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Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH Digital Camera

User Reviews: Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH

Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH Digital Camera
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4.5 out of 5.0 stars 142 Ratings (46 Reviews)

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    I can't imagine this thing being any better!!

    By Brian  Nov 8, 2006 | 51 out of 55 found this Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH review helpful

    Pros: great features, small size

    Cons: none

    I bought this camera 1 month ago and all I can say is WOW! It really takes great photos and has some awesome features that I had no idea were even available. For my work I need to have a wide angle lens to take pictures of commercial buildings and I ...had been using an olympus 2020 with a bunch of lens adapters and a huge wide angle lens. I had a big case that I had to lug around everywhere and then I had to buy an external flash because the huge lens blocked the internal flash, what a pain. Now I have this SD800 with a 2 gig card and I can take like 1000 pics on the highest setting! Wide angle is no problem and I can carry this thing in my shirt pocket!! I have my camera with me all the time now, it really changes how I do things. The display is huge, you can actually see and review what you shot. It has a sensor that knows if you are holding the camera in landscape or portrait, so if you hold the camera sideways to take a shot of something tall, when you go to look at the results on the screen, the camera automatically turns the photo so it is displayed normally on the screen. Who would have thought it would have that feature? It took a few days of playing with it to figure out the menus, but that's the same as anything new nowadays. I like it, my clients are happy, it's easy to use, seems pretty robust. I didnt buy a case for it because they werent in stock yet, but I found that my leather case for my blackberry fits this camera perfect and makes it super easy to pull out for a quick shot and still keep it protected. Read more Less

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    SD800 not as good as SD700

    By Jack  Dec 5, 2006 | 27 out of 38 found this Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH review helpful

    Pros: Higher MP than SD700

    Cons: Not as good as SD700

    Sorry to say - I really wanted to love this camera, but alas, it went back! I bought the SD700 a few months back and LOVE IT!!!! Of course this was after the SD550, Sony P200, and a multitude of other cams over the years. The SD700 has great pictures... and video. So when the opportunity to "upgrade" to the SD800 came along, I could not wait. Well, the SD700 in my humble geek opinion is much better and now cheaper. The higher MP did nothing and the SD800 seemed "cheaper" more plastic than the 700. Also, there was a lot of �light shadow� in the video and while framing pics on the LCD, maybe it was not working properly, but I tried EVERY setting. By the way, I've had almost every point and shoot camera on the market (thank goodness for healthy return policies with Staples, Best Buy, Fries, and the like)! Only one person�s opinion! Read more Less

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    Finally, decent wide angle in a sub compact!

    By Yahoo! Shopping User  Dec 9, 2006 | 16 out of 16 found this Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH review helpful

    Pros: True 28mm wide angle, small size

    Cons: LCD screen supposedly fragile

    This is my 6th camera and second "SD" series from Canon. In a lot of ways, this is what I was looking for all along...a responsive compact with a wide enough angle to finally fit in the whole family in those holiday shots. There are VERY fe...w compacts that fit the bill in this regard, and I was starting to think it would never happen. If you find yourself backing up to fit everything into the picture, you need this camera. As far as build quality, speed, and software, Canon is consistently good. One surprise...the video quality is quite decent and good enough to burn to a DVD. It won't take the place of a camcorder, but it is quite good. I highly recommend this camera, and I think you'll find the wide angle much more useful than the high zoom numbers which many manufacturers are using to market cameras. Do you really want 12X zoom (which will look horrible short of an SLR), or do you want a usable compact that makes indoor and travel shots a breeze? Read more Less

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    Decent camera for point and shoot

    By Jason  May 4, 2007 | 9 out of 9 found this Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH review helpful

