Canon PowerShot SD870IS 8MP Digital Camera with 3.8x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black)
by Canon
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Canon PowerShot SD870IS 8MP Digital Camera with 3.8x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black)
Customer Review: What could be better?
Summary: 5 Stars
First, my apologies to the extreme photo enthusiasts out there who typically write these reviews. They speak of chromatic aberration, barrel distortion, noise at high ISO settings, the need for a view finder, and the like. I am not one of you. You are great and I love to read that stuff, but I needed a camera that had a big, clear display, was simple to operate, and takes great snapshots at family gatherings and on vacations.
If you are like me, then get this camera. It has a big, clear display, it is simple to operate, and it takes great snapshots at family gatherings and on vacations.
My wife and I were dazzled by the display. It is beautiful, even in bright sunshine. That is probably my biggest complaint with the reviews I read on this camera, that the LCD is not good in bright sunshine. Those reviewers are wrong. Even with my poor eyesight I have no trouble framing my shot and then viewing the resulting photo in any lighting conditions except the darkest of rooms, where even a view finder would have problems.
This camera has a LOT of options, but the options that I use the most are right there and as simple to find as any digital camera I looked at, and I looked at a lot of cameras. The options I need the most are:
1. On-Off. Sounds stupid, but on some cameras, this is not that easy.
2. Shutter button. Big and easy to find by touch.
3. Zoom. The toggle for this is small, but it is a small camera. On all small cameras the zoom buttons are small. I like the toggle right up there by the shutter button. You can easily move your finger from the shutter button to the zoom and back without looking.
4. Flash on-off. Done with the little round rocker on the back. The little round rocker on the back is small and the icons on it are hard to see for older people, like myself. However, this is a problem for all small cameras. It's just a tradeoff you make when you get a small camera. It has to be small to fit on the small camera. Once you find it though, it is easy to remember, plus when you touch this rocker, a larger representation of it appears on the screen. This will help you find the flash on-off function.
5. Timer. It is on the little round rocker also.
6. Reviewing the photos that you already took. This function is a little bit complicated on every digital camera I have ever seen. On the SD870IS, it is about as simple as any I have seen. It is something you have to practice if you want to be able to do it quickly and seamlessly.
7. Getting the photos off the camera. I have played with the software that comes with the camera and it is OK. No better and no worse than other software I have seen and tried to use. Rather than mess with it and also train my wife on how to use it, we just prefer to do it the way we did it with our old camera. Not real simple (certainly no more difficult than the Canon software), but we have a routine that works for us.
The picture quality is great. Some flash shots are a little over-exposed, but we adjust that with Picasa. Easy to do. Over all, the quality of pictures we get is better than we got with our old digital camera, a Panasonic. It would take some great pictures but it was inexplicably inconsistent. Still, it was a fine camera that took a lot of abuse. Still works but it has a too-small display and we were ready to change after 5 years with it.
One other little bonus...the camera is ready to go within a second or two of turning it on. That is a very nice feature. Some cameras take quite a bit longer. This is not a big deal for patient people, but it is nice.
Are there negatives? So far I have found one little quibble. I agree with other reviews that finding a way to hold this camera is not intuitively obvious. You have to work with it to find a way to hold it without getting a finger in front of the flash, or to hold it with one hand. I think that is the price you pay when you buy a small camera that has almost the whole back taken up by an LCD display. But for me, the huge LCD display was one of the big selling points. And I must say that I was not ready for how beautifully this display works.
I did not review the hundreds of other options with this camera because I probably won't use them much. But the Canon SD870IS fits my requirements very well. If your requirements are like mine, I encourage you to take a good look at it.
Customer Review: Very versatile point-and-shoot!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my first time owning a Canon. All of my past point-and-shoot cameras have been Sony Cyber-Shots. That said, I didn't know exactly what to expect from Canon, though I knew they had a certain standard of quality.
I'm extremely pleased with this camera so far. Not only is it comfortable to use, but the image quality is superb. I previously owned a DSC-W80, and I was so disappointed by how muddy the picture quality was. In this age where cramming more megapixels onto small sensors is the norm, I was afraid that this 8.0mp camera would be more of the same. I was very pleasantly surprised! Canon's noise reduction is mild, and doesn't destroy the image. The images are a little soft/unsharp, but that is to be expected from ANY digital compact, so that's not a knock at the product.
