I don't know, I took some very nice shots of people around a fire on a moonless night with a15 second exposure with my S30 and it came out quite well. There is a focus light/IR beam for focus assist. The controls are virtually identical to my A2E and playing with exposure settings with immediate feedback is a great learning tool. Granted it's not an SLR 6.0 MP job, but it's a pretty nice camera for $500.

Raw is still so much nicer than jpg. I'd be irritated too if I couldn't use them.

-Zeke