On vacation not a tiny rectangular box a lady can easily carry in her purse but still very light and portable to carry around.
Easy to operate menu settings
Large viewing screen of 3" fore easy viewing.
Good size zoom with relatively wide aperture for low light situations.
Low ISO for fine-grain shots as well as fast ISO for occasional action shots.
Fast shutter response. Compare to the older Canon digitals there is very little noticeable lag time from the moment you press the shutter to the time when your image shows up on your viewer.

Flash on & off very straightforward lifting the head by hand. Instead of having the flash on 1 side that stays put the flash is about half an inch higher when lifted. This gets rid of most red-eye problems since the flash is above eye-level.

You see exactly what you get on the viewer. When you fine-tune your exposure, the viewer adjusts brightness accordingly. Some cameras you need to take a test shot before you see the image is ok.

Good resolution for an 8 mpix.

ISO settings work well up to 400. When set to 800 & 1600 can see much more grain. ISO settings fixed at 80, 100, 200, 400, 800 & 1600. Definitely not an SLR where you can get in between settings.

F-stop only go up to F8. When shooting macro or scenic shots with people you may want to set to F11 or higher for better depth of field.

Shutter on auto modes only go down to 1s. If you need longer exposure than 1s you'd have to set to M... such as for shooting fireworks.

Macro focusing a bit awkward and don't work when zooming in to maximum magnification.

Zoom up & down switch fine-tuning a bit awkward. You push the knob a bit, the zoom move up & down a lot.

Battery life is very limited. Using Litheon Ion or rechargeable NiMh is recommended to regular alkaline. Relies too much on viewer since there is no viewing screen above you can bypass viewer to save battery. Doing heavy shooting 2 alkaline batteries can last you 1 1/2 days if you're lucky without using flash.

5"x7" compatible print format. Any time you're printing just 4"x6" you know the width will be slightly cropped. Enlargement to 5x7 you get a 1:1 reproduction.

IS mode for shake reduction is good feature to have. But on this camera not sure if it works well. When the shutter gets down to 1/15s or slower hand-held you start seeing blurred shots. Otherwise if you're using camera support you wouldn't need the stabilizer.

White Balance on Auto works most of the time. In some situations you may want to set to another WB mode such as daylight, tungsten, cloudy day, flash etc. where the camera is fixed at specific color temperatures instead of having the camera processor determine the ideal setting before the shot.

* Large screen size
* Light and portable
* 10x zoom 6-60 aperture f2.8-4.3
* ISO from 80-1600
* Fast shutter response
* Macro mode for occasional flower and other close-ups.
* 8 mpix processor

Customer Service

N/A

Similar Products Used:

Canon S45 & S70

This camera works very well under extremely dark conditions such as taking photos during a music concert. We were about 30 feet from the stage and took many photos from our seats. For those who have tried this, usual result is a black background where the stage is dark, and white space washed out image where the entertainer is located. On full automatic, this camera did OK, but the images were washed out from overexposure, due to the black background.

The camera was placed on full manual, photos were taken until the image looked best on the LCD display. Following up on my PC, these photos were near perfect, far better than the Kodak can do under similar conditions. Also noted is the photo review on the LCD display is very close to the printed photo. This was not the case in the Kodak DX7590.

I even put the camera on a tripod outside on a pitch dark night. A 15 second time exposure showed many stars and a fairly black sky. Not many point and shoot cameras can do that. Obviously, this is no camera for astronomy, but it shows the cameras capabilities.

Indoor and outdoor photos and such are very nice as expected.

The camera, as most of the Canon line that uses AA batteries is rather hard on batteries. Simple solution is to purchase rechargeable NiHyd batteries with a charger from almost any discount store.

A benefit of the rechargeables, is they not only can be recharged many times, they also take several times more photos on a single charge as compared to the AA alkaline batteries

On full automatic, the flash will not trigger on a well lighted scene when fill in is needed. This can be resolved by setting the camera to its "P" program mode.

This is my 5th digital camera, most recent is the Kodak DX7590. I needed a camera that uses AA batteries for an upcoming long duration vacation trip.

The Canon SX100 was selected after an investigation on the Internet, this camera looked to be the best unit to satisfy my needs. Even though the Kodak camera is only about two years old, the Canon SX100 far outpaces the Kodak camera in difficult conditions.

For someone who needs a fairly compact camera with the full automatic and manual commands, this would be a good camera to consider.

This camera is never going to compete with the professional cameras that can cost more than 10 times than this camera, but for the average user, it really fills in the gap between the simple point and shoot and professional cameras.

Customer Service

Not needed so far.

Similar Products Used:

Kodak DX7590, Canon 710. Also have several other cameras of lower quality.

Picture quality, zoom, size and weight, feel of the camera in your hand. As I stated previously, it takes great pictures day or night. Love it, Love it, Love it. Did I say I love it?

Okay, so every camera is going to have its weaknesses, and this one is no exception. I loved having a camera dock with a rechargeable battery on my last camera. This one takes regular batteries, or you can buy rechargeable. But a dock for the camera to recharge would definitely be a plus for this camera. Another thing is that there is no viewfinder. Not really a problem since I tended to not use them in my previous cameras, but it was nice to know it was there in case I needed it. I don't usually use my camera for taking digital video pics, but a zoom on video would also be nice.

This is my third digital camera. My first was a Sony and my last one was the Casio Exilim. This camera surpasses both of these cameras. The picture quality is excellent. Night pictures are unbelievable. With my previous cameras, you couldn't even see the picture that you were taking at night, even with the flash on. I've taken pictures with this camera with the lights out (flash on only) and it looks like daylight. I'm extremely happy with this purchase and would recommend this camera to anyone looking to take great quality photos.

Customer Service

I haven't had any communication with the customer service department at either Canon or Dell in regard to this product.

Similar Products Used:

Previous to this digital camera I had a Sony and a Casio Exilim. The Sony took great pictures for a 1.6 mp camera, but it was huge. Larger than the video cameras that are out today. The Casio Exilim was nice and small and I loved the charging dock, but the pictures were just not good in my opinion. I was not happy with the quality of the pictures that were produced by that camera.