Not to discourage you, but that all sounds like user error and not the camera. The low light capabilities of almost all p&s cameras is about the same, which is not that good. This is where taking control of your camera and getting out of auto is the only way you are going to consistently get what you want. The ghosting is probably because the super zoom cameras have a larger piece of glass on the front and it is getting unwanted light hitting it. The only thing to fix that is a lens hood. If they are foggy in a cold area, you didn't let the camera adjust to the temp long enough before trying to use it. Again, the larger the glass up front, the worse this effect is. Basically, that new Kodak you are looking at is not likely to be one bit better than the Canon you sent back.
I agree, and to expand on the bolded if I may (in my own way of explaining, which may not be 100% technically correct, but will hopefully get the main gist across; this is what helped me understand the concept myself) - the whole issue with point and shoot cameras is that the sensor (the little information center that gathers all the digital information of the picture) is quite small, in general. (Much, much smaller than 35mm film used to be, as an example - see chart below.)
In the early days of digital cameras, when they had 1MP, 2MP, 3MP sensors, there was a fairly good amount of space on the sensor to hold all the information. But then more megapixels came along, and things began crowding a bit there on the small sensors. Cameras that had 5 to 6MP were just about right, however - enough to gather and interpret the information needed, but not too much.
Then someone decided that even more megapixels would be a good idea, and this idea was sold to the general public who didn't really know or care much about sensors or the technicalities of how it all worked, really; they just wanted great images with a convenient vehicle to get them. But what happened was that image quality began to suffer a bit as megapixels went up, because basically too much information was being crammed into a tiny little sensor. Information overload, if you will. 12MP, 13MP is an awful lot to put on a tiny sensor.
So point and shoot cameras, with their tiny sensors, are essentially incapable of doing all of the types of things that people want them to do in every situation, but particularly those in low light and movement settings and especially when being used by everyday users (as opposed to those skilled in photography, who know other tricks to tweak out some usable images).
OTOH, dSLRs have much larger sensors. See graph here (point and shoot sensors are the tiny ones on the bottom):
So when people come on here asking for advice about finding the perfect camera, but then putting severe limits on what they're willing to buy (such as price or type of camera), it becomes kind of hard for people to explain simply the differences between a point and shoot/bridge, or dSLR. I don't think it's that people are trying to talk anyone into anything, I think they're just trying to say that, when given the types of images they're looking to get, they're inevitably going to be disappointed with almost whatever point and shoot they're going to buy (possibly with a few exceptions), or, put another way, anything less than (the sensor of) a dSLR.
Of course, one way images can be improved with a point and shoot, is to learn aspects of photography, or the concept of exposure, basically, as that will allow a user to capture the best images possible on whatever point and shoot camera they do buy. But most buyers here say that's not something they have time or inclination to do, so again, it's tough.
With all that said, having a dSLR is not a "magic bullet" either. Sure, the sensor's bigger, but one must generally learn how to use it in order to get decent images, which is why people say that often the reports of poor image quality with a dSLR can be attributed to user error.
And to add one more category to the equation, there are now "mirrorless dSLRs" that have the same sensors as dSLRs but come in a small package to make them easier to carry around, the caveat being that they still have interchangable lenses and the kit lenses probably still won't be "fast" enough (ie let enough light in) in low light situations to yield completely perfect images, either (which can also be said of dSLR kit lenses as well).
So much to consider, but hopefully this helped anyone trying to decide what to buy or trying to figure out why their images aren't great, whatever camera they use.
Not everyone wants to take the time to learn DSLR or can invest in lenses. I've played with many friends DSLRs, and while I think I would love them, I just don't feel photography is enough of a hobby for me to justify the expense of a DSLR.
) Mine broke last year after getting banged around for several years in my pocketbook since I liked to keep it with me at all times as a point and shoot. My solution was to just buy a new S3IS (used, actually, but new condition - of course, now I have an iPhone that takes decent quick pics and video so I really don't take the S3 out with me anymore). I remember when it's predecessor, the S5IS came out, there were many reports that image quality had gone down a bit from the S3. (I don't know enough about the subject to comment on it here, but we had a long running S3/S5IS thread here for years and some of the users who had both had commented on it.) So you could always consider buying another S3IS if that worked for you!
