The Canon Powershot SD850 has all the features you need in a compact digital camera and it takes great pictures.

I bought this camera to replace a Nikon Coolpix which, unfortunately, was stolen over the holidays. I’m always hesitant to purchase items based on online reviews, but this Canon seemed to have such glowing reviews on every site that I figured I couldn’t go wrong. So far, that’s been true.

Things I like about this camera:

Decent zoom – 4x Optical and the digital zoom is not bad all.

Flash control – I like controlling the use of the flash (and battery power), so it’s nice to have this ability conveniently located on the back of the camera.

Intuitive design – The system menus are very easy to figure out and utilize. The overall design of this camera lends itself easily to those intimidated by newer technology, while still having plenty of tweakable options that more advanced users like to play around with.

Manual and Auto Shooting – Both have their pros and cons, but it’s nice to have a choice in how you want your image shot.

Speedy!! – In good natural light, this cam snaps a pic, processes it, and displays the image very quickly…more importantly, it captures what you saw when you pressed the shutter button. Using the flash there’s usually a slight delay in capturing what you see in the viewfinder, but this true of most digital cameras.

Perfect size – Some digital cams can be clunky and odd shaped. This is perfectly sized to fit in a pocket, purse, or back pack.

Macro feature – Always nice to have, especially for people that will use this for business purposes or people who need a cam to take close-up, detailed pics.

Rechargeable battery and charger – I was little hesitant about using a proprietary battery — since my other cam used AAs that you can buy cheaply anywhere — but so far the battery hasn’t even gotten close to needing a recharge. That said, if you’re planning on taking this on a trip overseas you might look into buying an extra battery or buying a converter/adapter for using the recharger with the different shaped outlets in another country.

To help avoid not being able to take enough pics, since I always try to use the highest settings, I also purchased a SanDisk 4 GB memory card…which I doubt I’ll ever fill. I’ve had this camera for about a month and I’ve taken close to 300 pictures and I’ve been impressed with most of them. This camera is awesome!

Tags: Canon, digital camera, memory, Nikon Coolpix, pictures, PowerShot

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Life, Product Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.