Canon PowerShot A720IS 8MP Digital Camera with 6x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

The Canon PowerShot A720IS is an interesting beast as it doesn't seem to have particularly good or bad qualities. It takes pleasant pictures with good clarity and color, and the rich feature-set will satisfy both novice and experienced photographers, but in the end, this camera feels uninspired and amorphous. It's not as small or sleek as Canon's Digital ELPH series (SD Series), nor does it have the imaging abilities of the G series or the absolute zoom capabilities of the S series. If you could take all of Canon's consumer digital cameras (minus the DSLR's) and roll them up into a single camera, it would be very similar to the A720. This camera isn't anything exceptional, but it is very functional.
With that said, this is one of the better budget cameras I've used. With various scene modes and full manual controls, it can grow with you as your skills improve, assuming you spend the time to learn how to use it. This camera works as an acceptable point-and-shoot in the program mode, but when you start playing with the manual controls, great low light and macro shots become possible. Some noteworthy elements of this camera are its excellent video mode (30fps 640x480 resolution), 6x optical zoom, and use of standard AA batteries. The flash is also pretty good and in the right mode, the camera will automatically adjust the flash's brightness.
Digital Noise has been getting better throughout the years and with the new A720, you can pretty much use up to ISO200 without having to worry about noise. Although the camera supports higher ISO settings, anything above 200 will start to become very noticeably grainy. At ISO80, the pictures are just beautifully smooth.
This camera performs exceptionally well outdoors on a sunny day, or in places where there are generous amounts of bright light - the picture quality in these situations can rival cameras costing twice as much! Unfortunately, this performance noticeably diminishes in challenging lighting situations such as those encountered on a hike in the woods. There, the overall level of light is lower but there are now very high contrast zones (such as sunlight peeking through the tree branches). Under these circumstances, the picture's colors become muted and flat with a tinge of blue. Also, under challenging lighting conditions, it's very easy to get blurry or over/underexposed shots. (You can fix the color issue by adjusting the camera's "White Balance", and you can help the over/underexposed shots by adjusting the "Metering Mode")
In my opinion, the built-in image stabilization works, but it isn't terribly effective. IS cameras can't perform miracles - they can only compensate a little bit for camera shake, so blurry pictures will remain a reality. Observing the proper shooting posture and holding your breath is much more effective - many digital camera users extend both arms to hold the camera, which is an inherently unstable position. It's much more stable to hold the camera up to your face and use the viewfinder! There are a number of things you can do to fight blur besides relying on image stabilization, including: zooming out, using a higher ISO, increasing shutter speed, and opening up the aperture (make the F number smaller). Keep in mind that to effectively use this camera's 6x zoom, you'll either need a tripod or some other stable surface to put the camera on.
The camera feels lightweight but sturdy, and is small enough to fit inside a large pocket. Although it is bulkier than the Digital ELPH series, with the A720, I can grip it firmly with both hands for steadier shooting.
I didn't have too many complaints about this camera except that it's sluggish at times (especially when the flash is turned on), but power-on to first shot times are respectable. Another problem is that the built-in viewfinder is off-center and only shows about 70% of the scene, making fine compositions a very challenging task. In the end, this is a great camera and you get a lot for the money.

Canon PowerShot SD750 7.1MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom (Silver)

