Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS / Digital IXUS 80 IS Digital Camera

I recently traded my Sony P200 for a Canon SD1100 and I haven't looked back. The camera is so light that I have carried in my shirt pocket almost constantly in the month that I have had it. I find myself taking it out all the time to snap pictures of whatever might be interesting as I walk to and from work. The picture quality is so good, and the 8 megapixels allow for such a large picture, that I spend half the night looking at the pictures at full size on my computer just to find the little things I never would have noticed with my naked eye. I must admit here that I am completely an amateur and this will not be a review that discusses the differences in ISO and line blurring and all the fancy things the regular folks don't know much about - I will simply discuss what it is like as an average user of a point-and-shoot camera.

This camera comes in 5 different colors to appeal to all the tastes of the general population. There is no black to suit the club photographers out there, but the grey is a nice neutral color (I thought it a bit more appropriate for myself than the "pink melody").

As anyone who has used a Canon camera can tell you, they are exceptionally easy to use. The menus are intuitive and the buttons are large enough that you don't press all the keys when trying to press the one that you need. A friend of mine that owns the previous model (SD1000) has complained many times about the silliness of a feature that causes the menu screen to close if a decision is not made with enough haste. Thankfully, that little programming snafu has been corrected and you may now spend as much time as you like adjusting the proper shutter speed and ISO settings without fear that you will once again have to navigate to that point.

The screen on this camera is a beautiful 2.5" of intense color and ample brightness. I had wanted a camera with at least a 3" screen but I found that most of those were available on cameras that were in the next price category up. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the screen was more than large enough and I never found myself getting a little too close to the camera to see what was happening in there (as I occasionally did with my P200). For those who still enjoy a peek through the viewfinder, you might be a bit let down - as far as I can tell, the image that you see on the LCD is more expansive than the one in the viewfinder. By my estimate, you only see about 80% of what the camera is really shooting. Also, the viewfinder is physically small and a touch difficult to look through; those blessed with glasses need not even try.

The pictures themselves are impressive in both size and quality. This camera is 1 megapixel improved over my last camera but I believe that to have made a great difference. I have been taken many a picture of the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean as I come in to work (surgery rounds start at 6am...) and I often thought that my P200 was not quite capturing all the colors that existed in that exquisite daily miracle. It is only now, with my new SD1100, that I feel like I am really taking a true picture of the sunrise. And with all the size I have available, I can zoom the frame out to include the boardwalk and a bit of the NY skyline in those pictures.

One of the few technical aspects of a camera I do like to be aware of is the shutter lag. The reason being that I often attend sports events and make an effort to capture the baseball at point of impact with the bat or the football as it enters the arms of the receiver. The other night, I was lucky enough to attend the Sox/Yankees game with my SD1100. Many times during that very exciting game I attempted to catch the great batters in their moments of action. When I arrived home and began my picture review, I found that many of the photos had caught the batters mid-swing. The shutter was indeed fast enough that I could push down the release button a moment before that desired and actually capture what I really wanted to. Very rare was the picture that showed the Rodriguez dropping his bat or Jeter making his way to first base. I used to think that P200 had a minimal shutter lag but it seems the SD1100 has shrunk that time so much that I can now actually capture exactly the moments in time that I want to remember.

The battery has been more than adequate for me. When I use the camera, I might snap about 50 pictures at a time. Generally I leave the flash set to auto and it goes off with about half of the pictures. I usually turn the camera off between pictures and so I might turn it off and on about 10 times over the course of a day. With this type of use I have found that I need to recharge the camera after about 4-5 days of use. To do this, I place the rechargeable battery in an external charger and leave it over night. While I dont know the exact full-charge time, it is certainly at that point when I wake up in the morning. So far, it has never died on me, and if battery performance and life remains as it is, it never will.

There are two nice features on this camera that I have never had on a camera before: face recognition and image stabilization. I never noticed a problem with face detection and never really found myself capturing the horse's derriere rather than my father's head, as those Sony ads would have you think we all do, but I have often had a problem with image stabilization. I should mention that I often take candid pictures from the hip or from moving cars and I can rarely stop moving or really look at the camera before I snap the picture. Too often before, I would get home to find that all-too-many of my pictures were streaky messes and worthless. Now, my fancy new image stabilizers, my pictures all come out clearly - even those taken in suboptimal lighting conditions. I don't know how, when, or where it works, but I know that it does.

Overall, this camera is a delight. I easily carry it with me everywhere I go, I have no trouble using it or adjusting it to my liking, and best of all, the pictures it captures look great!