A Great First Digital Camera
Written: Nov 05 '02
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Pros: Compact, Lightweight, Takes great photos in daylight
Cons: Weak flash, poor battery life
The Bottom Line: A great first digital camera, the S230 is portable and works well. If you need more power and manual control, buy another camera.
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| MediaLabGuy's Full Review: Canon PowerShot S230 / IXUS v³ Digital Camera |
The Canon Elph S230 is a small, solid point-&-shoot digital camera that is for you if you're looking to take photos without any hassle. It's the first camera in that size from Canon to sport a 3.2 megapixel CCD, enough to print reasonable quality 8x10 prints on a photo-quality inkjet printer at 2400 dpi.
It sports a 2x optical zoom (never pay attention to the digital zoom--it just makes your photos look really grainy) and has an advanced AiAF auto-focusing system. This just means that your photos look sharp and always in focus if you take them when there is plenty of sunlight; this system does a much better job than anything Canon or any other digital camera manufacturer has released to date.
Because of its simple design, the manual controls on the camera are limited. You can set a couple different flash modes (on/off/red-eye/night-time), the shutter speed, and the light sensitivity setting (ISO 100-400) but beyond that, the lens is always in automatic mode. You can't set the aperature, nor can you tinker with other settings that can give you full control of the shot. (Thus, you can't play around with depth-of-field or do anything else artistic if you're looking to do some serious amateur photography).
One additional gripe, because the lens element is so small, low-light or indoor photos are really blurry and grainy (more so than other digital cameras). The flash is also somewhat weak; if you're 3 feet away from the person you'll be able to see him clearly but anything beyond that gets really dark and fuzzy.
Ok, enough of the techno-talk--onto looking at the user experience. Some thoughts:
1. The camera is really easy to use, and the controls are rather intuitive. The setting buttons are small and sometimes hard to press, but then again, the camera is small I'm not one to complain.
2. Changing photo options often requires that you go into a menu system. While it works, I prefer a camera where I can press a button to access that particular option rather than having to navigate through a couple of menus.
3. Taking a photo is a snap; just point, shoot, and the camera does the rest. The AiAf feature and other intelligent controls help figure out all the details (focus, matrixing, etc.) for you so you don't have to deal with that.
4. The photos come out really nice; it's comparable to larger, more expensive digital cameras, except, as I mentioned previously, in low-light or indoor conditions where the small lens element makes the photos a bit more fuzzy than it otherwise needs to be.
In any case, I'm happy with the camera. The best thing about it is it's extremely portable; just slip it in your pocket and you won't feel a thing.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 399
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use
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Epinions.com ID:
MediaLabGuy
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Member: Wesley Chan
Location: Cambridge, MA
Reviews written: 48
Trusted by: 29 members
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