After months of rumors Canon has finally released new cameras to replace what almost looks like their entire line. I was actually looking for something new from Canon to replace my Powershot S80 and finally after weeks of research I homed in into what seemed to be the perfect pocket cam: The Powershot SD850 IS. But somehow I decided to wait and with the latest announcements I’m glad I did.
While they added new digital SLR’s, affordable digital compacts, semi-pro and budget super zoom compact digital cameras I decided to concentrate on their entries in the pocket cam arena: The titanium-cased SD 950 IS and SD870 IS with it’s wide-able zoom lens, both from the hugely successful Digital Elph line. In the previous generation they decided not to give the titanium-cladded SD900 the Image stabilization treatment, luckily this time they seemed to have learned their lesson and now both models feature IS. Higher numbers don’t always mean a better product and that’s exactly the case with the 8 megapixel SD870 IS. While the SD 950 IS may have the higher megapixels and titanium finish, the SD870 IS has the useful 28-105mm wide-angle zoom and equivalent 3.8X optical zoom. The SD870 IS is the successor to the SD800 IS and sports the same 28-105mm wide-angle zoom but ups the sensor resolution by 1 megapixel. The screen is now massive coming in at 3.0′.
All I can say is: finally. I have personally been waiting for an IS-equipped Canon, all of them seemed stuck at 2.5”, the SD870 seems to be best of both worlds.
Canon also released the SD 950 IS which to me seems more like something to keep the marketing team happy. While we don’t need more pixels, it has a whopping 12 megapixels which is their way of saying: hey look at us, we also have a 12 megapixel camera! But I do applaud them for adding IS. It’s nice to have a titanium-cased camera and Titanium’s strength and anti corrosion properties are not unknown to me, but it seems to be used more as way to add some bling bling factor.
Written by Devin