Red Canon PowerShot SD780IS
The red SD780 IS is one of the several colors the camera is available in. Visit the menu above to select the other colors before your make your final decision:
Red Canon SD780 IS Reviews
Amazing Things Sometimes Come In Tiny Packages!!
I came across the SD780IS after researching compact cameras for over two weeks. My choices came down to the SD780 IS, SD880 IS and a few models from other manufacturers. As you know, picking an electronic item is a tedious process. Each camera had a feature that I wanted, yet none of them had everything that I wanted. I wanted more zoom but that made the lens a little wider and the camera much larger defeating the purpose I originally bought this for. I would have liked a bit more zoom, and other cameras have wider lenses. In the end, the 3 features that totally won me over were (1) amazingly small size (2) the HD video capture feature at a resolution of 720p and last but not least (3) the HDMI out.
The SD780 IS is my first canon powershot which uses the IS or image stabilization feature and I have to say that it works nicely. On a recent trip I took over 500 pictures (and filled up less than 1/4th of my 8-gig card at the highest resolution), and not one of them ended up blurry. The auto feature changes between 18 settings automatically, such as bright sunshine, macro and this camera has been right on the money. Another complaint that I've read is that viewfinder is useless. I would say its quite tiny and I thought it was decent. Whats surprising is that canon was able to squeeze a viewfinder in such a tiny camera. I think we should be grateful for that.
My complaints are a few, and none would be a dealbreaker for me. One possible grievance if you can call it that would be the small size and smooth symmetrical shape sometimes make it hard to tell which side I am holding onto when I take it out of my pocket. When attempting to push the power button, I will often realize I am pushing on the bottom of the camera. I have to actually look at it to tell what I am doing. As mentioned previously, the HD video takes a pretty beefy CPU to play back smoothly. So if your PC is more than 4 years old it will have a hard time keeping up. Fortunately the easy solution to this is to play back directly to the monitor/TV with an HDMI cable. It seemed improbable to me that a video made with a camera this small would look good on a 55" HD television. I was absolutely shocked at how sharp it looked.
As far as performance goes, I could not be happier. Many of the reviews I read before purchasing mentioned a high amount of noise, but in my experience it only occurs at higher ISO's, is not very noticeable, and seems to be in line with other compact cameras that I've used, no more, no less. I would NOT let this be a determining factor if I were considering this camera.
The bottom line is that anybody looking for an ultra-compact camera is going to be extremely satisfied with this one. It doesn't take the pictures that a digital SLR is going to, nor does it have the same features. But anybody looking at this camera realizes that already. I went to an arts festival last weekend and was AMAZED at how many people are lugging around DSLR's these days. It seemed like every other person had one. When looking at performance vs. convenience and portability, I'll take the SD780 any day.
