Canon PowerShot SD1000 7.1MP Digital Elph Digital Camera

My wife never knows what to buy me for my birthday, but this year she had a great idea: let's get Eric a new digital camera! Poor Eric was still using an ancient Canon PowerShot S45 (bought in 2003, which is eons ago!) and so it was definitely time for an upgrade. And I'm very glad she did, as I'm now the happy owner of a Canon PowerShot SD1000 camera.

First, let's go over the basic features of this digital camera:

• 7.1-megapixel (MP) image capture (a big step up from the 4MP I was getting with the S45!)
• 2.5-inch bright LCD screen
• 3x optical zoom, with 10x digital zoom also available
• video recording at up to 640 x 480 pixels, 30 frames per second
• SecureDigital (SD) memory card support (the S45 used CompactFlash)
• Much thinner and smaller battery
• Compact size — 3.4 x 2.1 x 0.8 inches, weighs only 8 ounces

It also comes bundled with Canon's ZoomBrowser EX software, which even a professional photographer I know uses as his main image organizer.

One of the best things about this camera is the huge difference in the lag time I saw with the PowerShot S45. Compared to it, the Canon SD1000 takes its pictures almost instantly! Although it's not a professional camera, I've been able to take some great shots of my daughter's soccer team in full action.

What's surprised me the most, however, was how easy it is to make videos with this camera. Memory cards (the much smaller form factor of the SD format is also a big improvement) are so cheap these days that it's possible to record several minutes of high quality video (640 by 480), great for those times when you wish you'd lugged your video camera with you. The videos are easily transformed to your computer as AVI files using the ZoomBrowser software and the high-speed USB 2.0 link.

All in all, a great digital camera that I highly recommend. If you've been hesitating about upgrading, don't wait any longer — you're missing out on some great features! 

Learn more about the Canon PowerShot SD1000