Outstanding, pocketable camera! Great for pictures of people!

The SD1000 is an ultra compact (3.38 x 2.11 x 0.76 in.) camera with 7.1 Mega Pixels and a 3x optical zoom and Canon's new DIGIC III processor. I purchased this camera am my family's main camera. My criteria were: small enough to take anywhere, good pictures of people/kids, fast response to photo kids on the move, and good quality movies (camcorder replacement). The SD1000 is a great fit and the only real compromise I have to make is no optical zooming for movies, and dealing with red-eye in almost all indoor pictures. My specific thoughts on this camera are:

Size: Perfect, tiny size that easily fits into jeans pockets. Most of my missed photo opportunities were because I didn’t have a camera on hand and this camera eliminates that because you can easily fit it into a pocket any time

Image Quality: Outstanding for such a small package. Great photos under all types of lighting: inside and outside, and even under lower-light conditions. The face detection is also very helpful and produces outstanding pictures of people. I think taking people pictures is where this camera really excels. Colors are outstanding and are realistic but with a nice punch. The default sharpness setting it a bit soft for my taste but you have full control of sharpness, contrast, saturation, skin tones, and colors under the custom colors setting (The control is great but the location under custom colors in the menu is a bit odd.)

Movie Mode: Good quality videos that rival video cameras (except while zooming, unfortunately.). Movie files are in motion jpeg format very large at 2MB per second, but you can record clips up to 4 GB. There are several settings to choose from including resolutions of 640x480 or 320x240 and frame rates of 15 or 30 frames per second. There is also a high speed option of 60 fps at the lower resolution and even a time-lapse option that lets you take pictures at 1-2 second intervals for up to 2 hours. The down side to movies is that you can not use the optical zoom while recording. You can use the digital zoom up to 4x, but the image quality degrades and becomes rather pixilated at high digital zoom. In addition, there is no optical or digital image stabilization so you have to have a very steady hand or your movies will end up being very shaky.

Build Quality: The body feels very solid and high quality. My only complaints are a flimsy battery compartment door, small plastic lever that holds the battery in place, and the zoom rocker feels a little bit loose. In general, a very well built camera that I have carried around for hours in pockets and it still looks and functions like it was brand new.

Battery: So far, so good! I charge the battery after each day of shooting and I am yet to see a low battery indicator so I am happy. I plan to purchase an additional battery and have found high capacity, generic batteries for around $10 so battery life shouldn’t be a problem. In addition, this camera has an optical viewfinder so you can extend the battery life significantly by turning off the LCD display.

LCD Screen: Very impressive 2.5” display with excellent definition. It is also covered by a scratch resistant cover. Overall I am very pleased with the display and have yet to have it washed out in daylight pictures. It is also very nice for viewing images.

Extras:
Optical Viewfinder – Very nice to have in a camera this size! this works well under direct sunlight or when trying to conserve battery life.

Color swap – Allows you to swap one color for another in pictures.

Color accent - A very cool feature where the image is black and white except for a certain color that you designate. This feature is very easy to use and really adds an artistic touch to pictures. Example: beautiful pictures of my 2-year old daughter where only her pink jacket is colored.

In-camera red-eye removal in review mode – You can eliminate a lot of red-eye directly on the camera in review mode. This would be much nicer if it was done automatically, but still gives pretty good results.


Overall I am very happy with this purchase and very impressed with the camera and pictures that it produces. I would definitely recommend this camera to anyone wanting a pocketable P&S camera with great image quality.