A midrange member of Canon's SD series of cameras, the Canon PowerShot SD600 is small and light, weighing less than six ounces. The matte-silver metal body, almost identical to the PowerShot SD630's, is compact enough to fit in a shirt pocket but solid enough to have a nice, dense, block-of-metal feel. If you want to spend an extra $50 or so, the SD630 is a carbon copy of the SD600 but with a 3-inch LCD compared to the SD600's 2.5-inch screen.
Like the camera itself, the Canon PowerShot SD600's control scheme is simple but functional. Most of the controls are on the back of the camera, next to the LCD. You control camera functions with a basic four-way-plus-OK switch, with instant access to ISO, flash, macro, burst, and shutter settings. The back of the camera also holds a mode slider, as well as display, menu, and print buttons. The top side of the camera holds the shutter release, the zoom rocker, and a power button.
The SD600 sports a standard f/2.8-to-f/4.9, 3X zoom lens (35mm-to-105mm equivalent) and offers a basic feature set highlighted by a few notable capabilities. The 2.5-inch LCD is accompanied by an optical viewfinder, a rare combination in ultracompacts. The viewfinder is tiny but welcome, especially when battery power runs low. The camera has a handful of scene presets, plus a VGA movie mode with a QVGA 60fps setting for watching slow-motion clips. Of course, Canon's innumerable image-adjustment parameters let you tinker with contrast, sharpness, saturation, and skin tone, as well as red, green and blue levels.
The SD600 lacks certain features, such as built-in memory, image stabilization, manual exposure control, and a live histogram. These would have been handy, but they're not critical, and their absence hardly hurts the camera's appeal.
The Canon PowerShot SD600 boasts excellent performance, with fast start-up and responsive shooting. The quick shutter lags no more than 0.7 second, even in dim light. We measured a quick shot-to-shot speed of 1.5 seconds, which bumps up only slightly to 2.1 seconds with the flash enabled. Burst mode proves equally fast, delivering about 2.1fps.
Of course, the most important aspect of the camera is photo quality, and this compact shooter delivers in almost every respect. Besides exhibiting Canon's signature smooth, noiseless images at ISO 80 and ISO 100, the SD600 manages very well to as high as ISO 800, a sensitivity many compact digitals don't even reach. At that speed, the SD600's pictures are noisy but in an unobtrusive, almost filmlike way; ISO 800 images on the SD600 actually look a bit better than many other cameras' images shot at ISO 400. The SD600's ISO 200 shots are almost indistinguishable from those taken at ISO100, and its ISO 400 images are still very usable, though noise starts to become noticeable at that setting. With less noise than usual, this camera performs better than other cameras in its class, especially in low-light, no-flash conditions such as indoor performances and museums.
It's hard to find any fault with the SD600's imaging pipeline. Colors are appropriately warm and saturated at all speeds; it produces very sharp and detailed pictures. The camera's automatic white-balance and exposure decisions are consistently accurate and pleasing. Lens distortions such as vignetting or pincushioning are negligible in the SD600, though as with many ultracompacts, lens sharpness falls off dramatically in the upper-left corner of the scene. Fringing is also barely there, even under heavily backlit objects such as branches against a sky. Ugly JPEG processing artifacts such as color banding and halos around high-contrast edges are, likewise, hard to spot.
The few problems with the SD600's images are minor. White highlights tend to blow out easily, and flash pictures are not evenly lit, though the camera's excellent high-ISO performance will eliminate the need for flash in many instances.
The Canon PowerShot SD600 is a great compact digital camera. It might not have many bells and whistles, but its quick performance and excellent images make this a great choice for anyone who wants their camera to simply take pictures.
 |
Typical shot-to-shot time | |
Time to first shot | |
Shutter lag (typical) |
Product Specifications:
Product Description:
Canon PowerShot SD600 Digital ELPH - Digital camera
Product Type:
Digital camera
Dimensions (WxDxH):
3.4 in x 0.9 in x 2.1 in
Flash Memory:
16 MB
Supported Flash Memory:
MultiMediaCard
,
SD Memory Card
Sensor Resolution:
6 megapixels
Shooting Modes:
Frame movie mode
Focus Adjustment:
Automatic
Min Focus Range:
11.8 in
Focal Length:
5.8 mm - 17.4 mm
Red Eye Reduction:
Yes
Microphone:
Microphone - Built-in
Viewfinder:
Optical - Real-image zoom
Display:
LCD display - TFT active matrix - 2.5 in - Color
Supported Battery:
1 x Li-ion rechargeable battery - 760 mAh ( Included )
Product Basic Spec:
Video input type:
Digital camera
Digital Zoom:
4 x
Sensor resolution:
6 megapixels
Optical sensor type:
CCD
Light sensitivity:
ISO 80
,
ISO 100
,
ISO 200
,
ISO 400
,
ISO 800
,
ISO auto
Gross sensor resolution:
6,200,000 pixels
Still image format:
JPEG
Lens Aperture:
F/2.8-4.9
Optical Zoom:
3 x
Camera Flash:
Built-in flash
Exposure metering:
Spot
,
Evaluative
,
Center-weighted
Exposure compensation:
±2 EV range, in 1/3 EV steps
Flash memory:
16 MB - SD Memory Card
Display type:
2.5 in LCD display
Weight:
4.9 oz