Canon PowerShot SD700 / IXUS 800 Digital Camera

I've only had a few days to play with this camera so far but it has been impressive. I swapped my S3 with a friend for a few weeks since he wanted a compact camera with long zoom capabilities and he recently bought the SD700 through one of those insane Dell deals. In just a few days of use, I'm thinking of updating my aging S410 for this camera.

Short Take

The SD700 is certainly an impressive camera especially with the image stabilization and good 6 Megapixel sensor. Add to that a stylish and sturdy casing, limited manual settings, excellent 2.5 inch LCD screen, 4x optical zoom, and excellent photo and movie capturing, Canon retains a strong presence in the compact/ultracompact digital camera arena.

The SD700 isn't without it's problems however. Common to cameras of this size, red eye is a problem and flash range is short. Since the SD700 shares the same sensor as the S3 (and also the SD600 and SD630), ISO 400 displays some noise in shadow and dark areas and ISO 800 is often too noisy to use without some post processing. Chromatic aberration is also notable at the long end of the zoom (although you don't notice it on small prints like 5x7).

However, the biggest obstacle may be the high price tag. At a MSRP of $499, that's a hard price to swallow for most. It depends on whether having the image stabilization is worth at least the extra $100 over other competitive digicams to you. Without the image stabilization, the SD700 seems to be as good as the competition in taking photos.

Specs

The SD700 has dimensions are 3.56x2.22x1.04 in./90.4x56.5x26.4mm and weighing about 6.8 oz. with the SD card and battery. Surprisingly to me, this camera was approximately the same size and slightly heavier than my Canon Powershot S410 (which is an older 4.0 MP camera with 3x optical zoom using CompactFlash cards). The camera is a light metallic gray in the front, with a lighter gray/silver on the sides and partial back, and black around the 2.5 inch LCD screen. It's a striking color contrast that works rather well and looks very attractive. Add the curved edges to the design similar to the SD500/550 model to complete the high end look. The outer casing is made of stainless steel surrounding a polycarbonate body. The camera is easy to hold and control in one hand. The SD700 has a good solid feel to it as well.

The front of the unit holds the lens with build-in lens cover, the flash, optical viewfinder, AF assist lamp, and microphone port. The right side holds the eyelet for the included camera strap and the cover to the A/V output port and the mini-USB port. The bottom of the camera holds the cover to the battery and SD card slot (there is a rubber cover on the slot for the optional AC adapter) and the tripod mount is located in the center (in respect to the lens) of the bottom of the camera as well. The top of the camera holds the zoom ring with the shutter button in the center of the ring.

The back of the camera is where the action is. You have a healthy 2.5 inch color LCD capable of displaying 173,000 pixels. You have room for an optical viewfinder, a power switch, several LED status lights, a partially hidden mode dial, the four way controller with a central button, a direct print button, a display and menu button below the controller. The 4 way controller allows you to change ISO settings (up), flash mode (right), timer/continuous shot (down), and focus mode (left). The central button to the 4-way controller acts as the function/set button. After longer use, the size of the 4-way controller is starting to annoy me... I have to use my thumbnail to press it correctly when holding the SD700 in one hand.

Lens

The SD700 uses a 4X (35-140mm in the 35mm format) f/2.8-5.5 all-glass aspherical zoom lens. This lens utilizes Canon's Ultra High Refractive Index Aspherical technology (UA) which allows for the longer zoom ratios in a compact body. In display mode or powered down mode, the lens retracts fully into the body of the camera. There is a built in lens cap when in pure display mode or when the camera is powered down.