    Pros: The size, the wide angle, easy controls, viewfinder

    Cons: no battery meter, picture quality less than expected

    I bought this camera at the end of December 2006 and have taken about 1000 photos by now. I use it primarily for traveling since I work in the tourism industry in Greece. I do like the size (about the size of a deck of cards) as well as the overall c...amera, is fine. I do however have to say that I am not blown away by the picture quality. I know it's not an SLR and I am not comparing it to one, but I do have to say that this camera photo quality is only slightly better than my older 3 year old Olympus C310 which was my former pocket camera (and half the price of the SD800), but not as good as my 7 year old Sony DSC70 which still takes brilliant photos for an automatic digital. In low light, the pictures turn out grainy lots of the time which is a bit disappointing since it ,means I need to use the manual controls more often than I wish to do when on the go. Other than that, the camera takes wonderful photos in outside bright day light and the wide angle lens is far more useful to me than some super-zoom gimmick (if you have 7 megapixels, you can enlarge and crop a photo if you want something up close and in person). The video quality is better than average for such a small camera. Do I regret buying this camera, not really, just wish it were a little better in low light and had some basic functionality like a battery meter to let you know how long you have until you need to swap or charge the battery....the current indication gives you about 30 seconds before it goes dead. I don't think there is anything else put there that is beating this one right now in the area of size, wide angle and overall quality....a decent point and shoot camera. Read more Less

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    SD 800 Is

    By Jacob  Dec 11, 2006 | 8 out of 10 found this Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH review helpful

    Pros: Great focus, Nice pictures, big screen and fast turn-on

    Cons: Sometimes AiAf fails on macro

    I love it. I was looking at the Sony with the touch screen and this camera beats that by a mile. Nice shutter speeds, great focus and an awesome end result. You can't go wrong with this camera. It is small and very lightweight. It can take good p...hotos of anything. AND I MEAN ANYTHING. The screen is very big. I've had a Olympus, Fuji, older Canon and a samsung and this beats them all by a mile. The battery life is really good. My favorite features are when you take a vertical picture when you view it and turn the camera the picture turns with it. My other favorite feature is face detect. Don't be fooled by a touch screen. A camera is for taking great photos, and not for a touch screen. Read more Less

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    Canon Elph SD550

    By a  Dec 11, 2006 | 6 out of 9 found this Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH review helpful

    Pros: above average in picture quality (by itself), nice form factor.

    Cons: flash is definitely weak, a little bit heavy, still photos still need editing software to come out nice.

    I am not sure if the Canon SD800 is much different than SD550 in features beside a larger LCD and a minor increase in zomm. (Both has 7.1 megapixel). Still photo quality of most consumer-amateur camera needs adjustment with a decent photo-editing sof...tware. Read more Less

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    SD800 IS is a great point-and-shoot camera

    By Ken  Jul 21, 2007 | 4 out of 5 found this Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH review helpful

    Pros: can pump out beautiful shots at a pretty rapid pace

    Cons: If you want higher resolution and don't mind losing the optical image stabilization - the trade off