Canon resumes its position at the top of all camera manufacturers. Their design, performance, and quality is hard to match. Now onto the camera:
I have shot around 4-5 Gigs worth of photos in various settings, so I have a good idea of what this camera has to offer. The features itself within the camera are excellent. Aside from increased megapixels, it's not much different than the SD700 except for some odd reason, Canon decided to opt out of the IS (Image Stabilization) feature. I almost gave it 4 stars based solely on that aspect. But other than that, the camera is brilliant.
For portraits and close-ups, the Face Detection feature is phenomenal which is a reflection of the new DIGIC III technology. The camera will lock in on the human face or multiple faces (I've locked in up to 8) and keep it in focus no matter where you move or pan the camera. And if you're shooting indoors or in low-light, the ISO can be set as high as 1600 so you have a lot of Flash Exposure control if you don't like that spotlight look when using the flash. There is also an Auto ISO setting which gives the user a lot of range to shoot. It will determine proper ISO setting and shutter speed and also will predict camera shake resulting in less blurry pictures. I guess this makes up for not having IS. :)
If you are a novice photographer and don't like to mess with ISO, aperture settings, and shutter speed variations this camera will fit your needs just fine. It has 17 shooting modes including "scene" modes for the different settings you may be shooting in such as the beach, fireworks, snow, portraits, night, etc. Fully automatic so any beginner can pick up this camera and shoot like a pro.
The most popular feature has to be the 3" LCD screen. It's ginormous. But in order to get that big of a screen on such a compact camera, Canon forgoes the optical viewfinder. So if you're a viewfinder shooter, then you may not like the fact you are limited to just the LCD screen for image framing.
One shortcoming of the camera is that it still has a weak zoom. 3X optical is nothing and so the zoom feature is pretty much non-existent.
The movie features on the camera are awesome. i like the Time Lapse movies where you can record time lapse of up to 2 hours and condense it into a 4 or 8 minute movie. So if you want to make that cool "cloud moving" effect or the "budding flower" you can accomplish that with this camera. The video resolution is excellent and has a VGA frame rate of 30fps.
Overall, the camera satisfies all users with being simple enough to use for beginners and also boasting features a professional can appreciate. It also looks bitchin and has a two tone effect that people admire. The corners are intelligently rounded so it slips easily in and out of any pocket you may want to put it in.

Canon PowerShot SD850 IS 8.0 MP Digital Elph Camera with 4x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

For a point and shoot camera, this little gem packs a lot of advanced features. It's definitely not a DSLR but it's sure convenient when you want to conceal it and carry it with you in your pocket.
Pros:
1) Red-eye correction. No more red-eyes! It automatically fixes them.
2) Image stabilization. Will correct your hand movements but will not stop action.
3) Face Detection. Automatically finds and focuses on faces, and sets the proper exposure.
4) LCD Screen. The 2 1/2 LCD screen is very high resolution.
5) Lots of choices concerning picture quality and color.
6) Image and video quality are very good for such a small camera.
7) Optical viewfinder. Many cameras do not have this. It comes in handy when you do not want to use the LCD screen such as in theaters.
8) Auto White Balance is much improved over the older Digic II processors.
9) There is a manual setting where you can treak your photo settings. My preference is "Positive Film," "ISO 100," "+1/3 exposure," "flash on." The photos look fantastic.
Cons:
1) Noisy pictures with ISO settings over 200. (Pretty much what you get with any point and shoot camera.) Auto setting usually selects ISO 200, which is a little noisy. You're better off to go with ISO 80 or 100.
2) Lens is wide enough for most purposes but it's definitely not a "wide angle" lens. There is some barrel distortion on the short end, meaning that straight lines, buidings, walls, etc, appear a little curved.
3) Battery/SD Card Door can slide out and pop open easily.
4) Cannot chose aperature or shutter speeds manually.
5) No battery life meter. The LCD screen only displays a "low battery" warning.
Bottom Line:
This camera is a great little convenient camera, which is able to be concealed easily, and taken about anywhere because it easily slips into a purse or pocket. It's a great camera for taking indoor portraits with flash, as well as outdoor photos. It is not good at stopping action. Pictures of kids and pets running around will often be blurry because of the 1/60 sec. shutter speed. If you are needing to take low-light or action/sports photos, you would be better off purchasing a cheap DSLR. The only reason I don't give this camera 5 stars is because of the noise at higher ISO's.

