Canon SD800

[Mellow]

My other camera Sony DSC-S75 (http://www.st-owners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24824) is great however, I wanted a point and shoot that was
smaller in overall size.

Well, just got this today and it's a very nice size. Took some quick shots with it
and it takes good pictures. I'm not expert and to be honest I'm not sure I could
tell a good pic from a bad pic.. I like that this camera has a lithium ion battery
and used SD cards which are pretty cheap memory.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51TTWVDGD3L._AA280_.jpg
I'll post a follow up once I've used it on a trip.

[ToroGuy]

:worthless

[Mellow]

LOL... I'll get some later... I don't have anything to take a pic of... the bike is still dirty.. can't take a pic of that.

[ccryder]

I bought one for my SO and with the IS feature she has taken some great shots without too many fuzzy shots. It is a great size and takes great picts. I just have to convince her to take some shots while we are riding ;+}

Neil S.

[Mellow]

I bought one for my SO and with the IS feature she has taken some great shots without too many fuzzy shots. It is a great size and takes great picts. I just have to convince her to take some shots while we are riding ;+}

Neil S.

That's the one I got, with the Image Stabilization feature. I'm not sure how well that works but I have it...

[cmguerrero]

Joe, believe me, the image stabilization is a great feature. You'll love that little camera. it takes sharp as a tack pictures, it's easy to use, small enough to carry anywhere. Besides, you really don't want anything bigger when on the road, and most important, the image quality is superb, with its high resolution... I own a previous model, the Canon Elph SD550.

[Gonzo]

I just picked up a Sony DSC-H2 which is a bit bigger. I'm looking for a memory card for it now. Also I want to find an adapter for my telescope.

In the DSC series, they are up to the H7 now, and the pixels are about 8MB, I think. I wanted to limit my size to 6MB for uploading images. With the on-board memory at max definition, that's only 11 pictures.

If I can find an reasonably priced 8GB memory stick, I can take videos too.

gonzo

[Mellow]

Joe, believe me, the image stabilization is a great feature. You'll love that little camera. it takes sharp as a tack pictures, it's easy to use, small enough to carry anywhere. Besides, you really don't want anything bigger when on the road, and most important, the image quality is superb, with its high resolution... I own a previous model, the Canon Elph SD550.

I looked at your site and a lot of your pics. Was one reason I moved to this one. uptoblackwood had one at the Arkansas trip this weekend, can't remember exactly which model, and it took some great pics.

An SLR would be nice but not really for what I want. I want compact size, good resolution, good battery life and cheap memory. Also, what pushed me to this one was how fast it was from on-to-off and how fast it actually took the pic. It was not SLR-like in that respect, but it was pretty close. I'm talking about the delay most digital cameras have from the point you click the shutter to that point it captures the pic. This is where many people miss some shots or get fuzzy pics, they think the camera already took the pic and so they stop holding it steady.

[pretbek]

Joe, believe me, the image stabilization is a great feature. You'll love that little camera. it takes sharp as a tack pictures, it's easy to use, small enough to carry anywhere. Besides, you really don't want anything bigger when on the road, and most important, the image quality is superb, with its high resolution... I own a previous model, the Canon Elph SD550.

+1
I own the before that one, the SD500. It takes wonderful pictures, very sharp and with great color. It even makes movies with sound and my colleague was surprised at the quality and resolution of the movies.

[Mellow]

I just picked up a Sony DSC-H2 which is a bit bigger. I'm looking for a memory card for it now. Also I want to find an adapter for my telescope.

In the DSC series, they are up to the H7 now, and the pixels are about 8MB, I think. I wanted to limit my size to 6MB for uploading images. With the on-board memory at max definition, that's only 11 pictures.

If I can find an reasonably priced 8GB memory stick, I can take videos too.

gonzo

Does it use the duo-memory sticks? If so, that memory is a bit cheaper than the basic memory sticks.

[spotz]

Great little camera, I've got a canon 20d and a footlocker full of "L" glass and this sd800IS is amazing. With such a small footprint of the elph series of cameras it's hard to hold steady and the image stabilization makes most shots keepers. The movie mode was a plesant surprise as the movies are really pretty good and the wide focal length is a plus, a little noisy at high iso's but all an all as handy as a shirt pocket

[Gonzo]

Yes, the Sony uses the Duo Pro memory stick. 8GB size retail is around $200, but they are selling on ebay for just over $100. One just has to be careful as there are counterfeits out there (some have an extra 'T' in the part number) so check the feedback on the seller, and I don't recommend buying out of China.

