12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
SD700 / IXUS 800 Canon - true travel companion
Date of Review: Mar 21, 2008
The Bottom Line: I love SD700is!
When I think of Canon SD700is, I think of 15 countries, more than 40 cities,and more than 16,000 shots. I also think of rains, fog, freezing cold and steamy hot weather. And in all these conditions, SD700 performed amazing. SD700is was trully my travel companion for many months of backpacking through Eastern Europe and South East Asia. It was painful for me to leave it in India, but I had to at this point. Now, I am looking for a substitute to my best friend and will be purchasing SD850is.
Anyways, for those of you who want to know how SD700 holds up over time and crazy picture/video taking, you might enjoy reading this review. For those of you who are considering buying SD700is, it is definetely a great choice, especially if you are looking for a great pocket size camera.
Main Points:
1) DURABILITY
Yes, SD700is can definetely survive the toughest of all the travels. I dropped it in the sand of Indian desert. It was exposed to heavy pouring rain, as well as sticky heat. The camera performed equally. The sharpness and colors were great. After cleaning the lens, there were no marks of any weather damage whatsoever. The only bad thing is that the body tended to be scratched easily, for example, in your pocket together with the keys, or other objects. But this is really a minor thing. In addition, after touching the screen hundreds of times with sticky or dirty hands, as well as placing it dusty places, the screen accumulated durt which was hard to remove. But no picture quality was affected. All these things are body/screen related only. And also, I am probably one of these few people who would put the poor thing through those conditions.
2) PERFORMANCE
I would rather say [PERFORMANCE PLUS]. There were tonns of moments where I would shoot almost out of the pocket (not to get attention of many local people in many countries). Camera focused within a second and all fast taken pictures came out to be great. I am still looking at some pics I took out of the moving bus, train and even sitting on top of camel and horse. They are all focused and great! Wow! And I have like hundreds of those. All these things I am mentioning are true when taking pictures in the great light. I will go into details on bad light conditions below
3) LOW LIGHT SHOOTING
There were cases SD700 did amazing job at low light shooting (I still remember shooting the entire set of Kathakali dance in Southern India, pics are amazing!). However, you have to be careful when shooting in low light conditions. It is important to set up higher ISO, make sure your hands are not shaking, and if possible adjust other lighting through manual options. If you spend few minutes learning those tricks, you would be pleasantly surprised at what your little SD700 could do.
4) PORTRAITS / CLOSE UPS
My favorite part of working with SD700is. GREAT JOB on close ups whether portraits of people, shot of flowers or animals. If you don't forget to specify the option for close-up shots [looks like flower / or portrat option from SCN settings] you would be pleased with the work SD700 can do. Especially with the good day light. I loved it.
5) COLORS / SATURATION
I really enjoyed the colors / saturation in SD700 performance. They were not very bright and overstressed like many Sony/Nikon cameras do, but not washed out either (like the new Canon SD870). They were just right. To get extra crisp in coloring it was enough to stabilize the camera and focus for a second longer
6) SIZE / SCREEN
Camera is a bit heavier than slim Casios or Sonys but it is a good pocket size. The screen could be bigger, but still was enough for viewing and enjoying your photos. I am into small electronics and SD700is was perfect to fit any purse, pants pocket or just to hold in the hand while walking.
7) FOCUSING
There are options for focusing, including Weighted and Center options. Those are very helpful in your everyday picture taking. I changed focusing option for panoramic shots and for portraits or other single object focused compositions. It's a really cool option to play with in addition to panoramic/portrait option available both in Auto mode and in Manual Mode (via SCN). Whichever option I used, SD700is focused very fast. Impressive.
8) VIDEOS
Videos were OK. I didn't care as much for videos as pictures and would take occasionally of some procession or friends talking. It was mediocre. For people who really want their videos to be technologically up to date, Canon PowerShot G9 is an excellent option. I have never seen such a crispy, big resolution, amazing videos as that camera can produce.
Like any small pocket camera, SD700 lacks a good zoom, as well as sometimes shows white circles when taking pictures with flash in low light. All this is kind of given. SD700 is not a professional camera. Instead, it's an amazing pocket travel companion which will deliver great crisp shots whether you are taking pictures of mountains, water, bright dresses, people's faces, objects and colorful buildings.
As I said, I am still sad that I left SD700 behind after tonns of drops, and thousands of shots throughout 8 months of backpacking.
