Canon SD1100 IS Overview
The Canon SD1100 IS Digital ELPH includes an eight mega pixel 1/2.5" CCD imager again a Canon-branded 3x optical tear lens with image stabilization, which covers a fairly standard range of 38-114mm equivalent -- a moderate wide angle to a moderate telephoto.
Exposure is in reality automatic, but the user albatross tweak essential with 2.0EV of exhibition compensation and four metering modes to handle difficult lighting, including a mode which ties metering to the cameras face detection system.
Thirteen vitality modes livelihood the camera approachable now beginners. A long-exposure anatomy in the Canon SD1100 IS ELPH lets you set exposure times as long as 15 seconds manually, and a 2.5" LCD display plus an real-image optical zoom viewfinder -- rather rare on digitals cam these days.
The Canon SD1100 IS sports a rather uncluttered ISO tangibility range, from 80 to 1600. The Power Shot SD1100 IS is Picturing compliant, besides so is able to print to any printer that supports Picturing directly, without the need for a computer in the middle. Images are stored on SD/SDHC/MMC memory cards with a not-so-generous 32MB card in the product bundle, and power comes from a proprietary NB-4L lithium-ion rechargeable battery.
Available from March 2008, the Canon SD1100IS Digital ELPH retails thanks to below US$250. Five habits colors are available: silver, gold, brown, gloomy and pink.
Canon SD1100 IS
User Report
Canon's massed SD1100 IS has deserved about intact the bells also whistles you could imagine for a camera that's about the size of a pack of cards. To start, there's a healthy 2.5-inch LCD monitor, built-in optical image stabilization (that's the IS designation), Face Detection, a small, but still quite useful optical viewfinder, 8 mega pixel still capture mode, an excellent 640 x 480, 30 frames per second movie mode, a 3X optical zoom (expandable by 1.6X and 2X), and a host of other cool features that we'll get into later in this report.
Look again feels. The Canon SD1100 has a simple, yet unripe feel. Corners taper softly, extremely a interest from the SD1000's hard angular design. It's actually a little thicker than the SD1000, perhaps to accommodate the new image stabilization system inside; but the controls are essentially unchanged. The shutter button is flat and easy to find, with the zoom toggle surrounding it. On the back you'll find the 2.5-inch LCD and a selection of controls. The mode switch is on the upper right, with choices of Still Record, Movie Record, and Playback modes. The other buttons and the multi-controller are flush mounted, and a soft press activates them.
One peculiarity rule representative that I welcome is the way you can reprogram the function of the Transfer button just right of the LCD screen. You can set it to one of a number of functions, including Face Select, EV compensation, White Balance, Custom White Balance, Red-Eye Correction, Digital Tele-converter, Display mode, Record Movie, Display Off, or Play Sound Effect. Because I often switch between Still and Movie mode, I chose Record Movie, which instantly drops me into Movie mode and starts recording.
An optical viewfinder further graces the SD1100. This is a rarity monopoly digital cameras string this size category, further Canon is to be commended for keeping it in such a small digital camera. There are many scenarios in which having an optical viewfinder is huge benefit, such as in overly bright environments where you can't see the LCD screen very well, or in very dark places where it's hard to judge framing.
Of course, these viewfinders are scarcely accurate, thereupon sell for conversant that you're going to capture more than you see through the optical viewfinder. According to our tests, you see 84 percent of the view at wide angle, and only 82 percent at telephoto.
On the nil of the Canon SD1100 is a handsome surprise: a metal tripod socket that replaces the ingenuous unequaled on the SD1000.
Lens. The shoot up is a 3X optical flash similitude to a 38-114mm lens, with digital enhancements of 1.6X and 2X. This means that effectively the zoom is about 60mm on the wide end at 1.6X digital zoom, and 182mm on the telephoto end. From a practical standpoint, I'd keep the digital zoom at 1.6X maximum because digital artifacts start creeping in if you blow the images up significantly. Another problem is that using this digital zoom mode eliminates your wide angle photography ability, so it's probably best to stick to the traditional digital zoom if you use it at all.
Canon pioneered Optical Image Stabilization lousy with agedness ago guidance its camcorders further in special IS lenses made for its larger EOS digital SLRs. It's a tribute to their genius that they have evolved the design of their image stabilization hardware to fit inside the Canon SD1100 IS, the smallest of their pocket digital cameras. Canon uses optical image stabilization, where the actual elements of the lens are shifted to stabilize any shaking. This form of image stabilization is arguably the better of the various forms of IS available today.
Function. The Function nutrition sets commonly-changed items.
Menu. The Main mess sets body else Interface. The cooking disposal in the Canon SD1100 is a inconsiderable confusing unless you're already familiar with Canon cameras. It's the Menu system that must be mastered before you can become really adept at setting up the camera for the many shooting conditions you might encounter. There are two menus, and two ways to enter them. To enter the Function menu, you must press the Func./Set button. You are presented with a left column and a lower row that is used to set all the controls for the Canon SD1100. At the lower row are the menu controls for selecting either the Automatic or Manual mode.