Oh, by the way, in my business, we buy out of China all day long, but we are extremely careful. We are now an ISO 9001 registered company, and one of my jobs is supplier management. ALL our vendors have to agree to our rules of business and get a personal visit before we do any business with them.

Having said that, for inexperienced buyers, getting anything from there can get you burned.

gonzo

[cmguerrero]

+1
I own the before that one, the SD500. It takes wonderful pictures, very sharp and with great color. It even makes movies with sound and my colleague was surprised at the quality and resolution of the movies.

You are CORRECT sir! The Canon "Elph" series are wonderful !!! And as Joe was saying, these beauties don't have "shutter lag"...

[Bashy]

I bought a Canon Powershot A570 IS which I also highly recommend. Fits nicely in my motorcycle jacket.

[Fred D]

I bought a Canon Powershot A570 IS which I also highly recommend. Fits nicely in my motorcycle jacket.


I looked long and hard at the A570, too. Off the shelf AA batteries and SD cards, among other things make it hard to beat.

[Mellow]

Here's a quick pic.

[Bashy]

Is that an alien spaceship thats causing the bright lights? hehe

[Mellow]

Hey, it's a nice camera but I'm no photographer... LOL

[cmguerrero]

Is that an alien spaceship thats causing the bright lights? hehe

Ha! You know, it does look like an alien spaceship in the background.

[Muchmore]

I looked a long time at cameras before I bought my Canon G7. I used mine to make the moonshine stich (my first attempt). Here is a great lake picture. You will love the face recognition feature, it can recognize up to 6 faces at once and maintain focus on all of them with the closest being the main one.
The canon shot is a still I extracted from video of my toy from the G7.

[Muchmore]

also I forgot be sure to get a professional storage card that writes at 130x or faster. It will cut you recycle time by 2/3 and if you decide to do burst pictures I get .5 second shot times for as long as I hold the button down. I got my card at Fritz camera for $69.99 2GB Lexar, don't just look for Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) look for the actual write speed anything above 30x is considered high speed.

[Mellow]

also I forgot be sure to get a professional storage card that writes at 130x or faster. It will cut you recycle time by 2/3 and if you decide to do burst pictures I get .5 second shot times for as long as I hold the button down. I got my card at Fritz camera for $69.99 2GB Lexar, don't just look for Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) look for the actual write speed anything above 30x is considered high speed.

Thanks, I have a couple SD card but just normal ones.. haven't decided which card to get yet... there are also class 4 and class 6 cards which I'm not sure what that means..

[Mellow]

Okay... so a class 4 SD card is a 4 mb/second speed, class 6 is 6 mb/second speed.. I'll see is there's a correlation to the 999x numbers as well.

Okay, so... 66x is 10 mb/second if I'm looking at my info correctly.. which would be a class 10.

[Mellow]

Looks like transcend has a 4gb 150x speed card for $51. I've used that brand card with other things such as the zumo.. may give this a try.

http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-High%252dSpeed-Secure-Digital-%2528150x%2529/dp/B000BR3OHI/ref=sr_1_2/104-8006783-0874337?ie=UTF8&m=A1GC47N5J8F7IJ&s=electronics&qid=1184245547&sr=1-2

[ccryder]

Excellent price and speed! Great for the "motor drive" :+}

Neil S.

[Muchmore]

The faster cards will also allow you to shoot video until your storage card is full, otherwise it will shoot for a while, have to write to the card, and then begin shooting again. You can easily overrun the card unless it writes fast enough. It sounds so funny to talk about video on a digital "still" camera but they shoot video very, very well. I can only imagine what the new HD video recorders look like.

[Mellow]

I got the 4GB 150x card and it is indeed fast. Highest resolution I could click pretty fast and it was storing them about as fast as I could aim and find something else to take a pic of.

Here are a couple shots to show some of the detail, they were reduced from the original 'big' versions:


http://mellow.smugmug.com/photos/173731744-Ti.jpg
Click for big pic (http://mellow.smugmug.com/photos/173731744-O.jpg)
http://mellow.smugmug.com/photos/173731728-Ti.jpg
Click for big pic (http://mellow.smugmug.com/photos/173731728-O.jpg)
http://mellow.smugmug.com/photos/173731319-Ti.jpg
Click for big pic (http://mellow.smugmug.com/photos/173731319-O.jpg)
http://mellow.smugmug.com/photos/173746315-Ti.jpg
Click for big pic (http://mellow.smugmug.com/photos/173746315-O.jpg)
I really like this camera so far..

