Rating: 
Summary: Great Camera
Review: This is my first digital camera. I think it is great. This camera is very easy to use and with a little exploration and common sense, all of the options are very easy to use. I've only had the camera for 2 weeks now, but it takes great pictures, and coupled up with the canon I850 Priner, 4x6 pictures are coming out just like photos developed from the store. The color and detail are very impressive.
The only down side to the camera is the small 16 memory card. I've already bought a larger one for not much cost, and now I can take plenty of pictures without running out of memory.
Rating:
Summary: Fun Gerenal Use Camera with Good Picutres
Review: This is my first digital camera. The S230 is perfect for general snapshot and fun family use (let's be honest, if you're looking for professional quality or aperature control, buy one that cost $1,000+!) I take it with me everywhere--the size makes it a cinch to tuck it in a pocket or a purse. The metal body feels much better in your hand than most of the other camera's I looked at.The pictures are of great quality and the video clip is a fun addition for less than $400. It's incredibly easy to use, even for a digital novice. With my Windows XP, interface with the card reader is easier than I could have imagined. The panoramic stitch effect, while not perfect, captures the essence of the shot and, in some cases, is better than a traditional panoramic picture because you can decide the size. I knew the red eye would be an issue when I bought it, but, then again, it's rather easy to get rid of that using the software provided by Canon. My only complaint is a user error--because of the location of the on/off switch, I sometimes turn it off when taking a picture. Like any digital camera, it will go through batteries quickly if you leave the camera on, review your pictures often, or take shots with the LCD on, but with generic batteries available, there is no reason not to have a spare.
Rating:
Summary: impressive
Review: I sold my Sony brick which used a floppy drive and now I take the tiny s230 everywhere. Daytime pictures are very sharp, and the white balance seems very accurate in general. There is some purple fringe with strong light, and I noticed some slight barrel distortion on a macro shot or two, but nothing showstopping. I wish it had shutter and aperture priority modes, but it isn't a big deal--the camera was designed for quick snapshots. If you want to do some creative work, you can, but it takes some patience, experimenting, and use of spot metering and focus. I love the long exposure modes--I have taken many interesting night shots. The battery life is okay if you don't use the flash or auto focus beam often, and you try to frame as many shots as possible with the viewfinder. The screen is sharp, the menus are well laid out. The lens, while zooming, is a bit noisy, but bearable, and the camera won't remember my flash preference in auto mode for some reason after turning it off. One feature I love is being able to zoom in on a photo in playback mode. Blurry shots often look sharp when they are reduced in the screen, but you can blow up certain areas to see if it is sharp or not. This is useful for knowing which photos to throw out. The bundled software is absolute garbage. It is buggy, slow, and counterintuitive. To transfer images, (assuming you have a laptop) get a seven-dollar pcmcia card adapter. It has a smart flash that pre-flashes, meters, and adjusts the aperature accordingly. On my previous camera, low, medium, and high flash modes left much to be desired. On full-auto, it works very well. Overall, very pleased.
Rating:
Summary: What an impressive camera!
Review: I have been absolutely thrilled with the quality of photos, ease of use, durability, and compact size of this camera. Shortly after I bought it, I took some pictures at the highest resolution, and had them professionally developed to 11x13 size. The quality of the photo was outstanding! The photo was crystal clear, and I'm certain that I could have blown it up further. I previously owned a Kodak 2.0 mp, and although it took nice pictures, the delay (from pushing the button to the time the picture recorded) was nearly unbearable. I constantly missed photo ops of my new baby in action. My Kodak also began having problems after 18 months (what a dissapointment- of course it was then out of warranty). The S230 is lightening quick, and the recovery (from shot to shot) is also extremely fast. I found the software to be very intuitive, as well as easy to install (I'm running XP). Although I have other photo software, I am using the Cannon software, because I find it that functional. I did a lot of research in the way of compact cameras, before this puchase. I considered the Sony Cyber Shot (average response time, and very high price), the Minolta Dimage(got sub-par reviews for quality of photo). Three people in my family own the s200's, and have been thrilled with them for over 1 yr. The proprietary battery concerned me prior to my purchase, but I have been extremely pleased with the battery performance. I have not had the need to purchase a spare. I set up the camera (fooling with ALL of the settings), took over 100 photos, reviewed them MANY times, and downloaded them from the camera, before I had to recharge the battery! The battery also fully recharges in about 1 1/2 hours. One neat extra: the camera has a gravity sensor that "remembers" the orientation of your photos, so they are always "right side up". In low light conditions, the camera has performed far beyond my expectations (compensating with a very good flash). Because of the compact size (and flash proximity to the shutter, red eye is occasionally a problem (although no more so then other ultra-compact cameras), and can be fixed with the software. However red-eye is certainly no worse then my HUGE Kodak camera was. If you are looking for a compact camera, with excellent photo quality, and intuitive features, look no further.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome camera!
