Canon PowerShot SD 780 IS Digital Camera Review
June 9th, 2009 | Published in Canon, Digital Cameras
Canon PowerShot SD 780 IS Digital Camera
Canon has come out with another slim digital elph camera with good feature set, Canon PowerShot SD 780 IS. It comes with DIGIC 4 image processor. This is easily pocketable and light weight. You need to be extra careful not to loose it. For such tiny form factor, the picture quality is good and the feature set is excellent, including HD video taking ability.
Features
- 12.1 MP
- 3x Optical Zoom
- Face detection
- Optical Image stabilization
- HD movie shooting capability
- 2.5 inches widescreen LCD
- Intelligent scene selector
SD 780’s 12.1-megapixel resolution is more than requires, like any other camera. But, putting 12.1 megapixels in a tiny sensor is not good. You are bound to have noise. You will notice the noise when you go for 8×10 prints of pictures taken in low light condition. Sometimes it helps to reduce the resolution at which you take the picture. This problem exists with almost all the small form digital cameras with high megapixels.
PowerShot SD 780 can take HD video at 1280 x 720 pixels. It also comes with a mini-HDMI output that can be connected to any standard HDTV to watch your HD movies and photos. In HDTV you can watch 130 photos at a time using the HDMI connection. The SD 780 offers selective focus and image stabilization to your videos as well. Image stabilization helps a lot in movie making using such a small format camera. But, there is some noise in the audio. Most probably the microphone is picking up a humming sound from the camera mechanisms. But, the camera is mainly for still photography and therefore this noise can be ignored.
It comes with Smart AUTO technology that simplifies taking pictures. You just need to concentrate on your subject and when to take, the technical settings will be handled by Smart AUTO by choosing the appropriate setting from 18 specially defined settings.
The buttons on the back side of the camera are too small and might cause problem if you have big fingers. The buttons and functions are very intuitive as usual with almost all Canon cameras. The LCD is very bright and very good with color reproduction. The LCD comes with half brightness out of the box, but still very clear and useful. Just keep it at that brightness to save on battery. The camera comes with Optical Viewfinder that is very tiny and may be difficult to use. But, to save battery power it helps to use the viewfinder instead of the LCD for composing photos.
The Auto focus is fast and very accurate. The flash is very effective for such a tiny one. Pictures take with flash look like very natural and real. The battery life is excellent.
Overall, the camera is an excellent buy when shopping for pocketable cameras.
