I was traveling and in a hurry, and made the mistake of buying a Pentax Optio M20 on sale when I found I'd left my trusty old Canon SD110 at home. I call it a mistake not because there was anything terribly wrong with the Optio, but because I found it harder to get good pictures with it than with the venerable SD110, despite a friendlier user interface, much higher resolution and image stabilization.
Since I use my Canon EOS 30D for my non-candid photo needs, the Pentax has been adequate for the past couple years. But as I flipped through more and more candid photos that were blurry (or focused on the plant behind the subject's face), I decided to do a little research, and ended up pre-ordering the SD780IS.
I love the feel of this camera. It's sleek and solid, and fits easily into my pants pocket. The small flash offers surprisingly good coverage, considering its size, and the LCD is nicely sized and clear. The daylight shots are crisp and colorful, and the multiple face recognition makes it easy to take quick shots of several subjects at varying distances from the camera. Start up is quick, as is the image read/display rate in playback mode, and battery performance is more than adequate for casual shooting.
The techie features are abundant as well. I love the blink detection and face timer, even though neither option saves much time or effort. I'm also impressed with how smoothly Canon has integrated digital zoom, so that when taking pictures at lower than maximum resolution, the effective non-interpolated zoom increases from the optical 3x; this is clearly indicated in the process, so that it's not easy to accidentally zoom beyond 1-to-1 pixel capture.
There are, of course, small inconveniences that come with the miniaturization of this much technical sophistication. It took me a while to get used to the zoom lever due to its size and shape, and the navigation buttons on the back are slightly smaller than my thumb would prefer. Moving beyond ergonomics, the small aperture that this camera shares with others in the "pocket" genre means that low-light imaging is not always ideal (usually manifested as blur due to movement combined with a slow shutter speed; when the shutter speed is kept high, it is instead manifested as noise in the imagery due to the increased sensitivity at high ISO settings). The optical image stabilization does help, and it makes this a better candidate for low light than most of the small cameras that have come before it; it is certainly better than the two other small cameras I've owned (mentioned above) in this respect.
Being able to shoot high resolution video with this camera is refreshing, and I've enjoyed that feature. I had optimistically hoped that it would be good enough that I wouldn't need a separate camcorder for video, but that was wishful thinking. It's wonderful for short, candid videos but suffers from the small aperture and--ironically--form factor for longer shots. This is manifested as movement blur and camera shake. The movement blur is much less pronounced in good lighting, but the stabilizing lens can only move so much, and the human hand is notoriously unsteady when unbraced. The size of the camera makes it that much harder to hold still, as momentum tends to slow the movement of some of the larger cameras/camcorders.
In summary, I'm more than pleased with this camera and would have no second thoughts about recommending it to anyone looking for a small point-and-shoot. The defects it suffers are shared in common with all cameras of this size to some extent; as technology improves, more of these will be mitigated, but for the time being the convenience and fun being offered in this tiny package would be hard to beat at twice the price.Get more detail about Canon PowerShot SD780IS12.1 MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.5-inch LCD (Black).
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