Laundry List of SD700 Features

The SD700 does an above average job when in Auto mode and has limited manual controls. If you desire more extensive manual controls in an ultracompact, there are other ultracompacts that have more extensive manual controls. Here is a laundry list of features for the SD700:

Type: 6.0 Megapixel, 1/2.5 inch type Charge Coupled Device (CCD)
Total Pixels: Approx. 6.2 Megapixels
Effective Pixels: Approx. 6.0 Megapixels
Focus: TTL Autofocus
-Normal: 1.5 ft./45cm-infinity
-Macro: 0.79 in.-2.0 ft./2-60cm (WIDE), 1.3-2.0 ft./40-60cm (TELE)
-Digital Macro: 0.79 in.-2.0 ft./2-60cm (WIDE)
Metering: Evaluative, Center-weighted average, Spot Metering frame is fixed to the center
White Balance: Auto, Preset (Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H), Custom
ISO sensitivity: Auto, High ISO Auto, ISO 80/100/200/400/800 equivalent
Exposure Control Method: Program AE, AE Lock is available
Exposure Compensation: +/-2 stops in 1/3-stop increments
Built-in Flash Modes: Auto, Auto w/ Red-Eye Reduction, Flash On, Flash On w/ Red-Eye Reduction, Flash Off, Slow Syncro
Flash Exposure Compensation: none
Maximum Aperture: f/2.7 (W) - f/3.5 (T)
Shooting Modes: Auto, Camera M, Special Scene (Portrait, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Underwater, Indoor, Kids & Pets, Night Snapshot, Color Accent, Color Swap), Digital Macro, My Colors, Stitch Assist, Movie
Photo Effects: Vivid, Vivid Blue, Vivid Green, Vivid Red, Neutral, Sepia, Black & White, Positive Film, Lighter Skin Tone, Darker Skin Tone, Custom Color
Self-Timer: Activates shutter after an approx. 2-sec./10-sec. delay, Custom
Continuous Shooting: approx. 2.1 fps

Manual control is rather limited but useful in experienced hands so you can tweak your shots somewhat.

Day to Day Use and Photos

The SD700 is an exceptional performer in bright to moderate lighting. Shots taken under such conditions were overall crisp, heavily saturated and bright, and especially sharp under the lower ISO settings (80 and 100 specifically). Colors were accurate and vibrant. Image stabilization allowed for exceptional photos without a tripod at both ends of the zoom. There seemed to be a some softness to the corners of the photo and both extremes of the zoom although a bit worse on the telephoto end. Chromatic aberration was also noted in the shots especially when significantly enlarged (It could be noted on some 8x10 enlargements). I thought there was less chromatic aberration in my S410 photos but there is a loss of some fine detail on the S410 shots (remember the S410 is a 4MP camera compared to the 6MP SD700!). ISO settings above 200 showed increasing overall softness to the picture but still produced pleasing shots. ISO 400 had increased noise but were still suitable for enlargements. ISO 800 shots showed significant noise and were basically unprintable beyond 4x6 prints at best without some software postprocessing.

Having the optical viewfinder was extremely helpful for the continuous shot mode since the LCD does not show every shot taken in the time period (only the last shot of the series)... which makes me wish the S3 had an optical viewfinder. Sport shots in bright conditions were quick and showed no motion blurring. The 9-point autofocus system was pretty dead on in moderate to bright lighting conditions.

Overall, an extremely pleasant and easy to use camera under these conditions.

When the Sun Goes Down?

Unlike the S3, you actually have an optical viewfinder which makes things easier for night photos. You don't have to wait for the camera to display your desired shot on the LCD and frame your shot immediately. On the other hand, you want to half-depress the shutter so the camera can set the focus for the best possible shot in low light and dark situations.

Red eye issues were seen in a large number of photos with the SD700 but were corrected with the use of the HF-DC1 external slave flash accessory. Even with the red eye reduction, you still got a significant amount of red eye in low light and night portrait and group shots without the HF-DC1 flash unit. Note that the built-in flash range is very limited, I wouldn't expect much after 10 feet as my shots of subjects past that were poorly illuminated by the built in flash. However, within the built-in flash range, photographed subjects had excellent sharpness, color accuracy, and color reproduction. Note the HF-DC1 extended the SD700 range to about 30 feet while maintaining the excellent photo quality.

