Canon PowerShot SD400 Digital ELPH / Digital IXUS 50

size, price, usability

battery

86% of the reviews on Amazon.com give this product a positive rating.

Very good resolution, Incredibly slim, compact design, Beautifully built and all-metal construction, Excellent color and white balance in most situations, Manual (custom) white balance, Good exposure and generally very reliable focus (using...

Some purple fringing, Some edge softness at wide angle/max aperture, Battery life when using LCD not fantastic, No exposure information in record or playback mode, Very little manual control

In an ideal world buying an ultra compact camera would not involve any compromise at all.

Good video quality ; Ability to shoot video at 60 frames per second ; Images have excellent color and low noise ; 2 shots per second continuous shooting mode ; Fun My Colors mode

Lack of manual controls ; No live histogram

Compact size, Solid build, In-camera image stabilization makes all lenses better for low light shooting, Same sensor as 7D, Kit lens covers 18-70mm 35mm equivalent range, Very good to excellent low-light capability, Excellent battery life, Decent...

Proprietary hot shoe, No PC sync port, No video recording (a fact of life with SLRs), Hand grip may be uncomfortably small for some users, Image noise slightly high at ISO 1600, RAW+JPEG option only saves fine-mode JPEGs. (But that's not a bad...

The Canon PowerShot SD400 features a 3x, 5.8-17.4mm zoom lens, equivalent to a 35-105mm zoom on a 35mm camera. Aperture is automatically controlled, but the maximum setting ranges from f/2.8 at full wide angle to f/4.9 at full telephoto. A maximum 4x...

Very good photo quality (though see issues below) ; Compact and very thin metal body ; Blazing performance ; First rate movie and continuous shooting modes ; Unique My Colors feature ; LCD visible in low light ; AF-assist lamp; good low light focusing...

Images noisier/softer than I would've liked ; Redeye ; Some corner softness and purple fringing ; Cheap plastic door over memory card / battery compartment ; Battery life isn't great ; Can't swap memory cards while camera is on a tripod ; More manual...

Overall I recommend the SD400, but if you can swing it, I'd buy the SD500 instead. While it's a bit bigger, it takes better pictures and has both a more powerful flash and a longer-lasting battery.