The
Canon 
PowerShot SD550 Digital Elph
Ease of Use:
Overall
Rating:
Reviewed
by Jamie Lendino 9/6/06
The PowerShot
SD550 Digital Elph is a small, sleek camera that brings excellent credentials
to the table. It packs a 7.1 sensor, a 2.5-inch , and stellar
picture quality into an ultracompact body, making this a great grab-it-and-go
camera for just about any occasion.
The
SD550 is comfortable to hold and take pictures with. It’s not
so thin that you’d have a hard time positioning it, but it’s
still very discreet in terms of size. We liked its metal construction
and felt that it could withstand some serious abuse, though it’s
about an ounce heavier than we would have expected given the size. Our
review model had some scuff marks on it, indicating that the paint might
not fare as well as the camera body itself. The SD550 has a slightly
crowded back panel, but figuring out the basic functions (flash, close-up,
camera mode) is simple enough after a few moments. The camera strikes
a good balance between small size and sophisticated physical design.
Unfortunately,
the SD550 uses the same convoluted
structure that plagued its lower cost brother, the PowerShot
A430. Everything is broken up into separate Function menus, with
a bevy of tiny, unlabeled icons, and a more traditional Setup menu that
take care of auxiliary features like the LCD brightness. We’d
like to see this redesigned in the vein of the Kodak
EasyShare V610.
The
SD550 takes stunning pictures, which is something you can’t always
take for granted with ultracompact designs. With our test car fresh
from a car wash, the SD550 could still resolve very fine specs of dirt
in the cream colored paint. Please note that this example photo has
been compressed for the web site and does not show the full quality.
Outdoor shots were beautifully detailed, and indoor shots had good color,
with bright but evenly lit flash performance. The camera also
and takes multiple pictures very quickly. Recorded video exhibited moderate
noise, but test videos were well lit and smoothly animated.
We
can recommend the SD550 as a great camera, provided that you plan on
simply taking pictures with it and not diving into the more advanced
functions. It’s in getting at all the various customization options
that can make or break a camera for novice tech users, which is our
site’s emphasis. In this we’d say the SD550 falls a bit
short, but we really like this model otherwise.
Pros: sleek
design, great photo and video quality, very fast and
Cons: confusing , only 3x
Details:
Price: $399
Dimensions: 3.5 x 2.2 x 1.1 inches
Weight: 6.0 ounces (without battery)
Sensor resolution: 7.1
Movie recording: 640x480 at 30
: 3x
Screen Size: 2.5 inches
: none
Card slot:
Ease of Use Rating: 3 stars
Overall Rating: 4 stars
TeachTech Inc. 
