Nice camera at an incredible price! I've owned my 565 for about 6 months now and love it. I've own 2 other cameras, but this one has them beat.
Construction of the 565 is really good. It's one of the smallest 20x cameras out there making it easier to carry and store. Build is sturdy, strong and comfortable.
Features are too many to mention here. Has full auto to full manual. P setting is what I use the most, allowing for auto setting and manual setting at the same time, such as auto focusing, but manual shutter or ISO control. Most impressive feature of all is the very wide to super zoom, 26-520mm equivalent. A negative is the video recording features aren't great. You can chose to have sound, but no ability to zoom OR to be able to zoom in and out, but then have no sound. And you can't switch modes on the fly. No HD recordings either. However, I didn't but it for video recording, but the awesome zoom and other photography features.
Images are good. I've had almost no photos, even when taken in a moving car on a bumpy road turn out poorly with the cameras image stabilizing capabilities. Images are clear, true to color, and consistent. What keeps it from getting a perfect 5 here is, the photos tend to be slightly dull. A bit more contrast and brightness is desired. A plus is the 565 allows you to save images in JEP and RAW formats at the same time, so future editing can be done with minimal quality loss.
Ease of use very good given so many features one can chose from. With full auto, it's a no brainer, just point and shoot. But if you want to play with all the features available, it takes some getting use to, but once you do, it's not that hard even for a relatively new photographer.
I got it on sale for about $230 including shipping and taxes end of summer 2009. That's about $100-200 less than most the competitors with 20x zoom. So for the features and quality of images I've gotten for the price, nothing compares. Outstanding value!
Problems:
Couple very minor things. Some have mentioned the lense cap. It needs to be manually removed and put back on before and after taking photos. This is ultra minor to me.
The other minor issue, is battery life. I've not been able to get as many pix per charge as they claim (590 with Ni-MH). However, I get a couple hundred on Ni-MH. It's possible they are getting too old as I've had them 2-3 yrs. It's also possible due to the fact I almost always use the highest image quality setting and save them in both RAW and JPG formats.