Canon PowerShot SD1000 7.1MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom (Silver)

The SD 1000 slips into your shirt front pocket without making it sag. If you're wondering about the style, the square "retro" design is boxy but I like it better as it is very compact. It also does not slip out from my fingers as easily as the curved edge ones.
Since the cameras in SD series are so small some features like different shooting modes are accessible only through the menu which makes changing between them more cumbersome. Sometimes I've just preferred to stay on Auto rather than missing the shot while I navigated to the right mode. SD series cameras also have less manual or user defined controls like flash power reduction which I miss. The flash incidentally, can get very strong in lower light or indoor situations and often bleaches out color from people's faces. If you turn off the flash then you have to use a tripod or have the camera on a flat surface to prevent shaky pictures. I also find that the smallness and lightness of SD series makes my hand shake more than when I'm holding the A series camera with the side grip. I get more fuzzy pics with the SD series than my A series (comparing the models without Image Stabilization) and it's annoying to see the camera-shake warning each time on the screen I am trying to take a shot. I also get a little more red eye with this series probably because the flash is so close to the lens. On the SD 1000 however, there is a red eye correction feature so you can remove red eye right on the camera. The other improvement over the previous SD series is the automatic face detection which helps reduce the flash glare on faces so pictures come out better.
Having used many Canons, although I prefer some other models for their pictures, guess which camera travels with me most often. My SD1000. Just because it's small and fits into my tiny party purse or jeans pocket. Canon recently launched some SD series cameras with Image Stabilization like SD850 IS which is slightly more expensive and a bit bigger and heavier than the SD1000. I'd probably never take it along with me on daily basis and would miss some great photo ops...Many of my friends bought the SD1000 camera after seeing the size of my camera vs. its range of features (and the reasonable price!)
And what about some other Canon features? (If you're a regular Canon user skip reading this section, as you already know all this good stuff.):
- It has an intelligent focusing system with DIGIC III (up from DIGIC II earlier) auto red eye correction and face detection (see above).
- Goes up to ISO 1600 which improves it's low light performance. Although beware of camera shake if you turn off flash in low light. In my opinion, Canon has always out-performed all other consumer cameras in outdoor pics. For indoor low-light pics you'll have to turn on the flash or end up with grainy images. However, compared to other brands in the same class the SD1000 still takes pretty sharp pictures.
- SD card slot - cheap to buy 2GB cards.
-Photo-stitch - For stitching together panoramic views. I have shot countless seascapes, 'bridge'scapes, and landscapes from all my Canons using this function and stitching together 6-10 shots in one. It's easy.
-Macro mode - Great for close ups of babies or product shots
- The SCN mode (special scenes)- Fireworks, Beach, Snow, kids and pets, Underwater, Foliage, Aquarium and Indoor is great. Now even amateurs can use Canon experience to get the best shot quickly before they miss the photo opportunity while trying to set manual controls.
-"My colors" option - Allows you to choose a color you want to highlight in a picture or even darken and lighten skin tones. Color Accent allows you to capture only a particular color in a shot while the rest of the picture is black and white. I did a black and white Christmas group portrait with only the Santa hats, ornaments and poinsettias in red color. Or with Color Swap you can swap out one color with the other, like change your car or (or hair color!)- red to blue. The possibilities are endless, even my kid loves to use the color accent feature as it's really easy.
-Special effects (B/W, Sepia, Vivid, Nuetral etc.) I've used sepia a lot when taking portraits giving them an 'old world' feel. Vivid has been helpful in special situations like a red kite against a blue sky to bring out the colors. You can do all this in Photoshop later but how many of us actually get the time to do this, once a pic is taken it's over with for me!
-You can also take videos in 3 different resolutions with this camera and edit them right on the camera.
-You can create a slide show of all the images you took on the camera itself with fancy transition effects of your choice, it adds to the fun when you hook it up to a TV to view your pics.
-The zoom button shows one or many images at a time in the replay mode and you can zoom into each individual image to see parts of it closely. You can also add sound bites to your shots to remember a location.
- While replaying, the images auto-rotate to landscape or portrait mode to align with how you're holding the camera. It's a nice feature. The screen has been made more durable than it was earlier with an anti-reflective coating.
All in all, if you want a small and sexy yet very feature rich camera go for the SD1000, you'll find yourself using it more often than your previous cameras.