[pretbek]

"Blade", "Knot", "Nut" and "Mutt", eh?

Did you use the Macro setting for those close-ups? I'm assuming that nut was a close-up...?

[Mellow]

LOL.. never looked at it that way...

The macro setting was used for all but the Mutt(at least I don't think I used macro on that one).

These came straight from the camera and the software only added some color enhancement. I didn't do any other mod via the software, not even zoom/crop..

[pretbek]

I was just reading up on the SD1000 ($200) and the SD800 ($300), wondering why there was such a price difference. Now I know.
The biggest difference (apart from a slightly different size/shape frame) is that the SD800 has IS (Image Stabilization) and the SD1000 has not. I thought "IS, schm-IS", and then "OK, that didn't work. But who needs IS? Just hold your hand still". :rolleyes:
But reading the reviews made me realize that you can make great photos with long shutter openings, as in: You don't need to use the flash as much.

Now THAT is a big deal.

Often the flash is too bright and makes people look like specters, or not strong enough to light up a room and causes your subject to be underexposed in the dark center of the room.
Not having to use the flash and still getting sharp and properly exposed photos is a huge asset. It made me want to pay the extra $100 for a similar camera with that feature.
Problem is, I don't really need a new camera yet. I have an SD500 which works just fine (once it is back from warranty repairs), so I will have to "manage" with that for a while longer. Heh, sounds like quite the luxury problem, doesn't it?

[Mellow]

Yeah, I got the IS mostly because I like to ride with the camera and shoot a pic on the move (insert safety speech here) and with the IS I'm less likely to get a fuzzy pic. I haven't used it on a trip yet and the IS may not matter for the pics I do take as most of them are in bright sunlight and I've rarely have one that's fuzzy but that does help for other shots.

I think the 800 also starts out with a wider 28mm lens so that was another plus in my book.

[pretbek]

I think the 800 also starts out with a wider 28mm lens so that was another plus in my book.

Oh yeah, forgot about that one. That is what makes me appreciate the 800 (28 mm equivalent) better than the 850 (35 mm equivalent). The 850 has an optical zoom that reaches further, but that doesn't weigh up against the nice and wide angle of the 800.
Resolution is so good nowadays, if you want to emulate further zoom, just crop your image a little tighter. :D

[Mellow]

I promise I'll stop talking about this camera and move on to another subject but
one cool thing I like about this one is you can put into color accent mode then
point to a color and everything in the pic other than that color will be black / white.

This would be cool if you wanted to highlight a red wire in a bunch of wires or
or highlight something else in a pic.

Below are two different pics, taken at the same time but one with the blue accented
and the other with the red accented.

[ToroGuy]

Joe,

How tuff was it to find a house with a garage big enough to hold that beast?

[Mellow]

Joe,

How tuff was it to find a house with a garage big enough to hold that beast?

Hey... what are you talking about.. it's a 2-car garage.. one on the left and one on the ri.... ah... it wasn't tough...

[Fireball18]

After a lot of thought and investigation, I broke down and purchased a Canon S3/IS the end of May, just before a long trip. It's a larger camera--definitely not a pocket sized camera, but boy does it take great pics. It took awhile to get used to it and the fact that it's not quite as convenient as a pocket sized digital camera, but I've been learning to use it and am now more comfortable with it. I'll tell you what, it has a 12X optical telephoto lens, and it is superb! Even the digital zoom isn't too bad. If it have one nit to pick with it, it's that the viewing screen on the back is smallish and not as bright as I'd like, but it flips out and twists, so you can see to take pics from about any angle. Mellow--the I/S feature really does work, and quite well, too. For example, the shot of the loon was at full telephoto, handheld.

Here are a couple examples of the telephoto at near max--the equivalent of around 300mm if it were a 35mm.

[Mellow]

Greg, looks good... I think if they made a pocket sized camera but with the ability to add lenses... that would be cool... even if it were just a couple lens options...I didn't really see anything like that when I was looking... there were some small ones but just not as small as I wanted..

