I've owned one since august, and the pics on my portfolio are taken with it. I really like it in so many ways - it renewed my love of photography with it's full range of manual settings, some really fun effects (e.g. making everything black & white but for a colour of your choice, or swapping a blue sky for a green one etc.!) and incredible flexibility from amazing macro to very powerful telephoto. For it's price I think it's a gem.
But! I've used it so much, and got so into photography because of it, that it's also taught me I now want something better (I'll soon be buying a nikon d80 soon with some great lenses). Obviously that is much more expensive, and it's unfair really to compare it to my beloved s3, but here are the things I want to improve on:
I want a much clearer viewfinder for composing my shots (so important) - the s3's is a small not brilliantly clear digital image that is hard to use in sunny conditions.
I want a better range of tonality/image quality in my shots (from more megapixes/better sensor/better quality optics).
I want a megapixel level/sensor size that allows me to try and sell pictures (not many magazines/stock libraries etc accept 6mp)
I want it to be easier to have a full range of lenses and filters (e.g. an ultra wide angle lens, a polarizer & nds...; not tried the optional wide angle converter for the s3).
I want to be able to shoot in RAW.
less noise / better low light performance
As I said, these comparisons are unfair in a lot of ways as the s3 is so much cheaper than the setup I'm talking about, and it's image quality is excellent for it's price, but I thought it might be worth you knowing what you won't get. Here's what I will probably miss once I get a dslr:
the tilting/swivelable lcd - this has been used a lot for so many awkward position shots (e.g. ground viewpoints / tripod shots / holding above crowds). You can even tilt it to see yourself whilst taking yourself (kids love this).
the weight! and amazing amount of stuff (including excellent video) it can do whilst being so incredibly compact (you have to lug a lot of heavy stuff around to match all it's features with a dslr)
The (discreet) size
the price!!
have a look at
Canon S3 or Canon 5D System ....$420 or $5000+ Photo Gallery by J. Vincent at pbase.com for an amazing comparison of both size and price for the dslr equivalent of an s3
hope that's of help. For getting into photography it's an amazing choice.