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1615 of 1643 persons found the following review helpful.
great little cam, a great deal of improvements from earlier powershots, some quirks
By Omar Siddique
The SD1200 has a great deal of huge changes over it is predecessor SD1100, and is the smallest, best designed Elph I’ve employed thence far.
I’ve owned a heap of models of Elph, this is my 6th or 7th, so my review is purposed exceptionally at other serial Canon owners. I for the most part compare the SD1200 to the SD1100.
* The huge changes: Digic4 and a more prominent CCD sensor. The slight increase in CCD size (1/2.3″ vs 1/2.5″) will have to make for “cleaner” photos. And Digic4 promises faster/cleaner shots also.
* You get 10MP vs 8MP on the SD1100, and “medium” (M1) size is now 6MP. JPG quality is down to 2 setting: Fine or Normal.
* SD1200 is only somewhat littler than the SD1100, but feels notably littler by virtue of curved edges and the LCD being flush with the body (no bump-out).
* The 1200 now feels as little as this design may shrink. Good news: my average-sized male hands may still comfortably hold it, scarcely not covering lens, flash, or resting on the LCD. But the round power-button is now almost too little to press if you had big fingers and no fingernails.
* 1200′s new battery is a higher capacity 1000mAh (vs ~760mAh for SD1100). There’s also a new charger (not compatible with the old batteries), a shiny white-colored model to blend into your wall.
* The buttons and menus are streamlined. There’s now a button for review mode, pressing it a 2nd time takes you back to the former state. Handy. The slider has devoted AUTO and Manual settings, no longer need to use menus for that switch.
* Continuous mode and ISO now are in the Function Menu (on the SD1100, they had devoted buttons).
* A SD card is no longer included. This makes sense to me, a 32MB card is scarcely useful, and with the downward pressure on electronics prices, I can’t imagine Canon wanting to bundle a more expensive/bigger card. Some people will find this lack annoying.
* The A/V output is gone, and the USB connector now serves both intents (both kinds of included cables now have a USB-end)
* A new version of Canon software is required for this model, Zoombrowser 6.3. Canon distinctively requires a new release for each new family/season of cameras. Unfortunately, the CameraWindow software has been measuredly dumbed-down in the 6.x software and no longer offers the choices to delete your photos (have to go through the OS), nor to chose habit naming for the downloads. I say intentionally, since I asked Canon customer-support regarding it and they stated the changes were not bugs. The last Canon software to still have that functionality was 5.x, corresponding to the SD1000 and other cameras freed that season.
* In casual indoor tests, the 1200 seemed more ready to go to ISO400 (often too “noisy” to be useful) when the SD1100 would have chosen ISO200.
* The SD1200 and SD1100 have identical specs on their optics. However, I noticed a more pronounced barrel-distortion on the 1200 at extreme wide-angle. (still only noticable in close-up shots of straight-edged items at wide-angle)
* In a casual speed test, the SD1200 took/stored photos notably more immediate the SD1100 (same scene, continuous-mode, same brand SD card), in spite of the 1200′s effigy size being larger.
* Canon’s paper manuals have been shrinking steadily. With this model, the only manual included is a quick-start guide, the rest is on CD-ROM.
* The packaging is even more effective than before, when it comes to half the size of the SD1100′s box.
* Sadly, there is no HD video mode, altho all of the other Elphs freed this spring had HD. SD1200 owners are stuck with 640×480 video.
Canon has various sub-series within the compact Elph line, varying largely by asthetics and optics. The SD1200 is successor to the series that included the SD1100, SD1000, and SD600. These all favor a classic, slim design. If you’re unfamiliar with Canon’s Powershot cameras, there’s lots of good material out there on camera websites such as dpreview.
In general, the little sensors and optics in all ultra-compact digital cameras lead to a heap of optical quirks (such as barrelling), chromatic aberrations, over/under-exposure in bright sunlight/shade, and underpowered flashes. That’s intrinsic to the size of camera, and vendors try to rectify these effects in their on-board processing. My sentiment is that Canon does a good occupation of correcting for these issues and the Elphs including the SD1200 take very good photos for their size.
It’s questionable that a SD1100 proprietor would quintessentially find this a compelling upgrade other than the Digic4, but this is an splendid compact camera in all ways. Apart from the remarkable quirks: the lack of HD and the fixed features in the download software, this camera is Highly Recommended.
