Great 4x zoom with IS camera with good price

I bought this camera back in April from Amazon for $300.
You may be able to buy it less now.

I would like to focus my review on how and why I came to select SD700IS and what other cameras I reviewed rather than spending time explaining its functionality in details as I am sure other reviewer has gone over them thoroughly. I hope that viewers would find this review helpful.

I have been using Canon A60 since 2003 which I was very happy with but was ready for an upgrade. Canon A60 is 2 mega pixel subcompact (4x2.5x1.2 inches) with 3x optical zoom. It weighs 215g or 7.5oz without battery and it takes (4) AA batteries.
I had great experience with A60 in both as camera being used to take mainly my son who was born 1999. I was also satisfied with its picture quality. But while I enjoyed using this camera, I always wanted to have 1) smaller & lighter camera and 2) more optical zoom capability.

I typically carry my camera in my jacket or pants pocket and always felt it was heavy and bulky. 7.5oz may not be that heavy but with 4 AA batteries, it felt very, very heavy. And only having 3x optical zoom seems inadequate when you have while your kid is on the baseball, football, soccer field. It worked great for taking family pictures on any get-together occasions where you do not need much of zooming, though.

I spent a lot of time reviewing cameras from various brand on the Internet as well as stopping by at the local stores and actually see and hold them. The dpreview.com was most helpful as it provided in depth (and it is very in-depth) reviews on selected models as well as comparison on picture quality with other cameras. In addition to researching on the Internet, I highly recommend everyone to stop by the store and look at the camera before you buy it. It is one thing to check specs and learn all the measurements, but you need to actually see and hold cameras in your hand (it did help me making decision).

I dropped Sony, Pentax, Fuji and Casio due to its optical zoom availability; only 3x on compact cameras. I might add following comments;
- Sony cameras received good reviews on their picture quality
- Fuji received best reviews on the picture quality
I recommend Fuji for those who are okay with 3x optical zoom. Another reason I dropped Fuji was that it did not offer view finder on all its compact models. It will be very hard to look image on the LCD you have sun on your back.
I narrowed my selection to the following 3 models from Canon. I picked Canon from my experience with A60 as well as it constantly receiving good reviews from almost all the reviews I checked. Canon also offers zoom bigger than 3x and with Image Stabilizer (the name may differ by manufacturer) as you will need this if you go for more zoom.

1. SD700IS
2. SD800IS
3. A710IS

SD700IS is 6MegaPixel camera and comes with a lens equivalent of 35mm (in 35mm film camera) which is considered wide angle lens. It is helpful to have the wide angle lens if you take pictures of your family gathering where you would like to cover wider space in close proximity. The lens also zooms to 140mm equivalent (4x of zoom).
Its size is 3.56 x 2.22 x 1.04 inches and weighs 5.3oz.

SD800IS (7.1MP) is very similar in looks and size, but comes with wider angle lens at 28-105mm equivalent (3.75x zoom). The 28mm is still rare as I leaned that it is difficult to create this wide angle lens in the compact camera. The camera slightly suffers picture quality as it may have suffered in quality as it achieved 28mm wide angle.

A710IS offers the best value as this 7.1MP camera comes with 35-210mm equivalent (6x zoom) lens. But you pay the price by having bigger and heavier camera as the size increases to 3.8 x 2.6 x 1.6 inches and weighs about 7 oz. It also takes 2 AA batteries where above 2 models comes with smaller and rechargeable Lithium Ion batteries.

I ended up selecting SD700IS as it had better picture quality against SD800IS and the smaller size against A710IS. So far, I have very happy with the picture and video it is taking. I wish I can get bigger zoom than 4x, but with this camera size 4x is probably the maximum you can get at this point.

I saw some reviews questioning durability of the Canon compact cameras. I have a friend who has been using Canon SD500 for a couple of years and she went through poking LCD to dropping the camera from 3ft to the pavement. And it is still working with some pixels on LCD not working. Other than that it is working perfectly, and that was good enough proof for Canon's durability for me.

PS
Canon just released SD850IS. The size and weight is similar to SD700IS and SD800IS. The zoom is at 4x with 35-140mm equivalent lens. Casio also come out with 7.2MP compact camera with 7x zoom. The model number is Exilim EX-V7SR.