Review: Canon Digital Elph SD400

After many years of good use our old Fuji 1.5 Megapixel camera started acting flaky and became unreliable. This led to the purchase of a new Canon PowerShot Elph SD400. It is so much better than our four year old Fuji was, and so much smaller.

The one problem was the very small SD memory card it came with. Only 16Mb which meant only 9 pictures at a time! I replaced that with a 1Gb SD card, now I have room for more than 600 shots. Or, since the Canon takes videos with sound, 9 minutes of video.

It has a 3x optical zoom, and 4x additional digital zoom, but the digital zoom gets grainy fast, so I disabled it in the menu options. One of my favourite features is the custom self timer - I have set it to take four pictures, 3 seconds apart which makes for a 'photo booth' effect when posing.

The ability to shoot decent video & sound is very handy, and much more convenient than using our camcorder. Considering the very tiny size of this camera, I am amazed it can even take videos. It is as big as my wallet, which worries me because I don't think it will survive going thru the washer - which is a real possibility given it is so small.

The software it came with is great. It manages all the filenames and can be customized. The 'stitching' features let's you take a series of shots from left to right, then using the software it stitches them into a super-wide panoramic picture. Worked the first time too!

This camera will change the pictures I take, because it is so easy to carry I will always have it with me. It is ready to shoot as soon as it is turned on. If only it played mp3's!