lifebsideben

Finally the SD300 is available, I’ve been waiting for its release the past 3 months. I’ve been wanting to replace my Olympus D40Z digital camera for a while now… it takes decent pictures most of the time but I still wasn’t satisfied. I’m a “little camera” fan, I’m willing to give up (some) features for smaller footprint, and so far I’m quite happy with the SD300.

Here’s the big differentiators from the Olympus, in my opinion:

• fast start up and shot-to-shot cycle time
• much smaller footprint. the sd300 I really can fit in any pocket!
• larger LCD display, and entirely more sensical operation. after a shot, if you want to keep the review onscreen, press one key. no mode switching, no rushing to show it to people before it disappears!
• it actually remembers the last mode you were in, complete with various manual overrides etc., between power-off and back on. this was immensely frustrating on the D40Z.
• SD cards go a lot bigger and faster (I picked up a 32x 512M) than SmartMedia!
• the movie mode is waaaaay nicer, including 640×480 @ 30 fps, saved as some variant of QuickTime (I think actually MJPEG)
• formatting a SD card takes less than 1 sec!
• “stitch assist” mode for panoramic photos, and half-decent software to stitch them
• generally the software is much much nicer than the olympus stuff, and has full OS X support too!

That’s the good stuff. The less impressive stuff about the new camera so far include:

• Uses proprietary batteries. All the smaller cameras do, but there is something nice about NiMH AAs, and the ability to “fall back” to alkalines when you’re out of the country, can’t get to a AC outlet, etc. (This happened to me in Romania; I didn’t have time to charge the batteries but could pick up some cheap AAs to tide me over until the end of the day…)
• Picture quality, in general, is not noticeably better than the Olympus. But I’ll take more outside shots and compare further. So, it’s a 2-year-later-model camera, same resolution, but about same quality pictures. I guess I expected some advances, even in a smaller camera.
• No case included, and the official Canon one is on backorder. When the camera has 40% of its back as the LCD, you really feel safer with a case to put it in! I finally just picked up a $10 Case Logic model from Fry’s in the meantime. I can’t find the specific case on their site, but it’s kind of cute–built like the black case that comes with the iPod 2nd gen… like two pieces of padded material with snug elastic on the sides.
• “long shutter” mode is up to 15 sec; the Olympus can do 45 sec. Granted, you don’t need this often, but I’ve gotten a few really cool nighttime shots of the sky with the long exposures.

That’s kind of the roundup at this point. I’ll see how I feel in a few more weeks after the holidays… really worried about the battery situation, until I can get a spare (for $40!)

Now the really sad part is that the D40Z, which cost me $550 at Amazon 2.5 years ago, only goes for about $100 on eBay. Sigh…

Tags: cameras, photography, review