Canon Powershot SD550 - Product Review

I'm mostly an amateur photographer. At least, the equipment I use is. However, I've been recognized by several publications and certainly by reviews from my peers for the quality of my photography. That means I know what quality I'm looking for in an amateur-level camera. I've used 35mm in its time, an easy to use Advantix camera when it was hot technology, and after digital cameras started working up past 2.0 megapixels, I decided to make the upgrade. I had started with a Canon Powershot S400 and used it for three years in various parts of the world, from wet jungles and oceans to the busiest metropolises of Europe & America. But after three years, I decided it was time to find a new one. Well, in Canon's Powershot SD550 I found pretty much everything I could want in order to not only maintain the quality of my photography, but to bump it up to a whole new level. I'm going to review the camera based on its pure digital shooting power, its hardware, and its great and innovative built-in features.

The Powershot SD550 is more than small enough to fit in your pocket (less than half as tall and not as wide as a CD, and 1 in. slim), and other than the light weight of the battery and reinforced metal casing, it would weigh nothing. But don't let it's small size fool you. It packs a lot more of a punch than most large-size cameras you'll find in retail markets today. It has 7.1 megapixels, more than enough to make a good looking 12x16 blow-up of any of your favorite shots. Delay has always been one of the biggest problems with digital cameras, and although my S400 was fast, I was sometimes a little frustrated with its delay speed. The SD550 is probably the best I've ever seen. It's turned on and ready to go in far less than 1 second, and if you wanted to really point & shoot, it'll go from completely turned off to taking a picture of whatever it's pointed at in about 1.5 seconds. With almost any digital camera on the market today (other than pro-quality SLR's, but even with some of them) you're going to have to do a little bit of color-correcting and contrast enhancement on your computer if you want that true-to-life look. Even with my S400, I usually did minor corrections in PhotoShop afterwards. What can I say? - I'm picky. Not so with the SD550. It's practically perfect. The color is crisp and accurate, the shading is just right (though on the camera, you can adjust for as much exposure as you'd like); I don't have to change anything when I put the pictures on my computer. It doesn't even look pixally when you're zoomed in all the way, unlike many other 7 megapixel cameras I considered. It takes video in a variety of modes, everything from 30 frames per second (fps) at 640x480 to an ultra-fast 60 fps (for those action-intensive scenes) at a smooth 320x240. It can take video as long as you have memory left to store it on, while most other cameras limit you to about a minute. Its digital processing power is practically unrivaled, especially for a camera its size.

Its hardware, as I said, is encased in a high-quality, durable and lightweight stainless-steel body. Most cheap imitations are some kind of plastic, which doesn't protect the camera near so well from minor scratches or small drops. This one is built to last. It has a 2.5" LCD, one of the largest for a compact camera. It makes viewing your subject or replaying images or movies incredibly easy and it's bright enough to use effectively even on the sunniest of days (though you can adjust it to be brighter or darker depending on what you want). But, if you want to save battery power or you're just used to a traditional viewfinder, it has one of those, too (a feature scrapped by most of the Powershot's competition). It has a 3x optical zoom - pretty standard for a compact camera, and though it doesn't necessarily beat its competition, you'd also be hard pressed to find any that beat it. It definitely gets the job done. Although a 32mb SD card is provided in most packages, you'll want to upgrade to a least 1 GB, and 2 GB will satisfy you at the highest resolution and well over 500 pictures or over 10 minutes of highest-quality video. It comes with a lithium battery and portable charger, so it'll save you a bundle from buying new batteries, though you can buy an extra for any long trips where you might be without electricity (a long day on the town, camping, or even hiking through a jungle, like I've done on a few occasions). And of course it comes with built-in flash. You can have it on automatic, or you can adjust for red-eye, slow synchronization (low-lighted settings) and the standard fare. Its hardware packs in all the standards with a little bit of extras.

I could stop there and it'd be a really great camera. But it also packs in plenty of digital features for everyone from the beginner to the professional. I already mentioned the movie-mode, which is pretty self-explanatory and very easy to navigate. It has a "stitch mode", which for anyone unfamiliar, basically means a customizable panorama. You just select the mode, take your first picture, then a segment of it shows up so you can line up your next picture, on and on, you could potentially even do a 360 like that. It comes with software that can automatically put it together for you or let you adjust the parameters for a clearer picture. It has a timer that you can adjust the time on (from 2-10 sec.) and the number of pictures to take, so you can include yourself in the picture. It has a continuous shooting feature that's great for quick-moving or action shots, to make sure you don't miss anything cool. It's got both a manual macro (for extreme close-ups) and a digital macro, which is something new to me. I've actually found that the digital macro seems to perform even better. It's not at all like digital zoom, so you don't lose any of the quality from your image, it just somehow seems to focus better on very close-up objects. It's got a whole slew of scene-specific modes that fine-tune the lighting, coloring, and contrast specific to the setting - from beach to snow, to kids & pets, indoors, even underwater (though the underwater casing is sold separately). It's a great feature for those inexperienced with doing the particular adjustments themselves. It even has a "My Colors" mode that let you do some really artsy effects, like emphasize one color, grey everything but one color, or even swap two different colors in the scene - all in real time! So, you can achieve artistic effects without doing any photo editing on your computer. There's an auto mode that'll adjust all the settings for you, and there's a manual mode for more experienced photographers that lets you adjust any parameters from exposure, to color of lighting, color effects, focus weight, and of course image resolution and size. If you can set the camera still, you can set it on a long exposure, so you can get great cityscapes at night or other low-lit still objects (I used it to get a good picture of a volcano erupting at night in Costa Rica). It really packs in enough digital features to please anyone.

The only thing I can really complain about is that, unlike a larger camera, it doesn't have a swivel-screen for all those really weird angles you might want to use for your picture. That's really impossible for a camera its size and it makes up for it with its large, bright, clear LCD, but if I could have everything, I'd want one of those. Also, although the movie modes say 30 fps and 60 fps, it doesn't actually seem that fast. The picture quality is surprisingly good, but the frame rate still doesn't seem to be as fast as a regular 30 fps video would be. That's really the only thing to complain about, and those may be features you wouldn't even notice. Overall, the Canon Powershot SD550 is a surprisingly compact, versatile, and exceptionally high-quality camera and I'd be quick to recommend it to anyone. Canon cameras keep their value too. I bought my new one for just over $200 (I found a good deal online, you might be looking at $250-$350 for standard prices) and sold my three-year old one for about $150. Whether you're a beginner or a pro looking for a versatile travel camera, this one's for you.