Review posted for Canon PowerShot SD550
By
Dave Etchells
(Friday, October 28, 2005 - 02:00 EDT)
Canon's ELPH line of digital cameras have consistently offered good image quality, user-friendly design, and excellent build quality, and the new Canon PowerShot SD550 is no exception.
While it's not actually that much smaller than the previous CompactFlash-based SD500 model, it feels a lot smaller, thanks no doubt to its sleek, curving body design. When it comes to picture taking, while actual exposure control remains automatic, the ability to adjust ISO, White Balance, and access longer shutter times significantly increases the camera's shooting range. Thanks to its high-speed DIGIC-II processing chip, it's also very responsive for a subcompact digital camera, and its movie capability goes far beyond what I'm accustomed to seeing from subcompact digicam models.
One particularly positive note is that the Canon SD550 seems to largely avoid the problems with softness in the corners suffered by the SD200 and SD300 models, and its 7-megapixel CCD also manages to keep noise levels under control, even at ISO 400. (Even 8x10" prints on our Canon i9900 studio printer made from the SD550's ISO 400 shots were quite acceptable, a fair bit better than we've come to expect from consumer-level digital cameras operating at that ISO level.)
The SD550 impresses mightily. Read on for more!
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