Shots of NYC skyline at night were acceptable under the auto settings under the wide angle range of the zoom but could be better. Here there was a bit of purple fringing/chromatic aberration noted especially with brightly lit windows against the dark face of buildings (like similar photos on my S3). Using ISO modes over 200 added a bit of noise to the photos although ISO 800 shots had excessive noise in the photos and again were suitable for small prints without some postprocessing). ISO 400 had acceptable noise levels. The image stabilization helped greatly with night photos especially at the maximum telephoto range of the zoom at night without a tripod. Pictures in this setting had occassional blurring on the auto setting and maximum telephoto range but better than my S410 shots under similar conditions. I would even say that the SD700 had less blurring taking such photos compared to my S70 (7.1 MP camera utilizing the DIGIC 1 processor).

Any shots under low light and dark conditions of fast motion often were blurred if no adequate light source was nearby. Overall, low light and dark conditions were above average for a ultracompact digital camera.

Movie Mode

The SD700 has an overall flexible movie capture mode that is similar to the S3 without the stereo sound. Although robust, the SD700 will not replace a camcorder anytime soon. As with the S3, any movie you record cannot go over 1GB in size. On top of this, you can't even hope to make a movie that size without using a high speed SD card. You can stitch together 1GB files after the fact with the included Canon software to make longer movies.

You can pick between 640x480 and 320x240 for movie image size and between 30 or 15 frames per second. You also can record at 60 fps at 320x240 pixels for up to a 1 minute in length. The SD700 can also record at 160x120 at 15 fps up to 3 minutes in length. At 640x480 at 30fps with a high speed SD card over 1GB in size, you can only record for about 7-8 minutes and create another file to records for another 7-8 minutes so on and so forth.

Like the S3, the movies overall have excellent quality (although playback through the A/V cable was fuzzy compared to playback on the camera screen or transferring to your personal computer). There is a built in speaker to listen to your playback but it's a bit faint.

I wish Canon could utilize a better video compression scheme so you can record longer movies into the limited card space or increase the file size limits.

Flash

The flash is limited in range as expected for an ultracompact. The max range is about 10 meters. If you want longer flash ranges, the HF-DC1 external slave flash is a viable option. This also reduced the occurance of red eye.

Viewfinder/LCD

The LCD gives you 99-100% framing while the optical viewfinder gives you 80-85% framing.

The LCD is bright with a wide viewing angle and is exceptionally sharp. The display will brighten as the camera detects that it is in low light conditions. Photos viewed through the LCD will rotate accordingly as the camera position is changed so that picture is in the proper viewing position (i.e. if the camera is upside down, the viewed photo will display with the top side always up).

On Image Stabilization(IS)

Overall, you'll see the improvements especially if you have unsteady hands or take alot of photos near the telephoto range of the zoom. The camera has 4 modes for the IS: Off, Continuous, Shoot Only, and Panning. There is a marked difference when the IS is on versus the IS being turned off. You will notice the difference in your zoom shots with blurred images and a lack of detail in your photos with IS off and especially without use of a tripod.

Continuous mode has the IS on all the time. This puts a bigger drain on your batteries but tends to give you the most stable shots for most conditions. Shoot only activates the IS when the photo is taken. This saves a bit of battery power but I found it best if you have a fairly steady hand or have the camera on a tripod already. Panning mode is used mostly for making those large stitch panorama shots. It basically has the IS stabilize the vertical field and not the horizontal field.

Of course, the off setting greatly increases your battery life.

Battery Life

The SD700 utilizes the NB-5L battery (with none of the other current Canon Digital Camera use as of now) which is a 3.7V 1120mAh Lithium Ion rechargable battery pack. Canon rates the battery as giving up to 240 shots with the LCD on, up to 700 shots with the LCD off, or up to 360 minutes of playback on a full charge. My experience with extensive flash use, LCD on, and IS on continuous mode and previewing 1/4 to 1/3 of the shots captured was about 150 shots on average per full charge (I've gone through two full charges so far and the camera has had 6 full charges at the time of this writing).

Canon includes a portable battery charger (plugs right into the wall) in the package. This fully charges the battery in 1 1/2 hours. Note that the battery must come out of the camera and be placed in the charger.

