best point and shoot

Re: best point and shoot

I bought my wife a Canon SD800IS for Christmas. While it take decent pictures, there are a couple of things about it that I do not like. First, the red eye reduction setting is effective less than half the time, and sometimes will only eliminate the effect from one eye. So, I still end up cleaning this up in Photoshop (guess I'm spoiled with my dSLR and external flash, which never produces red eye). Second, the markings on the program dial are quite difficult to see, so my wife has a hard time telling if the camera is in playback mode, auto mode, AV mode, etc. Photography is not an interest of hers, and she just wants to flip between auto and playback modes. If she accidently puts the camera in manual or AV mode, the pictures are guaranteed to come out poorly, since she has no idea how to use a camera in such modes.

Re: best point and shoot

Don't use (built-in) flash, if you want to avoid red-eye (among other things).

If you're still shopping, take a look at the Fuji compacts too. The inexpensive F20 might fit the bill for instance.

_Man_

Re: best point and shoot

I have both Canon Digital Rebel XTi and PowerShot SD800 IS (along with UnderWater Housing).

Nearly all the ultra compacts (although I am sure exceptions exist) are not capable of handling red eyes. So if you have your mind set on ultra compacts, I would not use red eyes as a deciding factor.

Comparing image quality between these two cameras would be unfair, particularly since my XTi has 2 L-series lenses (EF 17-40mm f/4L USM and EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM) and a fantastic portrait lens (EF 50mm f/1.4 USM). The difference is particularly pronounced at wide angle (27mm via EF 17-40mm vs. SD800's 28mm). SD800 exhibits greater barrel distortion (pin cushioning) and noticeably soft details around the edges. And forget about using ISO beyond 200 on SD800 - ISO 400 and above are unusable.

That said, I recommend SD800 IS highly if you want wide angle. On prints and 1920x1200 LCD, corner softness is not significant. Virtually none of the ultra compacts have wide angle lens and if you are heavily into shooting landscapes and buildings, it's simply a must. I suppose it's not as long as some of the competing cameras, but it is plenty long for me (I am not heavily into telephoto photography, and when I do, XTI with 70-200mm will do the job). The image stabilizer is also nice to have as it affords between 2 and 3 stops. And face detection works pretty well, further reducing blurry photos.

Although it is not a thin by today's standard, it is still small and the ergonomics is mostly excellent -- mode selector knob is a bit cumbersome to use (I wish it had a shortcut button for "play"). Overall, the camera feels right and the on-screen menu is pleasure to use. It's very responsive, although I wish the lens was faster at longer focal lengths.

And the aforementioned underwater housing. It's a a bit pricey but shooting under the ocean while snorkeling can be extremely rewarding. The battery life is also considerably better than rated 270 shots with LCD on.

Re: best point and shoot

At around $170-200, the underwater housing (Canon WP-DC9) isn't exactly cheap. But for me, it earned every single penny. It's just so much fun and I took many amazing shots. I regret not having one for the honeymoon (took disposal underwater cameras with subpar results).

Regarding indoor shots, don't expect miracles with SD800's image stabilizers. It's definitely better than nothing, but I am able to take significantly better looking shots indoors with non-image stabilized 17-40mm lens and XTi (set at ISO 400). That said, SD800 has very useful "image check" feature -- click DISP button after shooting to see 100% crop on focus point(s).

Re: best point and shoot

Again, I would recommend giving one of the Fuji F series compacts a good look before settling on a Canon offering, especially given your criteria. If you've never seen samples from something like a Fuji F20 or F30, you might be very surprised how good their high ISO images look. No, they're not quite as good as DSLRs, but pretty close. Very many DSLR shooters go w/ one of the Fuji compacts specifically for that reason -- and some non-DSLR users also get one to complement whatever good daylight compacts they already own as well.

_Man_

Re: best point and shoot

Man-Fai definitely changed the course of my purchase. I'm going for the Fuji F31fd after having my eye on the Canon A710 IS for awhile. The superior image quality at 400 ISO and above compared to the Canon is amazing.

Re: best point and shoot

This page on dpreview in particular is enough for me: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilmf31fd/page6.asp I've been a Canon man myself, but it's hard to argue with those results. Most of my shooting is indoors without flash, so I suppose I've become sensitive to noise at higher ISOs.

Re: best point and shoot

I got my Fuji F31fd and thought I'd share a few pics. The first two were shot at ISO 400; the third at ISO 800 and all without flash. Be warned they run around 3 MB each.

http://cameronyee.com/images/DSCF0030.JPG

http://cameronyee.com/images/DSCF0037.JPG

http://cameronyee.com/images/DSCF0073.JPG

The ISO 800 looks a bit weird to me - some obvious noise reduction going on, but impressive nonetheless. I like the auto max ISO feature quite a bit and plan to keep it at 400 and below for most things.

Re: best point and shoot

I think the SD850 is more of an upgrade of the SD700 than the SD800. The SD800 has a wider angle lens (28mm equivalent) than the SD700 or SD850 (35mm equivalent). The wider angle lens of the SD800 is more useful in a point & shoot, IMO, and was the reason I chose it for my wife. A longer telephoto lens is not that interesting to me in a small point & shoot camera. For those types of shots, I would use my dSLR anyway.

Re: best point and shoot

I built that up special to demonstrate the fine detail capabilities of the camera