[cmguerrero]

LOL.. never looked at it that way...

The macro setting was used for all but the Mutt(at least I don't think I used macro on that one).

These came straight from the camera and the software only added some color enhancement. I didn't do any other mod via the software, not even zoom/crop..

I told ya"... "sharp as a tack". BTW Joe, you can also turn off the flash feature, for those situation where the flash reflection is an obvious negative, such as the copy work you did on the Red Rider magazine, assuming there's sufficient available light.

[Mellow]

I told ya"... "sharp as a tack". BTW Joe, you can also turn off the flash feature, for those situation where the flash reflection is an obvious negative, such as the copy work you did on the Red Rider magazine, assuming there's sufficient available light.

Yeah, there wasn't enough light in the living room. I have the fluorescent floods to save on energy and they don't seem to work well with cameras like the incandescents do, even though they are fine for human eyes.. LOL.. I tried the fluorescent setting too but it didn't quite work.. I was still messing with things at the time so I'm sure after some more practice I'll find what works well..

Or, I meant to do that, the alien effect was cool ... LOL

[Jim Davis]

Well well, a camera thread ;-)

I picked up a Panasonic Lumix FX07 and I love it! This has to be one of, if not the smallest camera around. Leica lens, 2 stage image stabilization, and the best feature is it takes a photo NOW when I push the button.

Plus, a small thing I like is the on/off switch instead of those stupid tiny little buttons. The movies it takes are fantastic. It has a closeup mode that will shoot as close as just over one inch. The battery lasts and lasts. 7.1 megapixels and ISO up to 1250. Large viewscreen, etc etc.

I can't say enough about it, but I'm a semi-pro coming from a Canon EOS DSLR. I still have that for birding pictures, but I sure love having something when riding that fits in a small pocket and is ready to go immediately.

I looked at the Canon offerings but they came up short from the Lumix. You can see a bunch of photos I took with it this summer here:
http://naturephoto.easternbeaver.com/Photo_Art/New_Images/Waterfall_Trail/waterfall_trail.html

[Mellow]

Well well, a camera thread ;-)

I picked up a Panasonic Lumix FX07 and I love it! This has to be one of, if not the smallest camera around. Leica lens, 2 stage image stabilization, and the best feature is it takes a photo NOW when I push the button.

Plus, a small thing I like is the on/off switch instead of those stupid tiny little buttons. The movies it takes are fantastic. It has a closeup mode that will shoot as close as just over one inch. The battery lasts and lasts. 7.1 megapixels and ISO up to 1250. Large viewscreen, etc etc.

I can't say enough about it, but I'm a semi-pro coming from a Canon EOS DSLR. I still have that for birding pictures, but I sure love having something when riding that fits in a small pocket and is ready to go immediately.

I looked at the Canon offerings but they came up short from the Lumix. You can see a bunch of photos I took with it this summer here:
http://naturephoto.easternbeaver.com/Photo_Art/New_Images/Waterfall_Trail/waterfall_trail.html

Great Pics Jim, too late for me since I already got the Canon but I'm good for at least a couple years with it if not longer.

There are so many cameras out there it's tough to decide that's for sure. I really wanted one like my original olympus with the sliding lens cover that acted as an on/off switch but the ones that do that now didn't meet my other requirements. The on/off button on the cannon isn't bad but I haven't really used it on a trip yet so we'll see how that works. I've tried it with gloves on and it seems to work well.

The newer cameras today are really nice. You turn on the camera and it's ready.. you click the shutter and as long as it isn't a 'flash' situation, it's almost instant.

I'm sure mine will be replaced by a faster, lighter, better, cheaper camera in about a month.. LOL

[Muchmore]

Greg, looks good... I think if they made a pocket sized camera but with the ability to add lenses... that would be cool... even if it were just a couple lens options...I didn't really see anything like that when I was looking... there were some small ones but just not as small as I wanted..
My Canon G7 will accept lenses but at an expense. the lenses hang over the existing lens, so you zoom out to full zoom and press the camera lens against thew optional lens. I question quality but it is a canon so who knows. I love the color accent.

[Mark]

That is one happy looking munchkin!
:-)

Mark

[Blue STreak]

Yep, the D200 is a great camera, as is my EOS 30D. But there are times when it's definitely too big, and too much of a hassle. I've got an older Canon S400 for times when smaller is better.