Picture Perfect

This past Father's Day I received a shocking but pleasant surprise – a shiny new Canon SD870IS ELPH point and shoot camera! The shocking part was due to the fact that my wife never buys technology for me, because I am so picky about my gadgets. The pleasant part is because I've been looking to replace our old SD200 that we've had for years. We both loved that camera because of it's small size, ease of use, and fast response time (when you have two fast-moving little ones, it helps to have a camera that can capture an photo right when you press the shutter release). We've also shot hours of video with the SD200, because even though we have a nice Sony camcorder, we never feel like lugging it around with us. The video quality is more than acceptable and it allows us to capture moments we would never have been able to with something larger. The SD200's 3.2 mega-pixel sensor worked fine for the kinds of shots we take.

So enter the SD870IS. The coolest feature about this camera is the “IS” at the end – Image Stabilization. For normal shooting it helps eliminate blur and even works on the large, bright 3” screen. (I was always jealous of other camera's big screens when all I had was the SD200's 2.5” screen). But the stabilization really comes in handy for shooting video. With such a small device, shaking is always a problem on video. The old camera's video always had a lot of shake and could be annoying to watch sometimes, but this new camera shoots nice, steady video that is wonderful to watch! And for photos, the 8 mega-pixel sensor allows us do more with printing and cropping than we could ever do before.

Over the years since the SD200 was introduced, Canon has added tons of cool little features to the software, too numerous to mention here, but several new shooting modes, and auto adjusting the image orientation while reviewing images are a couple of them that I really appreciate. The SD870IS still has some of the same issues as it's older cousin, most notably it's mediocre low light performance But overall, I am excited to have this cool new toy to play with, and I'm no longer lusting over the other cameras I see when we take the kids to Disneyland! Thanks Honey!