Canon PowerShot SD800 IS 7.1MP Digital Elph Camera with 3.8x Wide Angle Image-Stabilized Optical Zoo

Customer Reviews:

Great camera
We bought this camera for a trip and I couldnt be happier. The features in this size camera are amazing. Granted I've been using a old Kodak DC280 2MP camera for the last 6 years and was happy with it for what it was, it was time time move up for higher resolution, low light capability, wide angle, and ability to do movies. I'm not a camera guru but have taken some nice pics with my old Nikon SLR.
I've only had the camera for a couple of weeks and have taken ~ 500 pics so I'm still learning all the features and quirks but here are some observations
The not-so-great:
1. zoom only moves in steps so it's sometimes hard to get it exactly where you want it.
2. Funky on/off button
3. No button for playback... you have to rotate the not-so-easy functon dial.
4. Function dial is small and it seems like it couldn have been designed better ( Although I love the small size of the camera ).
5. I havent owned a Canon before but other reviews point out the fact that earlier models were all metal. This one is metal on the front and plastic on the back. Not a big deal to me but the plastic will probably have worn off paint after some use around the corners
6. Plastic battery/memory card door probably could be better designed.
7. Other reviews said pictures look "soft" and I'd agree with that. Not quite as crisp as I wouldn have hoped for. But editing the pic's a bit can help that.
8. Photo stitch software isnt as easy to use as I'd like and doesnt work perfectly... some pic's the border between pics is blurry.
9. Plastic door cover over USB jack feels a little flimsy and I worry that the plastic piece that holds it on might break someday after continued opening and closing.
10. The camera is a little slippery without any type of textured gripping surfaces and I worry a little about dropping it.
11. To delete all pics on the memory card at once, you need to go into the menu system and select that feature but cant do it easily from the review mode.
12. When taking video's, the focus seems to be locked at the beginning of the shot.. if you zoom while taking a video things will be out of focus unless you return to the original zoom level when you started the video.

Pro's
1. Size matters... Easily fits in a pocket and thats worth it when traveling.
2. Image stabilization seems to work well.
3. Fast start up... turn it on and you can take pictures immediately
4. Great pictures and great in low light.
5. Feels solid and optical viewfinder works with the zoom (although with the LCD display I rarely use the optical viewfinder)
6. Beautiful LCD display... very detailed and crisp.
7. Auto image orientation works great.
8. Color accent feature is fun to play with
9. Having up to ISO 1600 availible is nice although you definately notice more picture noise at ISO 800 and 1600.. especially noticable at 1600
10. Face detect feature works great. I'm amazed how well it works.
11. Battery life is good and the compact charger travels well and works european voltages just fine.

Overall, I'm not disappointed in this purchase and would buy it again.
Battery life is good. I bought an extra battery off amazon for less than $20 just in case but never ended up using it on our trip.. as long as you charge the battery every day one battery got us through 1 day... although we didnt shoot much in the way of video's and that might drain the battery quicker. It's a little expensive with so many other options out there but for the size and features it was worth it to me.
--2006-12-17

It works for me
I think this is a great camera for its size and price. But don't expect it to do the job of a larger and more expensive camera.

I consider myself to be serious about photography, and I have an EOS 20D as my main camera. But I'm not going to take that everywhere, so I need a small point and shoot camera for snapshot occasions. I've taken this approach since film days, when I had a Leica Mini (way bigger than this camera) for my "little" camera.

I was in the market for a new "little" camera, and the key things I wanted--beyond taking good pictures--were a 28mm equivalent wide angle capability, a viewfinder, small (but not necessarily tiny) size, and an underwater housing. Then this camera came out with all of those!

Another feature I like is that it can mask the LCD screen to show a 3:2 aspect. I normally crop to this aspect in Photoshop, and while I generally take pictures through the viewfinder there are occasional shots where this ability to check the framing is useful.

Some reviewers have complained about softness at the edges at the extreme wide angle. I haven't noticed this, but I haven't used it for the sort of picture where it would be critical. (I'd choose my 20D for that sort of situation.) If you want wide angle photos that are uniformly sharp across the frame you probably shouldn't be using a pocket camera. There is only so much manufacturers can do with optics that will fit in a camera this size.

I think the construction of the camera is fine. There is always a compromise among weight, toughness, and price. Canon has made reasonable choices here. This camera may not be the best choice for every photographer, but it isn't reasonable to ask one camera to be the best choice for every situation.

