Digital Trends

Excellent point-and-shoot camera!!!

by Kristina on May 9th, 2006 at 11:22 AM:

The Canon SD630 is a significant upgrade to our 1st digital camera (Canon A510). Right out of the box, setup is simple, and all controls (albeit somewhat smallish) are well placed and function easily. Quality and style are the name of the game for the SD630. Images are of excellent resolution for a 6MP camera and are more natural in color than the A510. There is some lens corner softness but only noticable when enlarging beyond 5 X 7. The flash produces well exposed images and there is no more red-eye in any of the group images I have taken!!! The movie mode produced very high quality video results with average audio sound quality. What I really like is the 3in LCD display that has very good resolution. I compared the LCD display of an SD600 side by side to the SD630 under natural sunlight and the SD630 gave more true color rendition. Also, the LCD display seems to be quite resistant to scratching. ISO 800 images are very noisy but you can grab a shot when needed whereas before it was impossible to do handheld. All in all, a very impressive camera with high quality, is extremely easy to use, very accurate focusing in AiAF and great image capturing. BTW I just had the chance to compare the SD630 and SD700IS side by side for image stabilization and found IS helpful but still there was noticable "shake". To make the camera "perfect" IMHO would be to eliminate the very slight lens corner softness, have the ability to capture images at ISO 1600 with minimal noise and pack more battery pack power (now ~150 shots, with LCD on) and for < $700...