The new Canon PowerShot SD400 is very light (only 5.5 ounces) and it feels great in your hands, with its dimensions of 3.4 x 2.1 x 0.83 inches. Persons with large hands may have trouble using it since a two-handed grip is essential for taking a good photo, but it also may be considered a nice digital camera for ladies.

Canon managed to pack a lot of features in the tiny space. The front hosts the 3x zoom lens, a microphone, the electronic flash, a focus- assist lamp and an optical viewfinder window. The bottom includes a tripod socket, the cover for the battery and for the SD/MMC memory card. On the side there is a flip-up door to access the I/O connectors.

The power button and a green LED power light are on the top and all the controls are on the right side of the black panel, just near the LCD monitor (2 inches). The features can be adjusted by using the four-way cursor pad. You can jump from picture to movie by using three way sliding switch, while the Menu provides access to other important controls such as exposure compression, resolution, ISO and compression ratio.

You can use the five modes for taking pictures: Portrait, Indoor, Kids & Pets and Night Snapshot. There is no sports mode and you can’t find a manual control for the shutter speed. The limited number of zoom steps is also annoying and you can end up with a lousy picture if you don’t hit the right zoom. The camera chooses the shutter speed for you depending on what you choose: evaluative, center-weighted or spot metering. Being a tiny camera with a tiny battery the flash unit is underpowered (11.5 feet in wide-angle mode and 6.6 feet in telephoto mode). You can even choose 320 x 240 resolution.

The image quality is good, but little disappointing but there is a good range of details both in shadows and highlights. Also the red-eye reduction feature doesn’t have much effect.

A tiny camera, for prices ranging between $219 and $299, high performance and good enough image quality, recommends it as a good choice.

 

Author : Cristina