With 8.0-megapixel technology at its heart, the Canon SD1100 IS Digital ELPH brings you high resolution images that maintain their sharpness and vivid impact even when they're enlarged and cropped. The 3x Optical Zoom is a clear winner when it comes to getting up close and personal. And Canon's invaluable Optical Image Stabilizer reduces the blur of camera movement, even in tricky low light situations. The Canon SD1100 integrated face-detection technology is designed to recognize people's faces in your photos and adjust white balance to enhance skin tones. It also has an option that tracks your subject's face so you do not lose them if they move around in the frame. the Canon SD1100 macro focus mode allows users to take highly-detailed photos of small or up-close subjects. The macro feature is easy to access and use; it's a simple as changing modes on the camera. Canon SD1100 "Color Accent" mode allows the user to choose a particular color to emphasize in the scene. The camera filters out all other colors, turning them black and white, so that only the color you selected comes through in the final photograph The camera comes as a replacement for the SD1000 (IXUS 70). The key features of this ultra compact aren't anything to write home about but the SD1100 promises to be another solid point and shoot tool coming out of the Canon stables. It combines an 8MP sensor with a 3x zoom (38-114mm equiv, optically stabilized) and lets you view images and menus on a high resolution 2.5 inch screen. There are a few new functions which Canon introduced with the latest additions to its line of compact cameras. Face Detection now also optimizes White Balance for the face detection frame and the new AF Point Zoom allows the user to check the focus by magnifying the AF frame when the shutter button is pressed half way. The Canon SD1100 IS is a superbly designed camera with a style that looks great and, even better, actually makes the camera easier to use. We loved the inclusion of an optical viewfinder - long the holy grail of compact cameras features here at infoSync - even if it's only a pinhole viewfinder and not truly optical. It's still a lot better than an electronic one. Still, the SD1100 IS isn't quite feature rich, but it makes up for that with great image quality, particularly in its deep color-rendering Canon has gone the extra mile in separating the Canon SD1100 IS from the pack, giving it a streamlined exterior and a contoured body that not only looks great, but makes the camera easier to hold. Our review unit was also an earthy red, a pleasing differentiation from the pewter tones of a typical point-and-shoot. The twist zoom around the shutter release is a bit small, and a wheel on the four-way controller would have been nice. Otherwise we have no complaints, as the Canon SD1100 IS takes the standard compact layout and does no wrong. Shortcuts are available for most everything important, and Canon has included a helpful toggle for switching between camera, video and playback modes. Best of all, and what particularly ingratiated the design to us, is the optical viewfinder above the LCD screen. Granted, it's not the same thing as an optical viewfinder on a DSLR – there's no system of mirrors to let you literally look through the lens – but a pinhole viewfinder like the one found in the Canon SD1100 IS will give you an unfiltered look at what's in the camera's frame. That said, keep in mind that pinhole viewfinders suffer from mild parallax issues (your eye is a few centimeters above the lens, so the geometry of what you're seeing is slightly different from how the photograph will look). At 2.5-inches, the LCD viewfinder is somewhat undersized, but it offers a clear image at a good resolution The Canon SD1100 IS isn't overloaded with features. It's not brimming with megapixels, it doesn't have stratospheric zooming, and it doesn't have a super wide-angle lens. Still, it does have one of the most important features to good image-quality – an optical image-stabilizer – and it has standard compact assists like face detection. It also features an intelligent auto-mode that analyzes lighting conditions and subject movement, which should further reduce blurry camera-shake, as well as a continuous shooting mode. We also liked the inclusion of delayed shutter with a custom timer, so the user can specify just how long he or she wants the camera to wait before taking an exposure. ISO speeds are selectable and range from 80 to 1600, with a 'HI' preset that automatically selects high sensitivities for shooting in dark environments |