Canon PowerShot A570IS 7.1MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

With Canon's release of the A570IS, I decided to upgrade, driven by the addition of optical image stabilization (IS). While the IS is impressive, I was surprised by other improvements that Canon has made. Image noise levels are significantly lower and more controlled for higher ISO captures. The Digic III processor seems to make more intelligent decisions about lighting and flash exposure, especially when its face recognition is engaged. Add a dramatically better quality LCD screen, slightly higher 7.1MP resolution, improved case, and support of high capacity SD cards, and I doubt I'll need to upgrade any time soon.
Like the A540, the A570IS is for me a perfect balance of size, speed, and photo quality. The A570IS is the same physical size as the A540. It's small enough to fit in a coat pocket or small belt case yet uses 2 AA batteries.
Like the A540, overall processing speed is very fast unless you're taking flash pictures (and then you should expect about 4-6 seconds between flashes depending on battery level and what flash strength the camera selected). Note that flash time is significantly better with high-capacity rechargeable NiMh batteries than with standard AAs. And, unlike some other cameras I have tried, the speed of the user interface (especially during playback) is very fast.
Picture quality in general is excellent, even in low light situations. Noise at higher ISO is significantly more controlled than the A540, perhaps a benefit of the new 7.1MP CCD and the Digic III image processor. According to the documentation, noise reduction is applied at slow shutter speeds of 1.3 seconds or greater, and this can slightly slow down shot-to-shot time. There is no option to disable or adjust the noise processing, but in my experience the results are very good. When noise reduction is applied, there is a slight loss of detail compared to the A540, but the results are noticeably better on the A570IS with its built-in noise reduction than post-processing noise on pictures taken with the A540.
In my own head-to-head comparisons between the A570IS and A540, the A570IS has better light metering and noticeably sharper detail on indoor shots without a flash (especially when image stabilization is engaged). The A570IS does favor slightly higher ISO in auto modes than the A540, giving generally better results without a flash. However, when taking close-up pictures with a flash, the A570IS doesn't seem to select anything lower then ISO 200, sometimes requiring a manual ISO override in Program mode.
The A570IS offers a new ISO 1600 mode, but I'm not quite sold on it. Without a tripod, under low light conditions, ISO 1600 does offer the opportunity for blur-free photographs not possible with ISO 800. But the level of noise and artifacts from the noise processing don't give a very usable picture.
The A570IS raises the bar with optical image stabilization, which only works when the camera is held horizontally. One of the biggest limitations of consumer digital cameras is the need to hold the camera steady to get a clear shot. At higher zooms and in night shots this problem can be compounded. I've taken a number of shots with and without IS, and it is useful but not a "magic bullet" for poor shots. Small details like far-away signs at night become clear when the IS is engaged. You can set the IS to run continuously during preview, only when the shutter is released (slightly lower battery drain), only on vertical movement (better for objects that are moving horizontally), or disabled (I have yet to find a reason to do so). And, unlike many cameras I've seen, the IS works in video capture mode.
Like the A540, the A570IS offers full manual controls. With the A570IS, Canon adds two more modes (Kids & Pets and Indoor) to the mode selector wheel (instead of having to find them on the Special Scene menu). The A570IS also adds a new Aquarium scene mode, while removing the useless Color Swap and Color Accent modes. Canon has also removed the "My Camera" customization menu (for changing the startup picture and various sounds) which I never used on my A540.
Although I never expected to use it, the movie mode is excellent. It's still not a replacement for a dedicated camcorder. But I have used it on a number of occasions to capture audio and video when a picture just won't do. Standard movie mode is 640x480 (VGA) quality at 30fps, but you can raise the capture to 60 fps at 320x240, or lower it to 15fps at 160x120. The A570 can now capture video up to 1 hour or 4GB whichever comes first. Video files are very large (around 1.9MB/second at 30fps) but they compress extremely well with QuickTime Pro's MPEG4 codec.
