Canon PowerShot SD870IS 8MP Digital Camera with 3.8x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Silver)

I bought this camera because of its wide-angle feature with which I could just point and shoot. I take pictures of decorating that I've done and like the full room shots. I bought a 2 GB card, and with that I can also shoot numerous short movie clips. (We used it to analyze our golf swings on the course. Quite helpful!) The photo quality is great. (This purchase was a move-up from a 5 yr. old Canon 4 MP digital.) The modes and settings are almost intuitive to use. It is compact and a joy to own!

we were heading to Hungary and I didn't want to take my new d300 so i went online for some advise. This is a great little camera. If you buy one, play with the manual settings as it takes a little practice, but this camera now replaced my d70 as my go to camera for daily usage. good job.

Have used the camera in a variety of settings. The range of setting options provides many opportunities to get those hard to take pictures. For the average user some continual experimenting of settings, flash and speeds will be an on-going effort but the default "Auto" setting is always a good fallback. The wide angle lens and zoom combination give a great range of composition. Size and weight of camera makes it perfect to bring to functions where space is a premium. While 8 MP is nice most pictures can be taken at a lesser MP seting and still be of useful quality.

I've owned digital cameras since "Genesis". Recently, my S30 was stolen from the car. Here were my requirements before I bought the SD870: <28mm wide angle, compact size, image stabilization, fast performance, good image quality & manual controls. Due to the scarce choices, I had to compromise the manual control feature and came up with the SD870. It had the above great attributes less the manual control (shutter speed/aperture) ability. SD870 takes excellent photos under most well lighted settings as already covered by many other reviews; here are my tips/notes for the less lighted settings:

1) When normal flash is used(slow sync off), the shutter speed is fixed at 1/60 sec(too fast); this explains why the photos turns out darker when using a flash at certain settings than no flash. This setting is good for not very dark setting.
2) When slow synch flash is used, the shutter speed could get much slower so it would capture much better amount of light. When lighting is very dark, the shutter speeds would go up to 1 sec(too slow to hold by hand); at this speed, you must use the tripod to avoid blurry photos. Play with the slow sync option and you'll be surprised at how different the photos would turn out.
3) When "night snapshot" mode is used, the ISO is fixed at 250 and shutter at 1/8 sec. A very useful mode to use. I set this mode as my default "scn" mode; when you slide the slider on top of the camera to the middle. I wish the ISO is fixed at 200 for less noise and shutter at 1/6.
4) In manual mode, you can adjust the shutter speed only from 1~15 sec; I wish Cannon allowed the control from 1/20~15 sec. But better than nothing. Great feature for very low light and must use a tripod.
5) Decent photo quality when ISO is 80~200; so in most situations, try to lock the ISO at as low as possible to obtain the best quality photos. You may have to use continuous mode to capture multiple shots and choose the best ones & use shutter delay 1 second to avoid hand shake.

When not using tripod, always turn the image stabilizer to continuous. You can still get a clear photo @ 1/2 sec shutter (1 out of 2 or 3 shots).

6) Customize the share botton to "exposure" control for convenience. But you rarely would need it since SD870 has very accurate exposure.

Hope this helps.

I absolutely love this camera! This has been so much fun and so easy to use. This is my first digital camera and I love the auto mode. I've had much fun playing around with the other features as well. I am in love with the 3" LCD screen!!! Have used the camera both inside and outside and am very pleased with my purchase. Amazon delivered the camera within a few days in excellent condition!!!! I am one extremely pleased customer!!!