The camera comes with a 241 page manual. There's a lot to do with this camera, and I recommend thumbing through the manual to get an understanding of it all. In the most basic automatic mode, it takes excellent photos, but the real fun is in the other modes.
My favorite modes in particular are the color accent and color swap. Color accent allows you to select a specific color in the frame, and isolate it in the picture. So, let's say you take a picture of your friend who is wearing a red shirt. You tell the camera to isolate the red, and that will be the ONLY color visible in the photo; the rest is black & white. Very fun mode, and very simple to use. It works much better with bold and bright colors, so soft neutrals and pastels won't work as well. Color swap is similar to the accent mode, but you get to select a color to isolate, then a second color to switch it with. So if you take that picture again of the person in red, but then select a green color to swap it with, voila! The red shirt is now green.
Image stabilization is great, but please be sensible; it's not a miracle worker. If you're taking a quick indoor shot and want more natural lighting, it's great. Don't expect to take low ISO night shots without a flat surface.
The fact that the lens is wide-angle, too. This has a nice zoom range.
The manual mode is great. Up to 15 seconds of exposure! That's really amazing for a compact, in my opinion. I took a picture of my window at night, and got a nicely exposed shot of the light coming in.
Movie mode is nice, and allows digital zooming while recording, but no optical zoom.
The startup is really quick, picture reviewing is just as fast and easy, and the touch sensitive control on the back even has a scroll wheel effect if you move your thumb around the ring.
I've honestly never been so impressed by a compact camera before. I don't even mind that there's no optical viewfinder, because the 3 inch screen is so crisp and clear that you don't mind.
It also has one flat side so you can rest it in portrait orientation and take a timed shot without a tripod.
I can't say enough good things about it. An excellent buy.
Customer Review: I bought two of these and they are a hit!
Summary: 5 Stars
Cameras typically boast 10x, 12x, 18x optical zoom and that's fine for birdwatching and the like (no don't take portraits with that unless you like flat faces) but few point-and-shoot cameras offer a 28mm-equivalent wide angle lens, with Image Stabilization to boot.
Buy this with a spare lenmar NB-5L equivalent battery, and a good capacity SD card - at least 2GB, and you won't be sorry at all. The 28mm wide lens can take excellent indoor shots.
Wide lenses bring in more light so you're more likely to get pictures at better ISO settings (less grainy) and the IS capability allows you yet a lower shutter speed since shake is eliminated.
With the massive 3" screen, you can pretty much view the shot as it will appear on your computer or in a print, and the 4x6 bars as well as the gridlines will assist you in getting nice printable 4"x6" shots. You won't miss the optical viewfinder. People complain, but I've never used the optical viewfinder when I've had this huge screen. Remember, the medium format Hasselblads boast of allowing you to look at your shot with both eyes and not force you to squint through a small hole. The spare battery will make up for any power consumed by the LCD.
A small room, a scenic view, people shots (especially if you don't want to get your subject conscious by pointing at him or her) all are possible with the wide view - the focus is intelligent enough to catch off-center subjects.
I particularly like IS for getting those artistic blurs. Normally if you take a picture with a low shutter speed, there's the blur from subject movement, and the blur from your camera shaking. Eliminate the camera shaking blur and you get wonderful, artistic motion captured in a still. A street in a busy city, with people moving and blurring just enough to suggest motion.
The diminutive size of the elphs helps in keeping them highly portable, always accessible (by the time you pull your DSLR out, your shot is gone) and the wide angle and IS features only make this camera well worth its modest price. 8MP is much more than enough, you don't need to squeeze more pixels than you will ever use. At 300dpi, an 8 MP image will get you a good poster print without a problem. The full-screen (640x480, 30fps) video capture rivals that of a decent camcorder, except you've already got your clip while your camcorder is still awaiting fumbling in your bag.
Suggestions: Don't use the flash in low light. Make do with IS and push ISO to 200 and you will still love the pictures. Turn off red-eye flash and digital zoom, both are bad ideas. Any computer can correct red-eye, which is better than using the blinking red-eye flash that renders subjects blind. Digital zoom? You can crop and enlarge on the download and storage software (e.g. iPhoto) instead of forever pixelating (= ruining) your image inside the camera.
