Canon Powershot SD450 5MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom (OLD MODEL)

I love the SD450 but I must admit I am partial to Canon as I have been using Canon cameras (both film and digital) for the longest time. This is my 7th digital camera from Canon. I have another camera which I use currently - the S2 IS which I bought to try my hand at some creative (hopefully!) photography. But the S2 wonderful as it is, has not been used as much as my earlier powershots given its size and its inability to fit into my little purse. So after having lost some great photo ops at parties, evenings out and impromptu get togethers I finally wanted a camera that was tiny enough for my evening bag but still allowed me to get creative.This camera took me the longest time to buy as I mulled between a Sony for the first time, and a Canon SD 550 and the SD450. I read dpreview (greatest site if you're looking up digital camera reviews), Steve's digicams, Cnet and all of those sites looking for the perfect tiny camera. I was leaning toward the SD550's 7 mega pixels till I took a couple of trips to the electronics stores and held the cameras in my hands. What a difference it made. The SD550 was thicker and chunkier and the curved edge made it slippery and everyone seemed to have them in the yucky gold color. So despite the megapixels the SD450 felt just right. I even considered the SD400 as I wasn't too partial towards the bigger screen of the SD450, but the added software enhancements in the SD450 were nice and the price difference between the 400 and 450 was very small at the time I bought it.PROS:Size- really small, a little bigger than a visiting card and great looks, steel look cover for the A/V digital out (not your usual canon rubber flap), feels great in hand. Sexy, sexy!For such a small camera the pros are that the SD450 has an optical view finder and an optical zoom (as well as a digital zoom). It has an intelligent focusing system AiAF which can give some pretty good results on auto mode.In addition to the auto mode it has the manual mode, potrait mode, night mode, macro mode (which is great!), scenery mode and the scene mode which goes into the different scene modes. You can also get to the panoramic mode thru the menu to shoot city scapes or rolling mountains in a series of shots. It's really easy as you can view your older shot in this mode while you take the new one overlapping the older one. The provided software will 'stitch' your shots into one when you upload them.It has the usual Canon powershot options of different scene modes -Kids and pets, foliage, fireworks, snow, underwater, beach, indoor so that you don't need to think about settings. Very convenient in a point and shoot! The newer My colors option allows you to choose a color you want to highlight or darken and lighten skin tones. It also allows you to capture only a particular color in a shot while the rest of the picture is black and white. So you can do a black and white potrait of your child with a red ribbon or red ball. Or you can swap out one color with the other, it allows for some creativity in your pictures.You can also take videos with this camera in .avi format and edit them on the camera. And you can create a slide show of all the images you took on the camera itself with fancy transition effects of your choice. The zoom button shows one or many images at a time in the replay mode and you can zoom into each individual image to see parts of it closely.In the manual mode you have the option to set white balance and your color tones to black and white, sepia, vivid, neutral. You can also change the metering (spot, center weighted, evaluative) and get the long shutter mode through the menu.There is self timer function as well as continuous shot function for rapid shooting.The coolest thing about the LCD is that as you rotate the camera the potrait pictures will automatically rotate to fill the screen. It's like magic!Battery charger is separate so you can charge a battery while you're using one. And it works from 120V-240V in case you make any foreign trips.Cons:Flash can be too strong for close-ups (in auto mode, in manual mode you can adjust flash or change metering options) and bleaches out color.Large screen is great but drains the battery quicker and more prone to damage. Buy the protective stick on sheets, it's a good investment.You cannot see battery power remaining at any time. So it's a bit of guesswork to figure out if you need to recharge.Overall this camera beats others given its size, features and performance at it's sub three hundred price tag!

it says memory error every time i try to use it and i’ve changed the memory card 3 times