    The 7-megapixel camera's tiny body is shiny, curvy, and very attractive. But it may be just a bit too stylish for its own good. For instance, the power button is a tiny, illuminated half-oval built flush into the top panel; without actually press...ing it, you might easily mistake it for an indicator light or a design flaw. The Canon PowerShot SD800's mode dial curves slightly outward, flowing into the design of the camera, making a comfortable resting spot for your thumb. But it feels slightly slippery when switching camera modes. Beyond those quirks, though, the SD800 IS is a standard, straightforwardly designed Canon shooter, with a four-way navigation switch, additional buttons, and the shutter-release/
    zoom-rocker mechanism we've grown used to. The small, all-metal body weighs slightly more than six ounces, and at an inch thick, is just the right size for most pockets. Though small, the camera still has enough room on its body to hold both a 2.5-inch LCD and an optical viewfinder, a rare and welcome feature on an ultracompact. The SD800's most prominent feature is its image-stabilized, f/2.8-to-f/5.8, 28mm-to-105mm-equivalent lens. The 3.8X zoom range offers the flexibility of wide-angle focal lengths, while still providing a bit more zoom power than the average 3X point-and-shoot lens. Though the SD700 IS had a 4X zoom lens, the SD800's 28mm-equivalent wide shot more than makes up for the slightly smaller telephoto factor. In addition to the flexible lens, the SD800 IS has some handy snapshot features. The camera's sensor can be boosted to as high as ISO 1,600 for low-light or high-movement shots, though you'll want to keep it at ISO 800 or lower because of image noise. You can shoot 30fps VGA video, or bump it up to 60fps QVGA (320x240) to capture action footage for half-speed playback. If you're looking for manual controls, however, look elsewhere; like the SD700, the SD800's aperture and shutter settings can't be changed except for a long shutter mode, its focus modes are all automatic, and the camera's manual mode allows only exposure compensation, color correction, metering, and white-balance adjustments. The SD800 also uses the recent Digic III image processor, which Canon claims improves image quality, performance, and battery life. We didn't notice any significant improvements over the SD700's already good performance, but the SD800 seemed slightly more responsive than its predecessor. It performed excellently in our lab tests. Just 1.1 seconds after the power button was pressed, it was able to take its first shot and subsequently could snap off a shot every 1.3 seconds. Even with the onboard flash enabled, we experienced a lag of only 2 seconds between shots. Shutter lag was a negligible 0.4 second. The only disappointment was the camera's burst mode, which managed only one shot per second. Shooting speed (Shorter bars indicate better performance) Typical shot-to-shot time Time to first shot Shutter lag (typical) Casio Exilim EX-Z1000 3.5 1.8 0.3 Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T30 1.6 1.8 0.4 Canon PowerShot SD800 IS 1.3 1.1 0.4 Canon PowerShot SD700 IS 1.6 1.5 0.5 Note: In seconds Typical continuous-shooting speed (Longer bars indicate better performance) Canon PowerShot SD700 IS 2.0 Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T30 1.4 Canon PowerShot SD800 IS 1.0 Casio Exilim EX-Z1000 0.4 Note: Frames per second Photos were attractive, with fine detail rendering and solid color reproduction. Aside from some slight purple fringing along the borders of bright subjects, we noticed few distortions or aberrations in our photos. Image noise was acceptable to as high as ISO 800, manifesting as a fine grain that dulled colors but otherwise didn't mar photo quality too much. ISO 1,600 was a different story; a sparkly, static-filled mess that made the photo look as if it were received via a television antenna. The Cano     Read more Less

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    The Greatest Compact Camera

    By Alice  May 4, 2007 | 3 out of 3 found this Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH review helpful

    Pros: size, feel, LCD, image stabilization, various modes

    Cons: only 3.8 x optical zoom

    This has been the most incredible compact camera. I've taken fabulous underwater pics in the Caribbean (using special housing), even video of a sting ray, and great night shots of Shanghai harbour without flash and tripod. One I've enlarged t...o 11" by 14" and the quality and detail are unbelieveable. I've had it for 3 months and am taking it along with my Nikon 70 with zoom to East Africa next week. The Casio EX850 I bought last year is junk next to this one. The learning curve was the easiest I've experienced in digital cameras. Read more Less

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    quick shutter, good image stabilization

    By Fake  May 22, 2007 | 2 out of 2 found this Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH review helpful

    Pros: low shutter lag

    Cons: a bit chunky for an ultra compact

    This thing takes great photos, and the image stabilization is excellent. Canon's interface just gets better and better -- even with all the features, you never find yourself burrowing through levels of menus to find what you're looking for. B...est of all: they've given the ISO control a dedicated button, which makes it a snap to bump it up at night, or down when it's bright out. Now if only they'd tack on a few more manual controls, it would be perfect. My previous camera was a tiny little Canon SD300, which -- while lacking the pixel count and many of the SD800's features -- was also a lot more compact. Looking at the numbers, it's just a few millimeters here and there, but it adds up to this thing not quite fitting so comfortably into a pocket. Still, though, it's a big step up in every other respect. Read more Less

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    nice little camera

    By simon a  Dec 5, 2006 | 2 out of 3 found this Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital ELPH review helpful

    Pros: small, easy to use with great color. Quick shutter response. Image stabilization

    Cons: plastic case allows dust on shutter causing problems with night time auto shots.

    Very light weight and easy to use, good size LCD. The quality of the pictures are very good as is the video imaging. The audio is average but does the job. A little pricey for an image stabilization camera. The cheaper Canon models don't have thi...s feature however although some other manufacturers offer this feature at a much lower cost. I found I had to keep it well covered in my pocket otherwise dust would makes its way into the shutter and cause a snow effect on night time shots. Needed to be professionally cleaned to rectify. Overall a very good cheap camera. Very good value for money (if you shop around) Read more Less

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