A great camera at a reasonable price

It's Christmas and it means it's time to 'invest' your money in a gadget. This year I plead my wife to let me buy a Christmas gift for myself and here I have: a Canon SD600.
The Canon Elph line has lots of similar models: SD450, SD550, SD800, SD900 etc... why did I choose SD600? I'll tell you why in detail as I review each feature. I also choose to bypass the details on specifications, which you can read on any Canon advertisement.

Picture:
I buy a sub-compact camera with the understanding that I have to trade quality for size, so I don't expect a lot from SD600. In general outdoor pictures are very good. The images are sharp, the colors are live but nothing spetacular. I tried to print a couple photos with my Epson PictureMate, they are all good.
Indoor pictures: I think SD600 fares pretty good, much better than my previous sub-compact Pentax Optio. Pictures in low light are better focused thanks to AF assist beam. Red-eye problems are reduced thanks to better flash. Close-up pictures are very good, not overexposed when using flash. Pictures taken with flash in a range of less than 5 feet are very good. Up to 8 feet they are still good, especially if there is some light in the background.

Control:
Overall it's easy and intuitive. I have no problem using the camera without reading the manual. Most controls are well placed, enabling a casual user to use the camera immediately. People with big hands may find the some difficulty in using the buttons, dial etc... especially using the optical viewfinder, but well, this is a sub-compact camera.

Lens:
To me the quality of the lens is very important if not the most. Many cameras carry cheap plastic lenses, yielding bad, distorted pictures. SD600's lens is all glass, made with Canon special technology that results in a good sharpness for 6M resolution (if the resolution is high but the lens is not good enough to capture the details then it produces a bigger resolution image but a lower quality one).
The lens is, unfortunately, a retractable one, which means it protrudes every time you power it on. This will eventually wears out the motor and makes it dead. I have a camera dead because of the dead motor. My brother and my sister in law both had their camera dead for the same reason (If you concern about this you can consider Sony cameras. Sony has a few models that have static lenses, which don't move when you zoom in or out).

Body:
I need a small camera that I can carry anywhere any time. So the size of SD600 fits my purpose. If you don't have the same need by any means avoid the sub-compact cameras. Why? In general bigger cameras have bigger lenses, bigger flashes (or pop-up flashes), more features and thus produce better pictures. You only buy smaller camera for the purpose of easy carrying, at the expense of quality and features. SD600 body is all metal, solid. I don't feel like holding a cheap plastic toy (after all I'm a man not a boy)

Resolution:
If you don't have a need to print hard copy of your pictures do not spend extra money on bigger resolution, assuming all other features are the same.
Manufacturers always emphasize on big resolution but unless you need it for hard copy printing, there's no use to have too many pixels, you spend more money for nothing.
SD600 has 6M, which is more than enough to print 8x10 or even 11x14 pictures. More pixels don't produce sharper pictures on screen. If you have 19 in or even 21 in monitor 6M are more than enough.
That's the main reason why I chose SD600 over SD800 or SD900. The later 2 have bigger resolutions (7M and 10M respectively) that I don't need and have to pay for it.

LCD screen and Optical viewer:
SD600 has pretty big screen, 2.5 in. However a big screen has its side effect: it eats up lots of battery. To make the matter worse sub-compact cameras carry small rechargeable battery pack that has limited life. Fortunately SD600 has optical viewer that helps tremendously in case you need to conserve energy. That the reason why I chose SD600 over SD630. SD630 is the same as SD600 except that it has a bigger LCD and no optical viewer.
LCD screen on SD600 is good not only in size but also in resolution. This provides sharper image than SD550. Also, the image you see on LCD is almost the same as the true picture (I guess it's about above 95%). In many other cameras LCD covers only 85% of the true picture.
Optical Viewer is a little disappointment to me. I say 'little; because given the small size of the camera, there is little room to do otherwise: it's too small, covers only about 80% of the true picture and has no adjustment for nearsighted people like me.

Battery:
One problem with sub-compact cameras is that they have no room to accommodate AA batteries and thus always have proprietary rechargeable battery pack. If you have a habit to review a picture after it is taken like I do, or you always use LCD, the battery will deplete fast. So, although it's optional you practically have to add the cost of an extra battery to the cost of the camera.
Years ago a battery pack may cost you $50 but fortunately today it cost less than $10 to purchase an extra battery for SD600 (ebay price is $8 including shipping).
A charger is also included and it can be plugged directly to an outlet without any cord. This is compact but causes problem if the outlet doesn't have enough room for you to plug in. The supplied charger is important because without it you have to use your camera to charge the battery and thus you cannot use it until the charging is complete, which is about an hour and a half

Flash and AF assist beam:
I can say all sub-compact cameras have weak flashes, SD600 is no exception. However testing the flash on SD600 gives me some surprise. Pictures as far as 8 feet are still acceptable. A good feature that helps pictures in the dark is AF (automatic focus) assist beam. This feature helps the camera to focus in low light, yielding better result (the sub-compact I had, Pentax Optio, doesn't have AF and many pictures are fuzzy because the camera cannot focus in the dark)
Another problem that plagues small cameras is red-eye. Because there is no room the flash is placed close to the lens and causes red-eye problem. SD600 is no exception but I'm surprised that the problem is much less than other cameras that I had.

Memory:
SD600 uses SD (Secure Digital) card. The choice of SD is excellent since SD costs much less than its competitors. For example you can buy 1G SD from ebay for $25 including shipping, versus $35 for a 1G Compactflash memory. According to the specifications SD600 can accommodate up to 2G card.
The only (minor) complaint I have is Canon includes a meager 16M card. I think at least a 64M should be included, given the cheap prices of memory nowadays.
Another advantage of SD is that it's small and consumes less energy.

Video: I don't like to use camera to capture video, much less sub-compact cameras. However SD600 capability on video surprises me. First it can capture 640x480 30 frames per second, which is a full frame under normal speed. Older cameras I have can capture only 320x240 at 15 fps which is small and jerky. The movie size can be as high as 1G, which is quite large. However most other competitors don't limit the size of the video file, their video file can be as large as the capacity of the memory card. SD600 can accommodate 2G card, so I don't understand why Canon doesn't allow the video size that big. One interesting feature of SD600 is that it can capture video at high speed, 60 fps, which is very useful to capture fast action in sport events.


Other Features:
Some reviews complain about the lack of manual features such as manual aperture but I think this complain is irrelevant. Sub-compact cameras are made for easy carrying and point-and-shoot purposes. If you expect features like the ones on big cameras such as manual speed/focus/aperture, pop-up flash you'd better buy big cameras.
To me SD600 has more than enough features in its class. Here are some of the other features worth to mention:
- underwater case: this case is optional. You can buy an underwater case for about $40, which is very affordable. In the past optional item like this costs you an arm and a leg.
- Noise-reduction for low light: in low light where exposure would be long this feature is automatically invoked, resulted in picture s with less noise
- Optional flash: if you need to expand the flash range Canon has an optional external flash (model HF-DC1) that costs about $120. The flash comes with a bracket and when mounted, fits nicely. $120 seems to be a lot for a flash but external flashes are not cheap, I once paid $250 for one. The extended range is pretty good. I tried objects as far as 25 feet and it's still good.

In summary I like the camera very much. Besides some minor complaints this camera fits my puposes and also my bill. If you need a sub-compact camera this is the one.