Canon PowerShot SD1000 7.1MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom (Silver) (OLD MODEL)

I had purchased a Canon Rebel XT DSLR as my "main" camera, but wanted something really small and simple that my wife could stick in her purse. The SD1000 was just the right size and that was the main reason I bought it. To my great surprise I quickly fell in love with this little camera and my wife doesn't get that much chance to use it. It's not a substitute for my DSLR, but it takes great pictures for its size and sure is handy to pack along. I bought the matching Canon camera case and hang it on my belt whenever I think I might want to have a camera along -- it is small and unobtrusive and the magnetic catch on the cover makes it easy to pull out the camera and snap a one-handed shot at a moments notice (makes me feel like an old-West gunslinger!) Another nice surprise is the video capability, which I wasn't even thinking about when I bought this. I setup the programmable button to enable video recording and I find that I use that a lot. It takes surprisingly good videos, and it's so simple and inconspicuous that I don't have to make a big production of it. (You can capture a lot of video on a 2GB card!) Actually, even when I get out my DSLR and assorted lenses for "serious" photograpy, I almost always take the little guy along too. It allows me to mix still pictures and videos, and when I've got a long lens on the DSLR, I can pop out the 1000 for a quick reasonably-wide-angle shot without worrying about changing lenses. There are probably "better" general-purpose cameras, but I've had this little gem for over a year now and am still delighted with its tiny size and big capability. A postscript -- I'm currently in Vail and have been packing this camera along to take pictures while snowshoeing and skiing. Not only is it really convenient, but the rest of my party has been amazed at the quality of the photos. The detail, contrast, and color is great and rarely is there any reason for subsequent photoshop enhancement -- even in snow scenes. The pictures I've been getting actually hold their own with the very expensive (and very heavy) professional style Canon DSLR used by one of the other folks on this trip, but I have mine with me all the time, whereas his mostly sits back at the lodge. I wouldn't claim this little point-and-shoot takes pictures at a par with a good DLSR with large-aperture lenses, but it sure won't embarass you either!

First of all, I've had 4 Canon cameras before this one (the legendary A80, the A95, the recent A560, and the Rebel XT, which was stolen). Also, I work as a photographer for a local newspaper and we constantly use high-end Canon SLRs and G series compact canons. Let me tell you that the quality of this little guy (the first Elph I've had) is impressive. Actually, I would say this is on top with the "G" and SLR series picture quality, if you know how to make a few adjustments. I've had the powershot SD1000 for 6 months, I've taken it to a few trips, parties, work events, and I carry it in my pocket every day. The features it has (like face detection, digital macro, time-lapse video, color accent, etc.), for the price, are fantastic. However, the best thing this camera offers, IMHO, is a quick operation. It takes VERY FAST pictures, and if you set the color to vivid, with a proper white balance, the images you get will surprise you. I recently had a trip to Cancun and took the camera with me. When I came back I wrote an article about my trip for the Sunday Magazine at my newspaper, and they used my pictures, as they looked very professional. If you're a casual photographer, you can't beat this price, get it now. There's ONE thing, however, I still hope canon introduces in the future: a more practical video mode format. I'm not saying the video quality is bad. Actually it is the best I've seen in ultra-compacts. The thing is, that after having owned a Pentax Optio s5z for a year (before this one), which used good quality divx compression (much smaller files), I found myself taking many videos without worrying about remaining space in the memory card. The "video thing" started growing a lot on me. However, canon uses almost no compression in the AVI files and so, for each 1GB of memory, you can only record 8 minutes of video (2GB = only 16 minutes!). About the image stabilization: I don't miss it. If your hands are not very shaky and you use the proper ISO, you can overcome this. However, if you're using 1600 ISO, you will see "grains" unless you keep the picture to "web sharing" size. It's normal with compact cameras. My next camera will be (if it's still on sale) the SD750, because I recently found it has a 3 inch LCD, and I don't really use the viewfinder in SD1000 (a personal choice). Bottom line: for vacations, every day use, social snapshots, pets, the occasional "artistic" inspiration, fantastic response and pro-quality images at a very affordable price, you can't go wrong with this camera.

