Back five years ago, I bought a Canon G7 with an underwater housing. Boy, it was the best technical compact camera I could find at the time, and I have loved it's complexity. One of it's downsides is the level of grain and enormous blur in dark areas, or it's general capability for dark photography.
Now there is the G12. Is it any better? How much better?
I would like to stick to the Canon G* family, but I recognize that a lot of competition has developed over the last few years. If I want to shoot high-qual photos in daylight but also dark areas (think night sky and stars, dance clubs, etc), have all the technical knobs and whistlebells that the G* family has, and very fast shutterspeeds in dark shoots, is there another compact camera out there that outperforms the Canon G* series? Ideally, I would like an underwater housing available as well.