Canon PowerShot SD850 IS August 30th, 2007 | by David Elrich
Full Review
Features and Design The front is dominated by a 4x optical zoom that sits in the middle of the circle. It extends when you power up and closes up neatly when you power down. The lens is tad more powerful than most point-and-shoots, giving you a 35-140mm focal length compared to the usual 3x 35-105mm. It’s a nice plus when you want to bring your subjects tight but I’d like it to be a little wider (28mm) for shooting landscapes and in tight corners but that’s just my preference. Also on the front are a flash, a pinhole mic, an AF Assist lamp and a porthole for the viewfinder. A few unobtrusive logos are here as well but they’re nicely understated. In case you were wondering what the IS stands for, it’s Image Stabilization and Canon uses the preferred optical version to help eliminate blurry images. You’re going to pay a little more for this but to me it’s a very worthwhile investment. This camera measures only 3.56 x 2.22 x 1.04 (WHD, in inches) so the 2.5-inch screen dominates the rear real estate. The LCD is rated 230K pixels, a solid spec and it holds up under most conditions, even bright sunshine. There’s always the tiny viewfinder available in case the screen totally wipes out, a good failsafe option. Next to the viewfinder is a very awkwardly designed on/off button. Rather than placing it on the top, Canon engineers put it above the top right corner of the screen. It takes a sharp nail to operate it and is a bit of a pain. It’s not a deal breaker but let’s hope they fix this with the next generation. This camera measures only 3.56 x 2.22 x 1.04 (WHD, in inches) so the 2.5-inch screen dominates the rear real estate. The LCD is rated 230K pixels, a solid spec and it holds up under most conditions, even bright sunshine. There’s always the tiny viewfinder available in case the screen totally wipes out, a good failsafe option. Next to the viewfinder is a very awkwardly designed on/off button. Rather than placing it on the top, Canon engineers put it above the top right corner of the screen. It takes a sharp nail to operate it and is a bit of a pain. It’s not a deal breaker but let’s hope they fix this with the next generation. You’ll also find the four-way controller with center Func./Set button and three keys to change the display, access the menus and Direct Link to send images to a printer without a PC. The four-way controller is very familiar with the points of the compass giving access to the flash, ISO (Auto, 80-1600), single or burst mode (1.3 fps) and macro/landscape options. You won’t find anything super sophisticated here since that’s not for whom or what this camera is intended. In homage to the iPod, you can run your finger on the dial and the icons will change but this is eye candy, not really functional. Nice try, but the folks in Cupertino don’t have much to worry about.
The SD850 IS looks just a shade better than the zillions of silver-bodied aim-and-forget digicams for sale. It has rounded edges, some metallic accents and the classic “box and circle” design featured on ELPHs for over a decade. It’s nice but it’s definitely getting a bit tired. Canon’s a pretty conservative company so I shouldn’t expect pink or red cameras from this crew. When you think about it, I’m glad they put their resources on picture-taking rather than sparkly bling but that’s another story…
On the top of the right side is the main mode dial that gives you choices for playback, auto, manual, scene modes (11 of them from Portrait to Underwater) and video (640 x 480 pixels at 30 fps). As noted, there are no aperture- or shutter priority settings but in Manual you can change exposure compensation, white balance, swap colors
adjust the metering, compression rates and resolution. That’s pretty much it. Remember this is primarily a camera for snapshots—good ones at that—but still snapshots.
On the top of the camera is just the shutter and wide/tele zoom lever (no on/off, unfortunately). There’s a compartment for A/V and USB outs on the right side. The bottom has a tripod mount and compartment for the battery and SD/SDHC card slot.
Since this camera has no internal memory, Canon supplies a 32MB SD card but this is so small you should budget another $20 USD for a 1 gig edition. In the box you’ll also find the usual straps and cables, battery and charger along with a Canon Digital Solutions CD ROM Ver. 30.2 with programs to import files to your Mac or PC and perform basic editing chores. There’s plenty of printed material too including a basic guide, a 162-page owner’s manual as well as a software starter guide. This is a solid offering and all of your questions should be answered with this collection. Kudos to Canon since they don’t force you to carry a laptop to access the owner’s manual on a PDF file.
After charging the battery, popping in a 4GB SDHC card, it was time to hit the streets and start clicking…
Image Courtesy of Canon
by Adam on November 8, 2009:
“I've been using this around NYC for the past few weeks. It's been absolutely perfect. The optical image stabilizer is far better than any of the other digicams on the market and comes in handy when taking pictures indoors, in dim light, or at night. The...” More...