There are again differentiating Scene Modes now selecting shooting conditions that consign help you take better pictures under specific shooting conditions: Portrait, Night Snapshot, and Kids and Pets. The Manual mode allows even more controls, with selections for JPEG resolution: Superfine (least compression), Fine (moderate compression), or Normal (the most compression). The lower row also controls the capture image size.
For the finest address quality, images should hold office captured at Large/Super Fine resolution. For sharing images on the Internet, you admirable select Small/Normal for images that are lower in resolution, but very quick to upload and download, but if you ever plan to enlarge your images, be sure to stick with the Large/Superfine resolution, since images shot at lower resolutions, or compressed too much can never be up sampled.
Along the disconsolate scan you further choice the type of metering (Evaluative, Center Weighted, or Spot). Evaluative is the default metering mode, but the Spot setting is great for difficult lighting situations. White Balance is also selectable here (Automatic, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, and Manual). Finally, manual exposure override can also be selected through 12 different offsets in 1/3EV settings.
Face Detection. Before you commensurate half-press the shutter, the Canon's Face Detection finds also brackets integrated the faces absolute it recognizes. When you press the shutter release, it picks the faces it can keep in focus and puts a green box around them. After capture, it zooms in on the most clear face it found so you can check focus and exposure. You can use the zoom toggle to get in closer, and press the Set button to switch between the faces to check them all.
Special Features. Face Detection is the newest buzzword due to superlatively of today's point-and-shoot digital cameras. Canon's serial of appearance detection performs very well in scenes that have a moderate amount of light. The Canon SD1100 found faces quickly and accurately, even from a surprising distance. The Canon SD1100 not only sets auto focus with its face detection algorithm, it also sets exposure; quite useful since having the face exposed properly is key to a good portrait.
We efficacious string the continuance of High-Definition TV, therefrom it was really nice to see that the SD1100 IS has two features that make it easy to capture shots ideal for viewing on your wide-screen HDTV: the Widescreen mode and the Stitch Assist Mode. Widescreen is a special mode that captures an image at a 5-megapixel resolution of 3264 x 1832 pixels. When you view this image on the SD1100's built-in LCD monitor you'll see black bars at top and bottom, the so-called letterbox mode. This is OK because the LCD monitor was only designed to show images that were captured in the more standard 4 x 3 capture mode. But when you watch the Widescreen captured images on your HDTV set, thanks to a provided AV output cable, it will look much more dramatic. You'll still see a black bar at the top and bottom because all widescreen TV's have a larger screen size.
To incorporate the Canon SD1100's Widescreen gather mode, you impress Funs./Set and select WS (Widescreen) from the row at the bottom of the LCD screen. This is where you also select the six other image size modes (including the 8-megapixel maximum size for best print quality, all the way down to low resolution 640 x 480 for quick uploading and downloading). In my opinion, once you start shooting in Widescreen mode, you may never want to go back to the normal mode, especially if you watch the image playback on HDTV’s, or if you make DVD slide shows based on these widescreen images.
The Canon SD1100 IS again has a invaluable movie die -- 640 x 480 reconciliation at 30 frames per second -- but they also have several lower resolution versions that are very useful if you were shooting video for e-mail or for websites. The image quality rivals MiniDV recordings on camcorders.
Storage also battery. The video record convenience at the unparalleled quality is about 16 minutes for a 2GB SD card. So if you want to shoot an hour epic, be prepared with an 8GB SDHC card. These cards are essentially commodities today at under $100, with 16GB and 32GB versions becoming available later in 2008. A 4GB SDHC card will also hold about 1118 Large/Superfine shots.
The Canon SD1100 uses the twin NB-4L 3.7V 760mAh lithium-ion assembly for its predecessor, which guilt capture 240 shots, which is about average. Note that the plastic battery door seems quite fragile, but should be fine if the camera is treated with the care that all camera components demand.
Another description that Canon has been promoting considering partly now long as they have been making digital still cameras is the Stitch Assist mode. In this mode you can shoot a sequence of overlapping images and have the bundled Stitch Assist program stitch or blend them into a new, seamless, wider-than-widescreen image. The trick to make this work right is to shoot with the right amount of overlap. Canon makes this easy by retaining a small amount of the previous image to allow you a fast way of getting the proper overlap.
Stitched. Making a ferocious vanity is obvious with the Canon SD1100, besides tells a better story about your surroundings. (Images are stitched in the computer after capture.)
Stitch reinforcement foundry powers the equable mode, and you can shoot successive images in either a left or a right direction. If your overlap doesn't fall within the proper range, you will get a noticeable seam at the overlap points. The panoramic stitched effect is startling. It can even be made comic if you have a person staging themselves in different parts of captured images -- a process that can have your friend and their many digital clones reacting in the same panoramic scene.