Canon PowerShot SD600 Review

[crazzy88ss]

Yea it takes great pictures of moving stuff. I think the shutter speed can go as fast as 1/1000. As long as you're in full light, they'll turn out great.

[[bear]]

Yea it takes great pictures of moving stuff. I think the shutter speed can go as fast as 1/1000. As long as you're in full light, they'll turn out great.

it can do 1/2000 it's pretty impressive

[boogerjones]

I got an SD600 about a month ago. For its price, it's a fantastic camera, as others have stated in this thread. My only problems with it are the relative low battery life, low-light LCD performance, and some vignetting. Purple fringing is barely noticable only at high-mag in photoshop.

[lime]

so i just got this camera and i read the manuals and i'm looking around and no where do i see where i can turn the exposure time faster for fast moving objects...

can anyone point me to a good guide or tell me how ??

thanks

[drumthrasher109]

Canon PowerShot SD600

.

Some quick specs:

6MP (2816x2112 pixels)

3x Optical Zoom

4x Digital Zoom

12x Combined Zoom

ISOs ranging from 80 to 800

2.5” LCD

If you really want pictures of the camera, google it or something lol.

So I finally grew tired of my ancient Canon PowerShot A60 (2MP, 7.5 combined zoom, 4 AA batteries, 1.5”LCD, big in size) and decided to get a new camera. I went looking, and I quickly realized that I wanted to stick with Canon. My price ranged maxed out at around $300, which was around the SD600/SD630. To be honest, I didn’t find any options of the SD630 to be worth the difference they were asking for between the two cameras, so I decided on the SD600. I ordered it from Amazon.com and got a 1gb SD card to go with it.

When the package arrived, I quickly ripped it open and “assembled” everything (put the battery in, the SD card in, and the wristband), and turned it on.

It started up noticeably faster, especially since the A60 you have to hold the power-on button for two seconds before it comes on. The 2.5” LCD was beautiful to look at, even in my dark room, compared to that of the 1.5” LCD on the A60.

So I began to do what every person would naturally do with a brand new camera; take lots and lots of pictures. And videos too.

I was used to the Canon interface already, but the new set up of the controls took about 15 minutes to get used to, as they are VERY simple. There’s only 5 buttons on the backside of the camera, and they make 13 functions out of them, just in shooting mode alone.

So I saved my real tests for my family vacation, to Whislter, in Beautiful British Columbia, Canada. While up there, I took over 260 pictures, which put the memory card about 65% full.

Our first stop was in Seattle, WA. We went up to the top of the Space Needle.

http://crazzy88ss.statichost.co.uk/p/seattle.jpg - full image 2.8mb

In the top right corner, you can just see Mt. Rainier, I think lol.

http://crazzy88ss.statichost.co.uk/p/rainier.jpg - full image 952kb

I used the maximum combined zoom, 12x total, to get Mt. Rainier. I included this image to show you the zoom power, when comparing the image above it.

http://crazzy88ss.statichost.co.uk/p/whistler.jpg - full image 2.7mb

We took a gondola ride to the top of Mt. Whistler. This is a picture of the Whistler Valley from an elevation of 7160 feet/2182 meters.

http://crazzy88ss.statichost.co.uk/p/macro.jpg - full image 2.4mb

This is the leather interior in my car. I felt this could show the amount of detail that could be captured in the macro mode.

http://crazzy88ss.statichost.co.uk/p/night.jpg - full image 1.5mb

Here I used a 6 second exposure to capture a car’s head lights driving by at 10:30 at night. The long shutter speed was one of the things that made me stay with Canon, as not all other brands had that option.

Another thing that I hated about my A60 was the shutter lag. It would sometimes literally take 2-3 seconds before the camera would take the picture, which could be very irritating at times. I’ve yet to have ANY troubles w/ the SD600 having shutter lag.

Movies – I never really played with them too much, other than on the 1100 mile drive home. It has different settings, 640x480 or 320x240, 30 or 15 FPS. You can combine those 4 choices in any way you choose. Then there’s an option to record at 60FPS. However, the maximum video size is 1 minute, and 320x240. There’s also a silly color swap mode in there :p And yes, you can record sound and zoom in all modes.

I just got an 11x14 picture that I printed from shutterfly.com and the picture detail is great. I think it could possibly even go bigger, but I don’t want to spend the $17.99 to find out! :p

Pros:

VERYVERYVERY Small, light weight, and easy to carry.

It starts up very quickly.

Virtually no shutter lag, especially among cameras in its price range.

Big, crystal clear LCD.

Very easy to use, especially if you’re just learning to use a digital camera.

Great movie support.

Produces great pictures, in every manner.

Did I say it was small?

Cons:

In low lighting, the LCD gets VERY grainy and a little laggish. It never really effected me much, but it was still a little annoying.

Battery life isn’t any where close to my A60. The A60 is rated at ~550 pictures w/ LCD on, while the SD600 is only at ~150. On the day of my trip up the gondola to Mt. Whistler, I took about 130-150 pictures. I was turning the camera on and off every 1-10 pictures that day, and I never had any problems. I think as long as you charge the battery, which takes a quick 1.5 hours or less, before you go out, you’ll be fine. Heck, you can even buy an extra one, for about $30 I think, if you need to stay on the safe side.

I REALLY enjoy this camera, and I think it’s easily worth the $297 I paid for it on amazon.com. Canon has once again impressed me.

Over all, I give it a 9.5/10.

Added camera's picture

Pink Floyd

OMFG for a sad story PM me.

[pyehac]

Nice choice! I have the same camera and I love it.

I gotta read the manual to get the long exposure shot (its so easy to use, I never even opened anything except the camera and battery).

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

great review.

i just went to Vancouver and Whistler last Sept. Gorgeous!