Canon PowerShot SD870IS 8MP Digital Camera with 3.8x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Silver)

Excellent! I recommend it. Easy to use, friendly, great quality of pictures, small and light.

Current Best Offer: $218.50

Best wide angle point and shoot

I have been a loyal nikon customer for years. I have gone through 3 other nikons, always upgrading. when I first picked up this camera the quality of the product and it's images blew past that of every camera on display.
1. the wide angle lens allows you to increase those group shots from four or five to 8 or 9 w/o needing to back up ten feet.
2. once you begin to play around and figure out all of the settings/iso modes etc....you can really push this camera to the limits. I have become a huge fan of the color isolation feature.
3. when zooming, even in the optical, the pixilation and shadowing is far better than that of other cameras on the market. I compared this with two nikons, panasonic, and a sony. None had such a clear screen to view, nor the features.
this camera may not be an slr, but for the price, features, and appeal it has when i pull it out....i will always be a canon guy now!

Current Best Offer: $218.50

A great camera

This is a great camera. I do a lot of hiking and I am tired of stitching together 2 or more images to create a panorama. Most times I really only need a single shot to capture a scene rather than a stitch of two scenes... this camera does just that with its wide-angle lens. In that mode there is very little barrel distortion, too.

The zoom isn't great at about 3x but then again I don't really that. I take mostly "snapshots" and this point-and-shoot not only garnered Consumer Reports as being highly rated but also my rating.

I also spend time documenting underground mining scenes and I found the flash more than adequate (despite others' comments), but, more importantly, the camera projects a red dot so that the imaging software can correctly focus on the scene -- that is invaluable to me.

Red-eye reduction seemed ineffective at a wedding that I was at; the feature of detecting smiling faces was incredibly precise.

The software (menu system) is a little clunky and counter-intuitive, but so was transitioning from Windows 98 to XP, right? I'll get used to it in time.

Boot-up time is phenomenally fast, pictures are taken rapidly, focus is rapid, picture quality is excellent (an 8 MP image takes about 4 MB card space -- detail is not sacrificed).

So why only the 4-star rating? In moderately low light the software shifts to a low shutter speed, one slow enough that, say, if a breeze is rustling branches then they are captured as blurred. In my photographs, however, I have not experienced the graininess that others have experienced at similar lighting conditions.

I haven't yet evaluated the movie or time-lapse movie modes so I cannot report on them... but, for a compact camera with great battery life and an awesome wide-angle lens, I am more than pleased with my purchase.

It is my understanding that there is now a slightly more improved version of this camera... probably worth checking out for the few extra pesos...

Now, as far as the Canon software goes, hmmm... it needs some work (and I need to familiarize myself with it more), but it does the job that I need: download the pictures from the camera, auto-rotate portrait images, and then save them. I use 3rd party paint programs for any editing so I cannot comment on the ability of the supplied software to handle that... I am a "minimalist" of sorts in that regards. It took me a few minutes to figure out what I needed to do from the non-standard user interface, but I did figure it out and the pictures drop into my selected folder properly rotated -- what more could I want? When the pictures are downloaded they go into one folder, then I ask to save them in another, but the originals are then not deleted. This could be my ineptitude with the software. Either way, a right-click and delete from Explorer and I am on my way.

Current Best Offer: $218.50

Best Point and Shoot I've Had Yet

WOW. I just spent a day shooting photos and videos with my new Canon as well as in evening light, and it is completel blowing me away in quality.

As with previous PowerShots, it's great in representing photos similarly to how my eye saw the image, the 28mm is rocking, and the video quality is fabulous. I just discovered all kinds of fun special effects for video.

Unlike my previous POS, oh I mean P and S, which was a Lumix, this PowerShot lets you zoom while a video is being filmed. That's a great feature.

Get a large capacity memory card and this camera, and enjoy taking beautiful professional quality photographs.

Current Best Offer: $218.50

my sd870 (also known as ixus sd860 in europe)

I really enjoy this camera from the moment i put the batteries on. It really has a nice lcd screen shiny and visible under the sun. It also starts quite fast and also shoots quite fast, i think because of the DIGIC III processor. But the most amazing part is the 28-105 mm lens, which gives large flexibility especiaaly in small places for group photos.
The camera has quality material which you feel it when you touch. There is also an extra button near the 3" lcd screen which you can assign some predefined actions, which is quite user friendly.

Current Best Offer: $218.50