Customer Review: Amazing quality and features for its size
Summary: 5 Stars
Bought this camera after buying, trying, and returning the Olympus 770SW (it sucks btw, don't buy it), and have been very impressed. I love the manual controls on this camera, the actual usefulness of the preset scene modes, battery life, etc. I'd have to say the best feature by far is the detailed playback mode showing the brightness histogram and areas of oversaturation. It's tough to tell how your shot really turned out until you download to a large screen or print, and nothing's worse than finding out the blue sky in your picture recorded as a wash of white. With the detailed playback, I can see how the shot turned out, adjust the exposure compensation and white balance as necessary, reshoot, and viola! the perfect shot! I've confirmed on my laptop, TV, and from the printer. Sizing up the other issues most reviewers gripe or rave about:
LCD/lack of viewfinder--I always appreciated a viewfinder to get the best shots, but the crispness of the LCD in sunlight-or-less coupled with the above function eliminate the need for one.
Ease of use--very good. In auto mode does well, in manual mode does better. There are alot of tricks you can pull out of your hat in non-obvious ways, which makes it non-idiot-proof, but it's nice to have them there.
Barrel distortion--haven't noticed it and have been looking for it
Wide angle--its nice. eliminates the need to stich two pics together. don't think it's the right reason to buy the camera, but a bonus nonetheless
Macro shots--my biggest gripe (along with most p&s on the market). everything at the focal point is clear and crisp, everything else is unrecognizable. I don't know why this happens--my old 2MP Fuji p&s brick gets everything, including the focused macro shot. I'll miss that
Continuous shots--I wish it could do better than 1.3 fps, but in a pinch you can use the video mode and break down in to <lower quality> frames
Buttons--surprisingly easy to maneuver through for their size. Naturally balances in your hand so you don't risk covering the flash/lens with the other, trying to hold er steady
and for the Canon engineers, if they're looking--This camera could benefit from an LED for underwater and macro illumination and the ability to save images in RAW format
And my schpiele: You can't go wrong with this P&S. You can get more features and more zoom, but it will cost you in price and size. If you're a novice, this will give you good pictures. If you want to get into more advanced photog without grabbing a DSLR, this camera will give you training wheels along with some great pictures. If you're like me and need great shots at a moments notice, get it.
Customer Review: Exellent Point & Shoot Camera!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had my own SD870IS camera for about 10 months, and it has retained it's reliability and speed. When I was in the market, I was looking for some features that I wanted in a compact Point & Shoot. Here are those features, and this camera has them:
-Better than average video quality
-fast speed between pressing the shutter button and shooting the photo.
-Very short "Power-up & Ready" time
-Widescreen Shooting Capability
-Big clear LCD display
-Few buttons
-Good Look and Feel
-Solid Biuld
-Long Battery Life
-Support for High Capacity SD cards
-Exellent Macro Capability
I will briefly talk about each of these features.
I was quite surprised of the video quality that this camera produces.
It compresses the video little, hence the quality, using "Motion JPEG" compression. You will be pleased. You can also shoot video in Macro, which is quite impressive.
When you press the shutter button(after pressing half way for focus in some situations), you get a very quick response. This camera also has very short "power-up & ready" time.
I am pleased with the Widescreen shootng Capability this camera has. The wide photos look exellent. This is the shooting mode I use most.
The SD870IS has a vivid 3" LCD display. The brightness is adjustable ofcourse. Aside the display are the main buttons. The functions from top to bottom are: Playback(videos & stills), Direct Print and Multifuction button, directional and Multifunction wheel, camera menu, LCD display options.
I have been on so many occasions with this camera where I shot photos constantly. The battery always lets me exceed 200+ photos. I keep two batterys on me. I rarely have to get out the second battery. This Camera uses a very good proprietary Lithium Ion battery.
I'm thankful for the support for SDHC(Secure Digital High Capacity)that this camera provides. With the Multi Gigabytes worth of photos I shoot on each occassion, my 4 Gigabyte SDHC card always suits me.
I am very pleased with the close-ups I shoot with this camera. I shoot close-ups very often. And about 90% of those photos turn out extremely good.
I hope this review helps you. I am very pleased with the Canon SD870IS compact Point & Shoot.