I got this camera as I was stepping down from a Canon DSLR. I had been pursuing photography as a fun hobby for many years, and quite enjoyed it. Only thing was, although my photographs were good (trust me they were :-D ), they were probably like MOST amateur/hobbyist photographer's pics in that they weren't good enough to ever make a museum or "get shown." So I was spending a lot of money on "better lenses" and "better bodies" to get larger file sizes that were essentially sitting on my hard drives, never printing many except to put on my walls - which are finite, and show on my webpage - which doesn't get many hits, especially for that sort of thing. My breaking point was seeing some professional galleries online one day. The guy was using very expensive gear, and taking some rather breathtaking shots in some rather breathtaking locations. I realized that 1) I don't have the disposable income to get that sort of equipment, and 2) even if I did, I don't have the time to travel to places like that, and 3) since I'm not traveling much, if I am going to take a picture of something I probably already HAVE a picture of it anyway at this point, and finally 4) even if I did buy the pricey equipment, I just don't have quite the talent of these guys to worry about whether my prints will get "shown;" they won't, I'd be spending money to fill up my hard drive with pictures that are only 95% as good as the struggling professionals anyway. Another big issue I had dealt with with regards to the DSLR was bulk. I wasn't even taking it with me. My Fiancé had gotten this exact same camera and it was always on her. Her pictures when posted to the web were not any worse than mine. So I jumped on board, because "the camera you take with you is infinitely better than the camera you leave behind." Now I take quick and easy photos that I can share with family & friends. I let the camera do the heavy lifting on the photos, and if one comes out under or overexposed, I just take another one. The quality of the pictures is decent. They are not too soft, but they could be sharper. Then again, it's a sub-$200 camera and I jumped down from a $1000+ setup that I wished was sharper too. I save a lot of time just importing as JPEG instead of RAW (this camera doesn't support RAW by the way), and not 'tweaking' much. The images themselves come out pretty good 85% of the time. The colors are accurate, the sharpness is adequate, and the exposure is good, if slightly over (more on that in a sec). And since it's so pocketable, you're going to have it with you, which makes the "decent" photos you're going to take with it infinitely better than the "awesome" photos you didn't take with the camera that was too big to come along. CAMERA FUNCTIONS: The camera has a multitude of settings to fiddle with. They have lots of presets, from full-auto to modes tuned for "kids & pets," Night shots, macro closeups (flowers, etc), fireworks, and more. And for me - a control junkie - they also have a "manual" mode which is more like "Exposure priority" than full-manual. You have control over Base ISO (more on that in a minute), white balance (which features an option to set the white balance too), and even exposure compensation. I tend to think that the camera slightly overexposes pics by default, so I set mine to compensate for that here. One of my most-liked features is the ISO-shift that is available in Manual mode. Since picture quality suffers as ISO goes up, I try to keep the ISO below 200 whenever possible. With ISO-shift enabled, if I frame a picture and the camera determines that with the ISO I have set the camera shutter speed will be too slow & possibly create blur, it warns me by blinking a blue LED on one of the back buttons near my thumb. Pressing this button toggles the camera to a higher ISO for that shot only. However, if you decide that the ISO it selects is too high for your tastes and you'd rather try a steady hand to prevent motion blur, another press toggles your preselected ISO back into action. The size of the camera is a real boon. Considering its lack of heft versus the quality of the pics it produces, I'd say it's a winner. YES, you can find a camera that takes better pictures. You could even find a camera that's smaller. But you can't find one that's better at both than this little guy, and for the price it produces very acceptable pictures that are crisp enough to share online easily, or even make family album prints (think 4x6, 5x7, even 8x10). Sometimes I miss the quality of my DSLR. But then I grab my little camera and take a picture and remember that in the time it took me to take that picture, I'd still be removing dust caps and setting the parameters on the big guy, and I smile. I love my little pocket camera and I think most people that venture this direction will agree. P.S: I also tried a slightly more expensive model, the SD870. The pictures weren't any crisper nor the colors more vibrant. For the very few features it offered over the SD1000 model, I'd say it's just too much money. Daily, you won't notice a difference and in fact I found the SD870 more a pain to work the controls than the SD1000. And in comparison between the models, I could rarely get the Image Stabilization - which the SD1000 lacks - to make any noticeable impact on my pictures. Your mileage may vary, but in my experience the SD1000 takes pics just as good for less cost and less hassle.

I got the SD1000 from amazon last June, and have never been more thrilled by a digital camera. I've owned digitals since 1997, with a Canon, then an HP (I know, I know), and Casio, and now I've come back to the beginning. I am a relatively poor actor living in LA, and so I was extremely picky about what I wanted in replacing my HP after it was stolen. I really wanted initially to buy a sony cybershot, but it was a bit expensive, and I really have a problem with Sony's proprietary memory format. The Canon SD1000 met all of my expectations and more. It's small, and easily fits in a pocket. It's fast, has a good optical zoom, SD memory card use (I use a 2GB card) and rechargeable LiIon battery. It takes remarkable video for such a small device. I'm part of a youtube documentary called Musecast, and have used the camera to film whole episodes on the go. (search for "musecast youtube gathering" on youtube to see an example) It also has an amazing macro capability! Sure it's been a few years since I've owned a new DC, but I've never had that before, and it's amazing!! Plus, with almost no knowledge of how to do it properly, I've managed to take some awesome shots in very-low-light conditions. I uploaded a sample of me in front of the LA skyline to show. It also has time-lapse video, which I've had a lot of fun with, and several fun filters like individual color enhancement. It also features a nice accelerometer which knows which way the camera is oriented and turns the image on the display so it's always right side up! I have absolutely no complaints about this camera. I'm really trying right now to think of something, because I never trust reviews myself that are all positive like this... I was initially concerned about the design, which I thought was pretty ugly and retro, but it's quite nice in practice, once you get it in your hands. Oh! ok. if I had to complain about something, I'd say that the red-eye reduction is surprisingly poor. Almost every picture I take with the flash (with the settings on automatic) requires me to fix the red-eye in iPhoto. However, the camera itself has a red-eye removal tool!! I see that the price is way lower than it was a year ago. I can't see any reason not to buy this camera for the $160 it's being offered for now. I'm probably going to stick with Canon for a long time.