Review: I love this camera, and I take it everywhere I can, cuz you never know when you might have a Kodak moment! The only complaint I have is the redeye...even though it claims to have redeye reduction, boy is there a lot of it! Oh well, nothing a little photoshop editing can't take care of. Besides that, this is THE camera to get.
Rating:
Summary: Turn off the LCD!
Review: I also have to give this little beauty a high rating. A number of people have expressed complaints or problems. I thought I'd describe some of my own experiences. I recently bought the camera for work, along with an extra battery and a 256MB CF card. In initial testing I was very impressed with the clarity of the pictures, though I changed the white balance for indoor pictures. I took 110 pictures of varying sizes and 3 movies of about a minute each (much more than I expected, based on reviews I've read of battery life). This week my wife and I went to Disneyland. I brought the camera, the empty CF card and both charged batteries. I took 182 pix at max size/min compression without depleting the first battery! Ultimately, I got 328 pictures over a period of two weeks - about half taken with flash. I kept the LCD display off the whole time, except for the two-second review display in the LCD after you take a picture and the status icons which appear when you change something (like turning the flash off or forcing infinity focus). The review display defaults to 10 seconds, but as I grew comfortable with the camera I changed it to 2 seconds -- partly to conserve battery life, but also because you can't do anything with the camera until the display clears. By the last day of our trip, I had turned if off entirely due to the discovery of an undocumented feature: if the LCD and review settings are both off, and you keep the shutter button pressed after taking your image, the image will be displayed for a few seconds. This has the potential to decrease the time between shots if you're busy taking several in a row in a short time. I have an SLR 35mm camera and two point-and-shoot's. Though I like looking through the lens to exactly frame a picture in the SLR, I've learned with the point-and-shoot's to see as the camera does and not worry about the viewfinder. I took this point-and-shoot approach with the S230 and it works fine. If you think "digital camera" means "looking at an LCD display to frame your picture," I urge you to rethink this. It will mean far less worry about the battery. It should be noted though, as it is elsewhere, that the "weak battery" icon doesn't come on until the battery is pretty much dead, which means you could end up in the lurch if you don't have a spare; but the battery life is less of a problem than I thought. In different stores I took many macro mode close-ups with the flash off, which requires a slow shutter setting for the dim light. They weren't as blurry as I thought they'd be, and a couple came out great. A pocket tripod would make the blurriness problem moot, of course. A curious feature of CCD digital cameras you need to understand is that longer exposures create grainier (more artifacts) pictures, exactly the opposite of what you can get with film. Flash pictures of 8-foot circular displays, taken from 4 or 5 feet back, came out quite well, and hand-held macro pictures under sufficient light were very nice. I switched from auto mode to manual (mostly to access the white balance settings) early on. When turning on the camera in manual mode, you only have to think about a few things: Whether to set infinity focus (in situations where you're shooting something more than 10 feet away and don't want to wait for the auto-focus); whether to set macro mode for sharp close-ups up to 1.5 feet away (not commonly used, but handy); and whether to turn the flash on or off. To review several pictures you've taken, just flick the mode switch from photo to review. Images will tend to have more contrast than you see with your eye, a bit more than with film. If you're within 8 to 10 feet, use a fill flash. Alternately you can work with images in the provided software (Photoshop Elements). For example, I shot some photos of the Small World exterior late in the afternoon. The sun shone brightly off the white building, and the shrubs and waiting area were in shadow. I aimed at the building and half-pressed the shutter to set the auto-exposure. In that image, the building looked fine, but the shadows were were almost black, even though they were easily visible to my eye. In a second photo, I aimed the camera at the shadows to set the auto-exposure, and then aimed at the building and took the picture. In this image, the building and surrounding area was completely washed out, but the shrubs and passing boats in the darker areas were much more distinct. I fixed the first image in Photoshop, but the second image couldn't be saved. I did this to test the camera's limits, but the best solution would have been to come back and shoot it in the morning. A common "bad photo" problem is not understanding when you need to recompose a shot, change the lighting (or wait for better lighting), or not accepting that you just can't get certain photos to come out. For those special photos it's still not time to replace my SLR, or even my point-and-shoot APS camera. But for the size, weight, and quality of images, even though I purchased the camera for work, I'm very happy with it and will use it for personal uses as well.
