CanonPowerShot SD1000 7.1MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom (Silver) (OLD MODEL)

First of all, I've had 4 Canon cameras before this one (the legendary A80, the A95, the recent A560, and the Rebel XT, which was stolen). Also, I work as a photographer for a local newspaper and we constantly use high-end Canon SLRs and G series compact canons. Let me tell you that the quality of this little guy (the first Elph I've had) is impressive. Actually, I would say this is on top with the "G" and SLR series picture quality, if you know how to make a few adjustments.I've had the powershot SD1000 for 6 months, I've taken it to a few trips, parties, work events, and I carry it in my pocket every day. The features it has (like face detection, digital macro, time-lapse video, color accent, etc.), for the price, are fantastic. However, the best thing this camera offers, IMHO, is a quick operation. It takes VERY FAST pictures, and if you set the color to vivid, with a proper white balance, the images you get will surprise you. I recently had a trip to Cancun and took the camera with me. When I came back I wrote an article about my trip for the Sunday Magazine at my newspaper, and they used my pictures, as they looked very professional.If you're a casual photographer, you can't beat this price, get it now.There's ONE thing, however, I still hope canon introduces in the future: a more practical video mode format.I'm not saying the video quality is bad. Actually it is the best I've seen in ultra-compacts. The thing is, that after having owned a Pentax Optio s5z for a year (before this one), which used good quality divx compression (much smaller files), I found myself taking many videos without worrying about remaining space in the memory card. The "video thing" started growing a lot on me. However, canon uses almost no compression in the AVI files and so, for each 1GB of memory, you can only record 8 minutes of video (2GB = only 16 minutes!).About the image stabilization: I don't miss it. If your hands are not very shaky and you use the proper ISO, you can overcome this. However, if you're using 1600 ISO, you will see "grains" unless you keep the picture to "web sharing" size. It's normal with compact cameras.My next camera will be (if it's still on sale) the SD750, because I recently found it has a 3 inch LCD, and I don't really use the viewfinder in SD1000 (a personal choice).Bottom line: for vacations, every day use, social snapshots, pets, the occasional "artistic" inspiration, fantastic response and pro-quality images at a very affordable price, you can't go wrong with this camera.

I got this camera as I was stepping down from a Canon DSLR. I had been pursuing photography as a fun hobby for many years, and quite enjoyed it. Only thing was, although my photographs were good (trust me they were :-D ), they were probably like MOST amateur/hobbyist photographer's pics in that they weren't good enough to ever make a museum or "get shown." So I was spending a lot of money on "better lenses" and "better bodies" to get larger file sizes that were essentially sitting on my hard drives, never printing many except to put on my walls - which are finite, and show on my webpage - which doesn't get many hits, especially for that sort of thing. My breaking point was seeing some professional galleries online one day. The guy was using very expensive gear, and taking some rather breathtaking shots in some rather breathtaking locations. I realized that 1) I don't have the disposable income to get that sort of equipment, and 2) even if I did, I don't have the time to travel to places like that, and 3) since I'm not traveling much, if I am going to take a picture of something I probably already HAVE a picture of it anyway at this point, and finally 4) even if I did buy the pricey equipment, I just don't have quite the talent of these guys to worry about whether my prints will get "shown;" they won't, I'd be spending money to fill up my hard drive with pictures that are only 95% as good as the struggling professionals anyway.Another big issue I had dealt with with regards to the DSLR was bulk. I wasn't even taking it with me. My Fiancé had gotten this exact same camera and it was always on her. Her pictures when posted to the web were not any worse than mine. So I jumped on board, because "the camera you take with you is infinitely better than the camera you leave behind."Now I take quick and easy photos that I can share with family & friends. I let the camera do the heavy lifting on the photos, and if one comes out under or overexposed, I just take another one. The quality of the pictures is decent. They are not too soft, but they could be sharper. Then again, it's a sub-$200 camera and I jumped down from a $1000+ setup that I wished was sharper too. I save a lot of time just importing as JPEG instead of RAW (this camera doesn't support RAW by the way), and not 'tweaking' much.The images themselves come out pretty good 85% of the time. The colors are accurate, the sharpness is adequate, and the exposure is good, if slightly over (more on that in a sec). And since it's so pocketable, you're going to have it with you, which makes the "decent" photos you're going to take with it infinitely better than the "awesome" photos you didn't take with the camera that was too big to come along.CAMERA FUNCTIONS:The camera has a multitude of settings to fiddle with. They have lots of presets, from full-auto to modes tuned for "kids & pets," Night shots, macro closeups (flowers, etc), fireworks, and more. And for me - a control junkie - they also have a "manual" mode which is more like "Exposure priority" than full-manual. You have control over Base ISO (more on that in a minute), white balance (which features an option to set the white balance too), and even exposure compensation. I tend to think that the camera slightly overexposes pics by default, so I set mine to compensate for that here.One of my most-liked features is the ISO-shift that is available in Manual mode. Since picture quality suffers as ISO goes up, I try to keep the ISO below 200 whenever possible. With ISO-shift enabled, if I frame a picture and the camera determines that with the ISO I have set the camera shutter speed will be too slow & possibly create blur, it warns me by blinking a blue LED on one of the back buttons near my thumb. Pressing this button toggles the camera to a higher ISO for that shot only. However, if you decide that the ISO it selects is too high for your tastes and you'd rather try a steady hand to prevent motion blur, another press toggles your preselected ISO back into action.The size of the camera is a real boon. Considering its lack of heft versus the quality of the pics it produces, I'd say it's a winner. YES, you can find a camera that takes better pictures. You could even find a camera that's smaller. But you can't find one that's better at both than this little guy, and for the price it produces very acceptable pictures that are crisp enough to share online easily, or even make family album prints (think 4x6, 5x7, even 8x10).Sometimes I miss the quality of my DSLR. But then I grab my little camera and take a picture and remember that in the time it took me to take that picture, I'd still be removing dust caps and setting the parameters on the big guy, and I smile. I love my little pocket camera and I think most people that venture this direction will agree.P.S: I also tried a slightly more expensive model, the SD870. The pictures weren't any crisper nor the colors more vibrant. For the very few features it offered over the SD1000 model, I'd say it's just too much money. Daily, you won't notice a difference and in fact I found the SD870 more a pain to work the controls than the SD1000. And in comparison between the models, I could rarely get the Image Stabilization - which the SD1000 lacks - to make any noticeable impact on my pictures. Your mileage may vary, but in my experience the SD1000 takes pics just as good for less cost and less hassle.