CHDK is worth the trouble even if RAW is not needed as it offers quite a few additional features (live histograms, over/under-exposure warnings, to name a few). For me it works fine in A570IS and A650IS. While rather old, the latter might be worth considering. It is rather big but, otherwise, image quality seems to be pretty decent; as a bonus, it takes AA batteries which seems to be more convenient outdoors than rechargable batteries of any sort.
lukasz