Canon PowerShot SD870 IS (Black)

Pros: Small camera, big 3" Screen, good pictures, good movie mode

Cons: Could use more zoom, and optical zoom during movie mode

Summary: I been looking for a camera for a month now, I bought the Sony T100, Panasonic TZ3 and Canon TX1 and returned them all, you can read why on their own reviews in Cnet.com.

I recently bought this camera and I guess I had to make some sacrifices, but got some good stuff in return. This camera is nice and small and to be honest the 3" screen is amazing. I guess I had to realize what I needed more, and when from there. I mostly use my cameras during snowboarding trips. So I need something small, and with a wide lens to get nice scenery pictures, plus it helps for the self portraits.

The camera is faster than the tx1, and it produces better result as far as picture quality goes, much less noise and sharper pictures. the video is pretty good except you can only use the digital zoom, and not the optical. this is due to amount of noise the optical zoom makes and the microphone would pick it up. The noise in the pictures is keep well under range, much much better than the tx1 and the t100, but not as good as the TZ3, but then again people complain that panazonic is pushing the limit with the noise reduction, and creating to many artifacts.

Low light performance is pretty good, the flash is somewhat powerful, better than the TX1. Colors are kept nice and strong during lower light situations and amount of detail is well kept as well.

The battery is nice and strong, it should be more than enough for 2 days or so, close to 300 pictures. The camera is light 153gr, somewhat small.


The BEST option this camera offer is the 28mm lens, it is simply the best. You can get better shots and get a lot more detail than a 35mm, I believe about 33% more detail in each picture.

Yes I lost the HD video but I more about pictures than video, although it would been nice to have the HD video as swell.

People complain about the view finder, to be honest this is why I bought this one instead of the SD800 IS, if you want a viewfinder get that one, it's the same camera. I personally love the 3" screen. Yes they could of left some of the plastics out of the camera, but it's not that bad, I bought the silver one in my opinion it looks better that the black one.

I guess between the 4 cameras I bought the only two I would consider are this one and the Panasonic TZ3, the only thing holding me on the TZ3 is the size of the camera and the lack of color accuracy in the pictures and the fact that you cannot even use the digital zoom in the video(but the again you get a 28mm-290mm lens, instead of 28mm-105mm lens).

here are some pictures for you to look at

http://www.flickr.com/gp/10297837@N05/096Rpe

I will try to upload the video later on.