- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 84 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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31 out of 32 people found this review helpful
2.5 stars
"small package but disappoints"
Pros: great replacement for my old mini-sony
Cons: soft pictures - almost out-of-focus, flash underpowered
Summary: this is the camera that I leave in my briefcase so it is always handy.
I chose it over the competition because it has an optical view-finder - the significance of which is if the batteries run low you can switch over from the LCD and still have a functional camera. I can just "set it and forget it" in my briefcase and not always worry about battery life.
the camera is easy to use and very slick looking - however, the pictures are often soft and I find myself taking two or three shots of each subject - the photos are so bad sometimes that I wonder if there is a focus matrix issue with the SD400 line.
it wasn't until I had already purchased the camera did I discover that this issue was raised on steve's digicam / dpreview and the other photography review.
hopefully there will be a firmware update now that the problem is more universally known.
The photos are often unusable unless you are just emailing photos around.
One difference between the SD300 and SD400 is the resolution (4mp to 5mp) - but important for me was that the SD400's viewfinder "gains up" when taking photos in dark condition and that was important for me because my old sony's viewfinder was completely fly by wire at night.
The flash is very short. If you want to have the photo properly illuminated you need to get pretty close.
Overall, the camera itself is sharp and fast - but if you want your photos to be sharp look at other models or if it is too later - like for me - here is what I have found to reduce the softness - turn off the AiF, set the camera to Manual and select ISO 50 or 100 (auto ISO will bump up to 400 and make the picture useless) and take two shots of each subject.
- 2 replies to this review
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...my photos seemed my crisp most of the time. The only issue I encounted was in non-flash/low light situations (e.g. the shutter speed was too slow unless you put the camera down in a few cases)
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Thanks for bringing up the soft images problem. I own, probably the earliest tiny digcam by Casio, the 4MP Exilim which has the same problem. That camera also has a problem with artifacts which are only eggaterated when using Photoshop unsharping function. I have been looking for a replacement and heard good things about the Canon. Guess this is NOT the answer!
Where to buy
Canon PowerShot SD400:
$598.97
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$598.97 | Yes |
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