I wanted a digital camera for years, but kept myself restrained to a budget until I saw this on sale and decided to order it. I've had it for over a month now and I love it. Know how you buy a new toy and you're really excited about it until it finally comes in and then you kind of forget about it? I'm still really stoked about having it because it's just that fun to use. Owning it actually inspired me to learn a lot about how to take pictures properly.Pros-Small and stylish will be sure to turn heads-Strong metal body so that it won't break should you hit it against a wall or drop it-EASILY fits into your pocket-The 2.5" screen is gorgeous and the size is just right (it can get super bright should you need it to)-Software couldn't be easier to use (it'll even rotate your pictures that are vertical automatically in the browser, and you can set it to save these rotations)-The gimmicky extra modes are super cool (color accent to make everything b&w except for one color, color swap, positive film, etc)-Surprisingly little noise at ISO 100 and ISO 200 (at least in the instances where I've used them)-Very simplistic navigation on the camera with very few buttons to confuse you and nice little pictures on them-The panoramic picture mode makes taking wide shots really easy-It can go pretty fast, which means that you won't miss the moment you really want to capture (especially if you hold down the shutter button halfway to focus it ahead of time)-It comes with an A/V cable right in the box, which is better than what most cameras tend to provide, and the slideshows that are built-in for you to show family and friends is real nifty-Pretty much perfect for the point-and-shoot photographer who wants something ultra portable-When you rotate the camera in playback, it'll rotate your picture view as well!-Flash is too obvious on the picture if the object is too close to you-Unbelievably sharp photos with very little fringing, particularly in natural light and outdoor environmentsCons-Could use some more manual controls (I wish I could control the shutterspeed)-There is no battery life indicator until you only have a few exposures left on the battery, though it's supposed to last 150 exposures (I haven't counted, but that sounds about right)-Red eye, which is a problem and each and every ultracompact digital camera out there-Movie mode sometimes a little grainyFalse Cons (where I disagree with others)-It's really not that bad for night shots if you know what you're doing as I've taken several good ones at a night concert I went to; you may not want to use the night snapshot mode, but if you go into manual and fiddle with the exposure value and up the ISO you can get pretty decent brightness out of it-Manual settings are pretty easy to use and discern since they all appear right on the screen without having to scroll around-Movie files actually do compress rather well-It's pretty good for moving photos if you just hold the shutter button halfway since then it'll go faster and it'll tell you if you're shaking (you can also hold it closer to your body to reduce that, or just get a portable tripod)-That guy who complained it's too slow just didn't read the manual because obviously he didn't hold down the shutter all the way, I've almost always had extremely fast capturesI would recommend getting at least 512 MB memory card. I delete pictures off of mine when I don't care much for them later on and just keep the stuff I'm willing to show other people, and I still haven't reached the limit of my 512 MB memory card's memory. You should definitely get a case for it, I got the PSC-90 and I think it's great (only protects the camera though, no extra storage, but very stylish). DEFINITELY buy a screen protector for the LCD, and don't cheap out on it because the screen is pretty sensitive and a scratch on it would likely pain you to see. You may want to invest in an extra battery pack as well, though I haven't.In sum: not perfect, but after doing some research, I stick by this being the best ultracompact on the market, and perfect for point-and-shoot amateur photographers like myself. I'd give it 5 stars, but I have a few cons that I'd feel guilty to let go of and give it 5 stars. I'd prefer 4.5 stars, but oh well.

We've had a few different digital cameras over the past decade, and this is by far the best. A few days before we took a trip to Disney this summer, I found out our JVC camcorder wouldn't get anything in focus and the picture was always near black. So I took it in and found out I wouldn't get it back for a few weeks. We had just recently gotten this camera, and hadn't really put it through its paces yet, but I decided to grab a 1GB SD card for it and hope that it took good videos as well as great pictures. And it certainly does. On the lowest quality settings (320x240 w/ 15 frames per second), you can record a good 45 minutes of video w/ audio on a 1GB SD card, which goes for about $30 now. It'll record video at up to 640x480 w/ 30 fps. It's loaded with features and responds very quickly. You can turn the power on and snap a picture in about 2 seconds. It's really a delight to work with, and the battery lasts a really long time. If you're zooming in a lot, it's kind of easy to end up with a blurry picture if it's not held steady, but that's a user thing, and not a problem with the camera. It's tiny, but it feels incredibly solid, and I highly recommend it.