396 of 408 humans found the following review helpful.
Hated it at first, but now we get along just fine!
By Sophster
I don’t quintessentially bother reviewing merchandise because I ordinarily only buy things that already have a lot of reviews. I decisive to throw in my 2 cents on this one in hopes someone may gain from my experience. I principally use my camera for family shots, for the most part of my young children. I loved my old Canon A610 more that I may say and it has served me well for 4 years. Recently one of my children got a hold of it and bent up the little dealies that close over the lens cap to the point where I had to pull them off with tweezers just to use the camera. That’s when I decisive it was time to see what Canon now has to offer. I am by no means a photography expert. I just want a point and shoot that I may use to snap high quality family photos for prints, digital scrapbooks, etc.
The sale price on this camera seemed magnificent for the features and a free memory card offer sucked me in so I took the plunge. I assumed it would be a major upgrade from my 5MP A610. Once I had the battery charged up I started taking photos of my kids in automati mode. I was *shocked* at the poor quality of the photos. Every photo I reviewed was terrible. Many were blurry, and the ones that weren’t couldn’t be cropped to the slightest degree without losing all detail. I couldn’t believe it! Auto mode on my old Canon had never failed me before and I could crop all the way to the eyeballs without loss of detail. Determined not to give up, I did numerous research. Several people commended “kids and pets” mode. I tried this and the blurry issue was solved. However, the cropping issue still remained. I dug deeper and started messing with ISO settings and a bunch of other stuff I don’t genuinely understand. I just couldn’t solve the problem. I even got out my old Canon and took identical shots with both cameras and the old one won out each single time. I must point out that these were all indoor shots with comparatively low light. I realize these are not idealisti conditions, but if a camera can’t handle those conditions then it isn’t for me.
I had gorgeous much resolved to return this camera and was already buying goods on Amazon for another one when I decisive to give it one more try. I merely couldn’t comprehend how this camera could carry out so poorly. I fired it back up in “kids and pets” mode and started looking around at all the settings it would let me modify. That’s when I noticed an “S” in the bottom left corner of the screen. Hmmm…what could this be? The other choices for this setting are L M1 M2 M3 S and W. It turns out that this setting determines the number of megapixels that the camera uses. L is the most eminent solution setting which uses all 10MP and 3648×2736 resolution. S (which is what the camera was mechanically set to) has a solution of only 640×480 and appears to use .3MP. Soooo, I bumped it from S up to L and now my camera takes aweinspiring photos. Once again I may crop to the eyeballs and now side by side the same photos look even better on the new camera than they did on my old one. Also, with my 4GB memory card it says I may take approximately 1450 photos at this higher resolution. So now all is right with the world, I don’t have to deal with the hassle of a return, and I may take amazing family photos this Christmas.
Even even though the camera is performing admirably now, I had to give it 4 stars because it must not have been such a pain in the rear to straighten this out. Not to mention that the included paper manual does not even address this issue at all. I assume the online manual covers it, but ought to I genuinely have to go that far to get one croppable indoor shot? This is a point and shoot!! Most of the bad reviews were for the same problem I was having. The majority of purchasers don’t want to have to switch a bunch of settings; they just want the camera to take great photos without a lot of effort.
371 of 384 humans found the following review helpful.
Professional photographers review
By S. Craig
I’m a professional photographer. I got tired of dragging my D3,D200 or other huge cameras around, and worrying with regards to it getting damaged. I decisive to buy a camera just for fun that could fit in my purse and I wouldn’t have a heart attack if it broke. Well I didn’t hold that high of expected values of the camera, but after getting it, I’ve had a lot of fun with it. Not the most astounding pictures come from it (I am applied to very high quality pictures), but they are good sufficient shots of my family. It’s easy to use, genuinely easy to set, FAST, and good low light. You don’t always need the flash. It’s very small, and may fit without apparent effort in my purse (that are all quiet little purses actually). This is a perfective camera if you just want galore fun shots that are clear, and you want an easy to use fast camera. This is NOT good for “professional” type shots (why do humans write reviews of these cameras and get all down on them for not being professional grade cameras? They never assert to be!).
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