Canon - PowerShot SD 850 IS Digital Camera Review

If you are in the market for a ultra-compact, or I guess any point and shoot digital camera, you should definitely check this one out. Its the latest generation of the excellent PowerShot Digital Elph series. Its tiny, at 3.5 inches wide, 2 inches tall, and an inch thick, weighing less than 7 ounces, and the picture quality is amazing. It won't be available in  the US until July, but the same camera is available elsewhere under the name "IXUS 950 IS". There are a few big camera shops online that are importing it already.

The LCD display is huge and bight, and augments the optical viewfinder nicely. The best feature is that the camera understands its orientation (it knows a picture was taken sideways/vertically) and the LCD shows the picture already rotated. Then, while looking at the picture, if you turn the camera sideways, the picture rotates too, so the top of the picture is always up. Now that's clever.

The auto-focus has a feature for finding faces in the field of view to set the focus point, and it works very well. It tracked my 6 year old through both camera movements and kid movements. Pictures so far have been very clear.

The image capture speed, from press to capture, is fast enough to catch the moments with my kids (your mileage may vary.)