With the A570IS, Canon also addressed some of my minor complaints about the A540. Most notably, the LCD screen is much higher quality and higher resolution. The case plastics seem more solid, the small rubber door covering the USB - A/V - power ports pivots open from the side not the top, and the handle area no longer has a chrome insert which had a tendency to fall off. The ring that covers the conversion lens adapter mount has a chrome trim, making the camera more attractive but at least on my A570IS it is more difficult to remove than the A540.
Once again, I looked at the Canon A710IS which offers a 6x optical zoom, but has the same 7.1MP sensor, optical image stabilization and user interface with the older Digic II image processor. In the end, after trying both cameras in the store, I again settled on the A570IS. The A710IS is noticeably larger (about 0.25 inches wider and slightly taller), and the more complicated lens takes longer to startup and to zoom. Both cameras have a limited number of stops in their zoom range, but this is noticeable on the 6x of the A710IS where it is not noticeable in the 4x of the A570IS. For me, the larger size wasn't worth the extra zoom. And the benefits of Digic III are impressive.
In summary, Canon A570IS Pros:
- 7.1 megapixel sensor, 4x optical zoom
- ISO 80 to 1600
- optical image stabilization for higher ISO or zoom, even during video capture
- optical viewfinder for shooting with the LCD off
- full manual controls (shutter priority, appeture priority, full manual)
- preset and custom white balance control
- outstanding photo quality, even in relatively low light (good color balance, very low noise at higher ISOs, almost non-existent chromatic aberation)
- Digic III processor offers face detection, makes more intelligent decisions on exposure, and flash levels
- very good results from built-in noise reduction for slow shutter speeds of 1.3 seconds or greater
- very fast startup and shot-to-shot speed (flash not withstanding)
- excellent and speedy auto-focus even in low light (although the AF assist light can slow this down)
- orientation sensor recognizes if you have rotated the camera to take a shot
- flash adjusts angle based on wide-telephoto zoom
- built-in red eye reduction during playback lets you select an area to remove red eye and save as new or overwrite the existing image
- surprisingly usable movie mode
- outstanding user interface: options are well laid out and easy to locate, very well thought-out record and playback options
- extremely fast user interface and playback performance, even zooming in on photos
- high resolution LCD screen
- well built case, very comfortable grip
- uses SD cards and supports high-capacity SDHC (takes advantage of high-speed SD)
- uses 2 AA batteries (at least 2500 mAh NiMh rechargeable recommended)
- very good battery life (approx 400 shots on 2 rechargeable NiMh AA, with the display on)
- replaceable lithium battery protects settings when changing batteries
- supports optional high-power flash, conversion lenses and underwater case
Cons (to me, all very minor):
- flash recharge time is acceptable but not great (4 - 6 seconds between shots using NiMh batteries)
- preview display blanks while flash recharges
- Auto ISO for indoor flash close-up pictures doesn't seem to select below ISO 200; you can force ISO 100 in Program or manual modes
- ISO 1600 is of questionable real-world use because of noise and artifacts from noise reduction
- noise reduction cannot be adjusted or disabled
- it is possible to insert the SD card upside down and you don't realize until you try to close the cover (would be easy to break the cover if you force this)
- the markings for the battery orientation are difficult to read
- no RAW image support, but you can select from 3 different compression ratios for image quality
- bundled 16MB card is useless - buy a 2GB card
TIPS:
1) make sure you do a low-level format before you use your SD card in this camera, even if you had formatted it for another Canon camera. It makes a significant difference in shot-to-shot speed
2) always use high-capacity (2500 mAh or greater) NiMh rechargeable batteries - the flash recharge time is much improved (though still 4-6 seconds)
3) for indoor flash close-up shots, may need to override ISO to 100 for better quality
4) for outdoor shots in bright sun, setting exposure -2/3 gives better control of bright areas
5) if you use the conversion lens adapter, don't plan on using the built-in flash which is partially obscured by the adapter. I haven't tried it, but would expect the external flash to not have this problem.