Digital Trends

Canon PowerShot SD880 IS December 10th, 2008 | by David Elrich

Features and Design

Available in silver or gold finish, the SD880 IS has the classic curvy lines of Canon ELPHs. The rounded edges set in apart from the zillions of Altoids tin-shaped digicams. On the front is a raised Canon logo which is nice and subtle while the camera’s full name is here as well. Nothing too blatant but you can’t miss it. The lens is surrounded by a metallic ring that looks very slick. Other than that you’ll find a small flash and a self-timer/AF Assist lamp. The lens is a favorite of ours—a 4x optical zoom with a 35mm equivalent of 28-112mm. You give up a bit on the telephoto end but the 28mm wide angle is a real joy. With it you can take wider family shots and great landscapes. Cityscapes look really special with buildings jutting to the sky, the list goes on. As you can tell, we strongly prefer the wide-angle option. Definitely check it out the next time you walk past a row of cameras at your local retailer to see why we’re big boosters of this feature.

The rear of the camera has been redesigned from last year’s 8-megapixel SD870 IS which has a similar feature set (4x wide-angle zoom, OIS). The 4-way controller, jog wheel and major function buttons are now all conveniently labeled, placed on the far right and given a curvy shape to fit the ELPH zeitgeist. The buttons may look different but they’re the same as you’ll find on any point-and-shoot: Direct Print with Canon printers, Playback, Menu and Display. The 4-way controller gives you access to ISO, flash, burst/self-timer, and landscape/macro. Surrounding the controller is a notched jog wheel you turn to move through menu options. An icon even appears on the LCD letting you know what you can change by turning the wheel (move through scene modes and so on). It’s very nicely done. To the left is the 3-inch LCD screen rated 230K pixels. Although not a huge number, the overall quality with its enhanced contrast is excellent and we had no problems framing subjects under a wide range of lighting conditions.

The camera is very compact measuring 3.69 x 2.24 x .93 (WHD, in inches) and weighs 7 ounces with battery and card. Basically you can take this with you anywhere which is a very good thing.

The top of the SD880 IS is straightforward. You’ll find the speaker, shutter button surrounded by the wide/tele zoom ring, a good-sized on/off key and a slider switch to move between camera, scene and movie modes. The camera only takes 640x480 clips at 30 fps (VHS) using the H.264 codec. And be careful! There’s a single pinhole mic to capture sound here so make sure your fingers don’t cover it up.

On the right side is a compartment for the USB-out while on the bottom is a metal tripod mount and the well that holds the rechargeable battery (310 shots per CIPA testing) and optional SD/SDHC cards.

All in all, the SD880 IS a very nicely designed, non-intimidating and thought-out camera.

What’s In the Box

The camera bundle is a good one. You get the camera (natch), battery/charger, USB and A/V cables, wrist strap, a pocket-sized 164-page owner’s manual, Direct Print and Software Starter user guides and a software CD-ROM. The disk (ver. 37) has ZoomBrowser EX 6.2, PhotoStitch 3.1 and EOS Utility 1.1a for PC and ImageBrowser 6.2, PhotoStitch 3.2 and EOS Utility 1.1 for Mac. These programs help you organize images, edit and make panoramas. We don’t know why but Canon also supplies a 32MB SD card yet they do. We know it’s for someone who doesn’t have an SD card and opens this as a present on Christmas morning and wants to take a few shots. Realistically how many people are sans SD card at home—or a dozen?

After charging the battery and loading a 2GB SD card, it was time to start shooting.

Image Courtesy of Canon