Memory and Storage

The SD700 uses SD (Secure Digital) and MMC (MultiMedia Card)cards for storage as most of Canon's camera lineup does now. The SD card is more common and has larger storage capacities available as well as speedier. Canon includes a pathetic 16MB card in the package so you need to add the price of a much larger SD card to the buying price (I would suggest at least a 1GB card).

I used Sandisk Ultra II 1GB SD cards with the SD700 as well as a standard 2GB Sandisk SD card. If you like to use the movie record function, stick to high speed cards with SD700. The high speed Ultra II cards allowed me to access the entire spectrum of functions of the SD700 compared to the plain vanilla Sandisk SD card. The camera takes advantage of the faster read and write speeds of a better SD card especially in the movie modes. Like the S3, I frequently got cut off short in movie mode using the plain vanilla Sandisk SD card. The lack of a high speed card also compromised the continuous shot feature as well.

For reference, a 1GB card should hold about 350-360 photos taken at 2816x2112 (i.e. 6MP images) at the highest quality setting (Super Fine). Each shot is approximately 3MB a pop. Like the rest of the SD series cameras, there is no RAW format option. Movies sizes are discussed in that section.

The SD700 has 5 image file size options: large (2816x2112), widescreen (2816x1584), medium2 (2272x1704), medium (1600x1200), and small (640x480). Note same sensor as the S3, same resolution option... I would guess that the SD630 and SD600 have the same options.

I still don't see why Canon added the Widescreen option... I found no use for it in the S3 and still find no use for it in the SD700. All this does is taken your standard 6MP image and crop the top on the bottom of it. I would rather do that on my own computer. However, it might be of use to those who print directly from their camera or put the SD memory card into a printer or photo developer.

In the Box

In the box are several printed manuals including the basic manual, an advanced manual, direct printing manual, and software manuals. You also get a crappy 16MB SD card, NB-5L Li-Ion battery, portable battery charger unit, wrist strap, USB 2.0-to-miniUSB cable, mono A/V output cable, and CD-ROM with Canon's Digital Camera Solutions software.

When buying the SD700, the preference is to buy a high speed SD card (I would recommend 1GB cards... Sandisk Ultra II should be around $50-$60 on the web... $50 at Costco) and probably an extra battery if you plan on taking the camera for long outings. A case is optional, but the camera is easily pocketable.

Accessories

Canon offers a few accessories for the SD700. These include the external slave flash HF-DC1 (which I've reviewed on epinions), the waterproof case, and a leather belt case which I wrote a review of the Canon PSC-55 leather case here. An AC adapter kit is available as well.

Out of these official Canon accessories, the External Slave Flash is one to consider since it extends the flash range of the SD700 up to 30 feet and helps with the redeye problems. Also note that the HF-DC1 does not replace the built-in flash of the SD700 but complements it (hence the slave flash designation)... it goes off as the main flash goes off.

Competition

If you don't need the image stabilization, there is a ton of competition including Canon's own SD600 and SD630. Honestly, I don't have too much experience with the current batch of ultracompacts so checking other epinions and sites like www.imaging-resource.com and www.steves-digicams.com for reviews on the competition would be better than reading my guesses on alternative ultracompact digital cameras.

Money Saving Tips

My best tip here would be using Dell.com when they have coupons available or percent discounts with the price of the SD700 falling as low as $364 before taxes (assuming a 20% coupon with a $35 off $300 stackable coupon). If you want better customer service and extended warranty options then Crutchfield.com, Amazon.com, RitzCamera.com, etc. will better fit your needs. For Crutchfield.com, you can use a referral code to get you a $20 discount (first time shoppers only!) from Crutchfield.com which also gives the referrer a $20 credit at Crutchfield as well. My referral code is p21r2-pqrdb-d9ryg and inputed on the payment screen (where you put in your credit card number). Crutchfield sends in stock purchases within 2-3 business days (I've often gotten purchases in 1-2 days)!

If you want something closer to home, the camera should be available at your local Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.

Although I haven't updated this article in a while, it still has a few helpful hints on saving money on new purchases.