Rating:
Summary: a great gift
Review: i've had it for a while now and am extremely happy with it. the battery life is just fine, the optical zoom is a plus because its greatest feature is its small size. its very portable and it can be taken anywhere. oh, and the 3.2 megapixel photos turn out great.
Rating:
Summary: Also works as a movie camera with 3 minute videos!
Review: I'm not going to repeat everything the other reviewers said, just emphasize that this little camera can take 3 minute long movies at 320x240 resolution, which when viewed on a TV come out amazingly sharp and fluid with fairly good sound. I used it a lot during my last vacation and then stitched the movies together using the EO Video software (not included with camera) to make one long movie with different scenes. So many small 1 minute to 3 minute movie clips add up to a decent show. The camera is very easy to use for movies since you don't have to keep the shutter pressed, just press it once to start recording and again to stop. You can easily hold it up over people's heads in crowds, but the funniest is to film unsuspecting friends, since they would never imagine being filmed by this little thing. Make sure you get at least a 256 MB CF Card with a high 25x speed rating so that you don't have to wait long for the camera to write the data. I found such a 256MB 25x CF card manufactured by Transcend for only...
Rating:
Summary: Good Price Good Camera GREAT Results
Review: I got this camera because of the 3.2 MP and the size.
It fits in my purse, my pocket, in my glovebox in my car.
It takes awesome photos. If you are at a concert and do not want to have a camera detected, this is your best friend. You can turn the flash off and take a good shot without anyone ever knowing. Want to photograph your computer screen? Get a nice clean shot with the flash turned off the camera. Always wonder why the heck you don't have your camera when you need one? This will solve your problem. You'll find you'll never leave the house without it again. I have photographed dragonflies, people, places, car accidents and more because of the fact that this camera is so easy to carry around, therefore I get 1,000 more opportunities to take photos. Photo and print quality is astounding for it's class.
Rating:
Summary: Unbelieveable camera!
Review: I first saw my friend's Elph S200 (the 2MP one) and was amazed at how small it was and the quality of the pictures and product. That day, I decided that when the 3 MP version (the S230) came down a little in price, I would buy one. Now that I got the camera, I am even more amazed. It is a precision instrument. For the camera itself, probably its only limitation is the 2x zoom. However, with the digital zoom, you get 6.4x. Granted, with the digital zoom, the pictures can get grainy. However, with 3 megapixel, the digitally zoomed pictures are still better than with my old 1.2 megapixel camera which made decent 4x6 shots. I had problems installing the software on my home PC which runs Windows XP (it is a three year old PC). The Installshield failed. I contacted Canon and they gave me a suggestion that didn't work. Upon contacting them again, they told me it was a Windows problem and told me to contact Microsoft. I was not happy about that. Luckily, I already had a CF reader which I use to get the pictures onto the PC which is probably a good investment anyway. I also use Photoshop Elements 2.0 which is better than the software they give. The software did install on my laptop running Windows XP, but still Photoshop Elements is better than theirs and it is easier using a separate CF reader than using the Canon-supplied cable. Even with my software problems, this camera still rates 5 stars. It is simply amazing how Canon fit so much camera into such a tiny package. Any software problems can't get worked around and my home PC is not new either.
|
