Evaluation: 
Conclusion: Great camera, great price
Review: I bought this camera for my girlfriend's birthday. I have had a lot of chance to play around with it and I am very pleased. I feel like it is a great camera for the price, pretty small, and would definitely recommend it to others.
Evaluation: 
Conclusion: Good Results for Its Size, BUT...
Review: This camera is unremarkable in its output, but is rich in features. It makes a good traveling camera, but if you decide on it, I'd set the image compensation to +1. Set at zero, the images tend to lack contrast and rich saturation. This is true with most cameras, both digital and print. The extra boost in exposure fills in shadow detail and boosts color saturation. Owners also should invest in a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements, if they don't have it already.
If you can cart around a slightly bigger camera, it should pay off with better quality photos; but if you want to travel light, this is as good a way as any.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Great Camera
Review: This is a great camera! It's easy to use, takes great photos, and is small enough to fit in a pocket. Image Stabilization helps prevent blurry photos, and all the auto-focus features work great.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Awesome for the lazy novice
Review: Just got this camera for a vacation trip (before the big price cut! bummer.) Spent the last two weeks taking well over 1000 photos on a 4GB card. Have never had my own digital camera before, but have used my friends' cameras and also purchased a Canon A630 for work about a year ago and use that occasionally. Basically, I'm the kind of user who never really wants to "think" about the picture I'm taking and expects the camera to figure out the right settings so I can just press the d--n button and get a great shot. Thus the Auto-mode on a camera is 10 times more important than all the "scene mode" options, because 95% of the time the camera is going to be on auto, and by the time I remember that a scene mode might be more appropriate, it's too late anyway.
From that "lazy novice" perspective, this is an awesome camera. It did almost all the thinking for me, and just allowed me to point 'n shoot. People, buildings, boats, skies, ocean, insects, sand, friends -- pretty much everything came out without any adjustment.
Comments on pics: I'm slightly red-green color blind, so I can't comment on the color fidelity of the shots, but these are all adjustable on the computer afterwards anyway. Focus was fantastic, with two exceptions: once when I needed to pick one non-centered boat to focus on in an array of boats at various distances, and I hadn't bothered to learn how to pick and lock focus from the manual. And should have used the "infinity focus" lock to take pics/video of a show in a dark theatre where flash was forbidden and the auto-focus assist lamp couldn't find the stage 50 feet away. This was the only time I got a series of blurry shots. I did use the "night snapshot" mode a lot to take pictures at night. That was my one concession in my expectation that the camera figure out everything. A couple times I turned the flash off because the flash was too close to someone's face and kind of flattened his skin tones and natural shadows.
I also want to point out that I have very unsteady hands, and I made little or no attempt to keep the camera still when I was shooting. Not sure whether the image stabilization feature or the high ISO capabilities kicked in here, but I very rarely got a blurry shot unless both the camera and the subject were in rapid motion. Very happy. And never saw significant noise in my photos, although I'm not particularly sensitive on this issue.
Comments on ergonomics: small camera, lighter than my smartphone, fit into pocket. Pretty easy to hold in one hand and take photos. Slightly slick surface left me worrying that it would slip out of my hands, so i often used the wrist strap.
My one wish has to do with the zoom range of the lens: it's not very wide at one end, and I often found myself inconveniently backing up to take pictures of houses. And the 3X telephoto end won't get you close up to that sea otter you spot out in the ocean surf. The Panasonic Lumix TZ series is fantastic in both of these areas, but I really didn't want to sacrifice the Canon idiot-proof simplicity, compact size, and great auto-focusing capabilities.
Comparisons to other cameras I've used or played with: It's faster and smaller than the Canon A570IS I bought for my parents 6 months ago, although the A570IS is easier to hold steady because of the big grip. Personally I would have preferred to use AA batteries like in the A570IS, but the battery life on the SD1100IS is great so far and the charger is tiny and light, so easy to pack for a trip. I think the IS image stabilization feature is critical for shaky hands and casual on-th-go one-handed shots, which gives it an advantage over amazing cameras like the A630. We use the A630 at work to photograph everything from building problems to new member portraits, and it's great but heavy as a brick and triple the size of the SD1100IS. I do love that articulating LCD screen, tho'. It was impossible to take discreet snapshots of people on the street with the SD1100IS -- chalk it up to pointing a pink camera in their direction, directly at eye level. With the articulating LCD you can pretend to be just fiddling with the camera while getting great spontaneous shots of your friends.
All in all, a brilliant camera for someone who really does NOT WANT to learn about technical issues of doing photography. Plus, at the current price it's a total steal, over fifty bucks less than I paid at the camera store just three weeks ago, and that was on sale!
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Every I hoped for in a Point and Shoot
Review: Recently, my wife had purchased another brand of digital camera because she was finding it harder and harder to find inexpensive to mid price 35mm cameras. Unfortunately she did not come and talk to me first who over time has owned four different digital cameras over 12+ years and shemade a purchase from a guy behind the counter in a department store. She has been very frustrated with what she got finding it complicated and non-intuitive.
After a couple of months, and bearing the brunt of her frustration with the digital age I decided to take things into my own hands. I began to do the research and settled on the SD1100IS after a fair amount of research and reviews. I offered her the substitution and the opportunity to use the 1100IS. It is a hit.
She finds the organization of the buttons and functions much clearer and simpler. It is not over loaded with features or complicated options. She prefers the rechargeable batteries because the other camera ran through AAs like a bear at a picnic. She finds the viewing screen much less susceptible to black out from glare and if necessary she loves still having the option of the peephole viewer to shoot through. All in all she is now very happy although she is unwilling to wade into the world of uploading pictures to the computer and will still keep Kodak happy going to the picture printer at Walmart. I guess it is one step at a time.
I am impressed with the quality of the pictures, the color balance, the excellent macro function, and the speed with which she was able to adapt to this camera.
All I need to do now is to figure out how to get rid of the first camera she bought.
|