BEWARE zero stars - first of all, the audacity to charge me $285.03 for a “very good condition” camera that came scratched up and DOESN’T EVEN TURN ON. Absolutely diabolical. Not to mention, I was sent a completely different product (I ordered the camera with a black ring, received silver). Horrible experience, would not recommend. They don’t even make it easy to reach out to the third party seller.

First, this is not a review about all the technical features and a electronics expert review. This review is from a non-techy perspective on the Canon PowerShot. Please do read some of the other reviews for that from electronics experts. I needed to get a camera that was... 1. Really GOOD (Took Great Photos) 2. Super Easy to Use 3. Easily Portable. The Canon PowerShot SD1000 7.1MP meets all three of those criteria like a CHAMP. I carry it with me just about everywhere because I can it is such a PERFECT portable size. So I have a small camera with me at the restaurant when I am with my cousins. And I have a small camera with me when we visit Disneyland. And the picture quality is excellent. Again, I am not aiming for professional quality photographs. But I did want excellent quality photographs. My Canon totally delivers that. Where were you this past year where you were kicking yourself because you either didn't have a portable camera or where the quality of you camera (like the one on most digital phones) was poor? Well, buy this camera, and end that happening again in the future. Because this is your portable digital camera, you will want to also purchase a protective case for it to avoid scratches and nicks. Something like Kroo Camera Case for Canon Powershot Camera Digital Camera + Bonus Bundled with Universal LCD Screen Protector Kit + Cloth (Many Color Available) (Slim NylonPink) for the color options, Protective Case For CANON PowerShot Digital Cameras ***Includes Convenient Shoulder Strap & Mini Tripod*** which has both the case and cool mini-tripod for about the same price, or one of the spiffy leather cases like Canon PSC-55 Deluxe Leather Compact Case SD Series Digital Cameras . The one product "drawback" is that the Memory Card holds really only about 15 pix. Which is fine for one evening out with your family. However, when you are traveling for vacation or on a weekend wine country jaunt, you want the freedom to take LOTS of pix without having to run to your laptop and download them to clear some memory. While you are ordering your Canon here, just add a more robust memory card (I bought two because I just NEVER wanted it to be an issue and they are super cheap.) BLAZING 4GB Secure Digital SDHC Memory Card and you are good to go and have fun.

I had a canon A75 for 3 years and all of a sudden one day, the monitor became violet and it stopped taking pictures. The screen has black and violet lines and there was no coming back. If you google this problem, you will see that it happened to many people. Even I was perfectly satisfied with my camera I had to say good bye to it just because sth was wrong with it. I never dropped my camera, I took perfect care of it, so it is sth that canon has to do. I bought my A75 for 230 dollars when they were first in the market. Now, I bought this Elph camera. Looks good, so small. Sometimes I think it will fall from my hands, I feel like I need to tie it around my hand. It takes pretty high quality pictures but the pictures are not great. Even it is high quality picture, it is a poor picture, cannot reflect the real image. This is my opinion, some people might think different. But, if you are looking for sth that you just wonna carry in your purse and take pcitures, buy this one. Otherwise this is not a professional product. 3x zoom is good, too. by the way, canon, are you kidding us? What is 32 mb memory for?:)))) We have to buy the 2 gb card. I mean if you produce sth like this and selling it for 160 bucks and you already put the sd card in. why not make it, 1 gb or 2 gb? anyways.I really feel like, this camera will also go bad in couple of years but still it was a good deal and I bought it.

Pro's:Quick turn on Quick reshot time Great quality- not grainy Great qulaity for the price Has speaker Great video quality Small and sleek Holds battery life Con's: Need to add bigger memory The manual is on disk Great product. It offers many great features for the price. To give you prespective I am still in school so I needed something within my price range and great for point and shoot pictures. This camera is perfect for that- turns on and ready for next picture quickly. Takes great pictures- not grainy or off colored. It is also small enough to fir in my pocket or small purse. (I keep it in a small for fitting case to protect the back screen which broke on my last camera in my purse) I did add a bigger memory chip which was helpful for a recent trip with friends and I often forget to delete photos after loaded to my computer (However, you can find those cheap online or look for sales at stores like Circuit City or Best Buy). Also, I used the video feature for a class project. I was able to film many small videos (about 10 minutes total along with about 150-200 picture on the memory card) with great quality picture and sound. The only thing I have not figured out how to do is make the actual camera's speaker turn up but it sounds perfectly clear on my computer. Lastly, I did not have to download any special software to use the pictures. I put the memory card into my reader and just went on my way. I am super excited to travel around europe with this camera. Highly suggest this camera!

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