Digital Camera Blog

If it??™s true that you can??™t tell a book by its cover, then the diminutive Canon Powershot SD900 just seems too small and compact to be packing a 10 megapixel wallop. But large file size is only part of the story for a little camera that produces excellent images and color right out of the box.

Actually, the cover is pretty cool on its own ??“ the SD900 case is titanium, with its medium grey sheen complemented nicely by bright chrome and flat black accents. Build quality, fit and finish appear first-rate. The camera features a 2.5??? LCD monitor and an optical viewfinder, a 10 megapixel sensor and 3X optical Canon zoom lens that provides a 35mm film equivalent focal length range of 37 to 111 mm. Canon claims the DIGIC III image processor provides improved image quality, speed of operation and battery performance over earlier processors.

The SD900 is a new addition to the Powershot line and like many point and shoot cameras in the Canon SD line, it offers virtually no manual controls. The ability to produce images with large file sizes seems tailored for those who wish to print big enlargements or aggressively crop their shots to produce the desired result.

Canon provides a wrist strap, battery charger, battery pack, AV and interface cables, a 32MB SD memory card and CD-ROM software with each SD900. With a 10 megapixel sensor that 32MB card won??™t last long, so plan on buying one with more capacity. A 4GB card allows for some 950+ images at the largest file size and image quality settings, at least according to the camera??™s counter.

The SD900 measures approximately 3.6 x 2.35 x 1.1 inches and weighs about 6.5 ounces with battery pack and memory card. It can capture still JPEG images in seven different pixel sizes, and Motion JPEGS at 160 x 120, 320 x 240, 640 x 480 or 1024 x 768 pixels at 15 and/or 30 frames per second.

The SD900 powers up fairly quickly ??“ the lens extends to wide angle mode and the camera is ready to acquire focus about 1 second after pressing the power button. Default settings for Auto mode include normal color and compression, auto white balance, large file size and evaluative metering for exposure. Image quality and color rendition were quite good for shots of normally lit scenes at the Auto setting.

While the SD900 provides a ???manual??? mode, it really only allows you to select exposure compensation, white balance and ISO speed as manual inputs. The camera is still doing virtually all the work.

There are also four other shooting options accessed via the ???manual??? mode: Digital Macro, Color Accent, Color Swap and Stitch Assist. The color options involve selective color manipulation of images, and Stitch Assist helps produce panoramic images.

There are eleven Special Scene selections available in the SD900 ??“ Portrait, Night Snapshot, Kids & Pets, Indoor, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Aquarium, Underwater and ISO 3200. Canon makes a ???waterproof case??? for the SD900 and recommends using it to shoot at ski resorts or beaches.

A word here about ISO 3200: a simple rule of thumb with any digital camera is that image noise increases as does the ISO level. Because the sensors in compact cameras may be dimensionally smaller than those in their larger brothers, this noise may become more apparent at lower ISO levels in compacts. In the SD900, ISO 3200 would be the choice for venues where flash is either inappropriate or ineffective given the distance to the main subject ??“ it literally becomes the final option, the ???when a really noisy image is better than no image at all??? setting. In the photos below, one was shot in ???Indoor Mode??? and the other at ???ISO 3200??? ??“ the results speak for themselves.

The 2.5 inch LCD monitor is composed of some 230,000 pixels and is adjustable for brightness. On sunny days with direct light on the monitor and a low contrast subject, photo composition was sometimes problematic, even with the monitor adjusted for maximum brightness. Monitor performance was satisfactory in the absence of direct light and/or a higher contrast subject.

Unlike many cameras in this class, the SD900 is equipped with a viewfinder. While small, the viewfinder did provide a viable option for those times when photo composition via the monitor was difficult.

Photos composed via the monitor are captured as they appear in the monitor, but photos composed via the viewfinder tended to produce an image that covered more area than appeared through the finder. You may find yourself cropping more photos composed through the viewfinder to eliminate objects that ???sneak??? into the frame.