Judging this camera against previous small cameras I've had and my expectations for it I am very happy. Judging it against my 20D it does better than I might have expected, but I never intended to judge it that way. Expecting a camera that costs less than 400 dollars and fits in your pocket to do what an expensive SLR with an expensive lens can do is silly. Even comparing it to a camera that costs twice as much and weighs three times as much is silly. But what you get for the size and price is terrific.

If you want a small camera that takes great pictures and can go wide this is the one!
--2006-12-17

More than satisfied--glad I upgraded before my vacation
This was my first digital camera upgrade from an old Olympus circa 2000--maybe I'm easily impressed. This camera worked out great for a recent vacation... and I'm glad we didn't lug around the old camera.

The biggest concern I had was the shutter delay. Apparantly all non-SLRs have some delay but I couldn't find any definitive information about this particular camera. Again, perhaps all modern cameras are similar to this Canon--but I can say without a doubt, that if you pre-focus you can take action pictures with this camera. I am impressed.

My ultimate reasons to choose this camera were:
--wide angle lens
--size

Surprisingly useful features:
--image stabilization (one of those rare features that actually has great utility and not just marketing value).
--video capture (I just didn't expect to ever use it and it's quite fun).
--"scenes" for auto-settings. The aquarium setting worked great for example.

Negatives:
--corners of wide angle lens are definitely soft and off color sometimes... but, really, it's minor and the primary drawback found in any wide lens. I find the gripes about this issue a bit unwarranted because I think all similar cameras have (effective) 35mm lenses. Bottom line: I love the look of wide angle that I'm glad to sacrifice a tiny bit of quality to get the great shots.

--Flash is not that great. Personally, I found myself using the "AUTO HI" ISO setting (where it's still auto-ISO, but tends to use higher values) in order to take low-light photos. They're grainy, but if you have at least some light I still like the results better. I don't know if the flash is just poor at picking the right power for the subject's distance or what--but the flash pictures just didn't turn out that great.

Regarding the review comments about the flimsy battery cover... When I first saw this I thought, "oh, is that all they're talking about? who cares" The door cover on the battery is fine. It's not metal like the rest of the camera case but it's fine. However, the cover for the AV and USB cable hook up is totally flimsy. It has this plastic tether/hinge thing that makes me very concerned... however, it seems to be well designed and simply "feels" cheap. Even if this fell off I wouldn't be terribly concerned. I guess my point is that the battery/SD cover is fine!

Finally, something I noticed as I was optimizing a bunch of vacation photos today...the exposure and color balance is awesome in this camera. Again, maybe I'm just easily impressed but if I had gone through 30 images as I did today with photos from that old camera I know I'd be using Photoshop's Auto-colors or Auto-levels to improve at least half of them. I barely touched any of the photos from this camera. They really are quite close to perfectly balanced.
--2006-12-17

Disapointed with picture quality
I was looking to replace my Cannon Digital Elf S300. I've had it for 5 years and was looking for something better. I was originally going for the Cannon SD630 but decided to upgrade to the Cannon Powershot SD800IS. After getting it home and trying all of its features this is what I found.

1. The pictures have alot more "noise" (grainy) in them than my old camera's pictures even on the automatic setting. And of course the higher you manually set the ISO the more noise you'll get. The pictures looked flat with no depth to them and sometimes the colors were a little more washed out than my old cammera (which by the way was the same price as the SD800IS 5 years ago.)

2. I bought this camera for low light pictures. It doesn't really do much better than the other camera's because they all have the same small flash size. I tested with over a hundred pictures and different settings and it still didn't impress me.

3. As far as the color swap feature, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I tried replacing red with blue and all's I got was a blue tint over the whole picture. I also tried color swapping my daughters shirt from pink to black and I just got the same thing - black tint over the whole picture.

I have to be fair and say that other than these issues the cammera seemed to be fine. But I'm taking it back because for that kind of money I expect it to take better pictures than my old cammera and it didn't. The only advantage it has is a bigger LCD screen and I care more about the quality of pictures it takes. I think Cannon went cheap on this product. They don't even use the Carl Zeiss lens anymore. He switched to Sony.
--2006-12-14

Terrific pocketable camera
I've had the SD800is for about two months now, and it is definitely the best 'grab and shoot' camera out there. We took it out of the box, charged the battery, and started taking pictures in full auto mode. Out of 100 pictures we took the first day, all were usable. The handling takes a little getting used to because it's so small.

I purchased this model specifically for the wide angle lens and because it has an optical view finder (which helps when shooting outdoors in bright sunlight.) My priority was to find a camera that I can carry with me at all times and will always get the shot. This one does not disappoint. For situations where I want the best possible picture quality, I carry my bigger camera.
--2006-12-10

- Canon