Digital Trends

This very compact, sleek 7-megapixel digicam is amazing. Smaller than the proverbial deck of cards but about as thick, the SD500 (around $450) is truly a go anywhere point-and-shoot digicam. It slips so easily into a pocket you'll take it with you everywhere and that's a good thing since you'll grab great spontaneous photographs all of the time. And it's light years ahead of any cameraphone, today's chic casual photography solution.

The all-metal SD500 has a 3x optical zoom with a 37mm-111mm range (35mm equivalent) that mirrors the classic film point-and-shoot zoom. Unlike 20^th Century film cameras, this one has a large LCD screen to frame and review your images (2 inches rated a decent 118K pixels). This camera does not have all the bells-and-whistles found on higher-priced Canons but it's clearly not designed for the frustrated Lee Friedlanders out there. It's for the person who wants style, convenience, simple operation and good quality... meaning about 99 percent of the people on the planet!

*Editor's note 9/7/05: Canon is introducing an updated version of this camera, the SD550 for $499. The key differences between them are the SD550's larger LCD screen (2.5 versus 2 inches), four new scene modes including Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks) as well as an improved movie mode. With the introduction of the newer model, the price of the SD500 is quickly dropping to around $400, making it, per David Elrich, one of the best deals this season.