Product Review: Canon PowerShot SD600

There are a lot of choices out there when it comes to buying digital cameras. Perhaps my favorite digital cameras are made by Canon. After doing some research I decided to purchase the six megapixel Canon PowerShot SD600. It's a great looking camera and I got it for about $230, not bad at all.

The Canon PowerShot SD600 is a six megapixel compact digital camera and comes with a metal case, 3x optical zoom, large 2.5-inch LCD screen, zooming optical viewfinder, a rechargeable battery and many other great features. You can even record videos at up to 30 fps.

The PowerShot SD600 uses DS or MultiMedia memory cards to store photos and videos. It also features a USB 2.0 connection to PC and Macs.

After opening the box you will see that the SD600 has a square shape with rounded corners. It's a nice looking, small camera and has a sturdy feel.

Usage

The Canon PowerShot SD600 turns out to be a very easy to use digital camera. The navigation menus and icons are descriptive and easy to read on the 2.5 inch screen. The SD600 uses the Canon Digic 2 processor which provides great operation and low power consumption.

If you have a lot of experience with digital cameras, especially Canon cameras, you may not even need to read the manual before getting started. It is a great camera for users of any experience level from novice to professional photographer.

Features

The Canon Powershot SD600 features a large 2.5 inch high resolution LCD screen and a low-light focus assist illuminator to help focus in low light.

The camera has selectable evaluative, center-weighted, and spot metering modes with a powerful built in flash. It also includes a red-eye reduction function. The shutter speed ranges from 15-1/1,500 sec and selectable ISO of 80-800 as well as ISO auto and high ISO auto.

The SD600 has an aperture range of f/2.8-5.6 at wide angle, f/4.9-10 at telephoto. The aperture is a two-step type that has no fine control over the aperture. Unfortunately ou can't control the aperture or shutter speed directly.

The Powershot SD600 also includes several scene modes which help the camera adjust the focusing and exposure setting b ased on the type of scene.

Performance

The Canon PowerShot SD600 uses the Digic II processor which gives the camera great speed. Zooming is fast and fairly responsive. The camera captures images at about two per second in burst mode. It can snap pictures in single-frame mode as fast as you can push the shutter release button. Overall, the camera features great performance.

The movie mode also works well. The Powershot SD600 records video at 640x480 resolution at 30 fps. The video I took was very smooth and sharp.

Battery Life

I was able to take over 100 photos without needing to recharge the camera. According to Canon, you should be able to take 160 photos on one battery charge with the LCD on and 600 with the LCD off.

The Verdict

Overall the Canon PowerShot SD600 is a great digital camera. It has all the positive factors of earlier Canon PowerShot versions while making improvements. It's not perfect, but I definitely recommend it.