My First Digital Elph and I'm Loving It!

Author's Rating:

Pros: intuitive menu, nice LCD, good picture quality, extremely portable, good ISO 400 images, fashionable

Cons: blurry edges, minimal flash control, difficult to press buttons

The Bottom Line: 
I highly recommend the Canon SD1200 for it's ease of use, styling, small size, and its good picture quality.

Author's Review
This is my first purchase of a camera in the Canon Elph series, and I was a bit apprehensive about buying something that I thought was mainly a fashionable statement. It's a cute looking camera. About the size of a credit card (thicker) and the shape of a bar of soap (it's not as slippery though). Yet I decided to get it because I wanted something that I can take everywhere with me. My other cameras, the Olympus C-8080 and the Canon PowerShot A590, are both excellent cameras, but they were too big to carry around daily. In other words I was looking for a pocketable camera.

The Canon SD1200 is a very fashionable lightweight camera. It comes in several colors to fit your taste including the dark gray one I picked out. The body feels firm with a metallic matte finish. Yes it's a metal body, both front and back. Canon continues the box-and-circle design for the Elph series with a shiny off-centered ring surrounding the retractable lens and fitted to a rectangular body. The corners are round making it less boxy and feel smaller than it's dimensions. The front is somewhat minimalistic and pleasing to the eye. There's the flash at the top right, optical viewfinder and AF focusing  lamp, and the Canon logo to the right where one would normally grip. Speaking of grip, there's none to be found so its not the easiest camera to hold, but it's balanced and lightweight enough that one could shoot one-handed. The SD1200 while not ultra sleek or thin will still certainly appeal to the younger crowd.

I've used the camera for almost a month, and my impressions of it are overwhelmingly positive. There are a few quibbles and some negative points, but I'll get to that later. The camera exceeded my expectations in the image quality that an ultracompact camera can deliver. I never really thought that such a small camera can produce nearly, and I stress nearly, as good images as my other larger cameras. If I didn't look closely to the pictures, I wouldn't know that the pictures came from the SD1200. My style of photography is mainly quick snaps of anything and everything I see when I walk about. The SD1200 is very fast in focusing and taking pictures. There is not much of a lag between the time I see something, focus on it, and capture it. This camera has quick and responsive performance. Even with my style of taking pictures, most images turn out sharp and in perfect focus. I do have Image Stabilization (IS) enabled in the shooting mode, and I believe this helps. Like I said, the pictures are great and I am satisfied with it. Colors are vibrant, images are sharp (at the centre), and white balance works quite well.

It's nice to see that Canon has made improvements in noise reduction in the newer Elph cameras. One thing I've noticed is that the SD1200 has much better noise control than previous SD series cameras. Maybe this improvement can be credited to the new Digic IV processor. I've looked at professional reviews online which shows sample images taken from with the SD1200 at various ISO levels, and noticed that ISO 200 looked like ISO 400 in Elph cameras a year or two back. Same goes for ISO 400 which appears like they would have compared to ISO 800 on previous Elphs models. I was curious as to how the SD1200 noise control compared to my one year old PowerShot A590 which has the Digic III processor. I am quite thrilled to find that indeed the images from the SD1200 proved superior in providing lower levels of noise and had a much cleaner look. Low ISO images, those less than 200, are extremely smooth and virtually free from noise (unless you magnify 100%). I also liked the ISO 400 pictures from this camera which retains color vibrancy and has minimal noise. Things tend to get noisier after this point, but it's certainly not out of the question to use ISO 800 images for smaller prints. Running the image through a software like Neat Image will do the trick to clean up the image.

There's plenty of other things I like about the SD1200. The LCD screen is simply gorgeous to look at. It's 2.5" diagonal, yet it's bright, high contrast, and easily visible from any angle. You can even adjust the brightness of the LCD. I lower the brightness partly to save battery life and partly because it's bright enough at the lower settings. The screen is also easy to clean and resists fingerprints. I didn't want to take a chance with it scratching so I have a plastic screen protector on it from day one. Another thing I like is the battery life. The camera uses an NB-6L 1000mAh lithium-ion battery which gives great battery life. I am not sure how many shots I can take before the battery is depleted, but it must be at least 200 or so. The CIPA battery rating is 260 with the LCD on, and at least double that with the LCD off and using the optical viewfinder. The Li-ion battery charges to full in under two hours in a small wall charger. I find that I can shoot several days and still have plenty of juice. However, I do charge it anyways because it's so quick to charge and there's no memory effects with lithium batteries.

There are a few negative issues that I need to bring up. One of it is that while the lens is sharp at the centre, it is not as sharp towards the edge. This is clearly obvious on closer inspection zooming into the images. I tested the SD1200 lens with the A590 and I was blown away by the difference. The A590 has excellent sharpness throughout the frame and even extending towards the edges. The SD1200 meanwhile had blurring at the edges. I was suprised because for one the A590 is a budget camera, costing only $150. Kudos to this remarkable camera! The other is that I was a bit let down given the SD1200 is higher in price by over $50 compared to the A590. Then I thought to myself this is an ultracompact camera what did I expect? The lens is smaller and so the smallest imperfections in the lens are going to be magnified. In other words, if I compared the SD1200 to other ultracompact cameras or compacts, it would fare just as well (or poorly) in edge sharpness.

Another point I need to raise, or reiterate is this camera is quite small. This means the buttons are also small. While I like the profile of the camera with nothing sticking out, it doesn't help that the buttons are flushed to the body which makes it difficult to press. Those with big thumbs might need to use their nails. There's not too many buttons at the back to play with although they are quite close together, especially the four way control ring which surrounds the Function Set button.

Finally, one other thing I should note is that there is no flash compensation. Unlike my A590 which allows me to adjust the power of the flash, I am limited with what I can do flash wise with the SD1200. I would have liked the option to boost the power of the SD1200's flash in some indoor situations.

Overall, I highly recommend the Canon SD1200. It's an easy to use, attractively styled camera that most importantly takes great pictures anywhere you go, because it's small enough to go with you everywhere.