Digital Trends

Canon PowerShot SD630

April 24th, 2006 | by David Elrich

Features and Design

I've always like the styling of the Digital ELPH. About the size of a deck of cards, the front has a nice brushed metal finish plus there's an embossed metal ring around the lens. While not the flashiest camera around, it's sophisticated and compact, at home in a Louis Vuitton handbag or a jeans pocket. And it has a nice substantial feel. The SD630 measures 3.6 x 2.2 x .8 (WHD, in inches) and weighs 5.8 ounces with battery, memory card and wrist strap.

The front of the 6-megapixel SD630 is as basic as can be featuring the lens, flash, AF Assist lamp and a tiny mic along with the usual self-aggrandizing logos and nomenclature. The lens retracts into the body when powered down and it has a built-in cover. It's rated 35-105mm, the traditional 3x optical zoom range. The top has a basic mode slider switch (still, video and playback), power button, shutter, zoom toggle switch and speaker. There's no Scene Mode dial; you have to go into the menus to change them. The right side features a small door covering the USB and A/V out ports. The bottom has the battery/memory card compartment door and a tripod mount.

We've saved the best for last which is the rear of the camera and its 3-inch LCD screen. Although rated 173K pixels, the quality is good, not great. A better spec of 230K pixels like that of the HP Photosmart R927 would've been nice but you can live with it. Since this is a very compact camera, there's not much room for other controls other the usual suspects—keys for menu, display, direct transfer of images and a four-way control with center function/set key. Although there's nothing really new here, Canon did go a step further with the ergonomics of the controller, giving you the option of making it a Touch Control. When you enable this function, a large display of the function you press (such as ISO or flash) appears on the LCD screen. It's nice eye candy in record mode. When you're in playback, it transforms into an iPod-like scroll wheel so you can spin through the images. This was a very pleasant surprise and fun to use.

Canon supplies a solid kit including a rechargeable lithium ion battery/charger rated a so-so 160 shots, the downside of a large LCD screen. You'll get a wrist strap, USB and AV cables, a basic 26-page manual, a more in-depth 138-page owner's manual and a multi-lingual Direct Print User Guide to help you turn your files into snappy prints. Canon also supplies a 16MB SD card so expect to budget another $40 for a one-gig card. The company also supplies its Digital Camera Solution Disk (ver. 28.0) with ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5.5 and several Canon utilities. It's a good bundle, about all the average photographer needs.  

After charging the battery, inserting it along with a 2-gig SD card it took just a few moments to set the date/time and check the settings to ensure image quality was at the max (2816 x 2112 pixels). Then it was time to start snapping in earnest.

Image Courtesy of Canon