Canon SD700 IS

lunato and I decided to trade-in our SONY DSC-P73 for a SHARP Korean-English-Chinese dictionary. We bought the camera on August 16th, 2004 and while it is a great camera, whenever we would ask someone other than ourselves to take pictures from it, the pictures would almost always be blurry. The lens is far too sensitive and any minuscule movement while taking a picture would produce a blurry image. The camera is actually wonderful when outside under bright light but if you’re indoors and there isn’t enough light, well.. that’s asking too much from it.

lunato’s friend, choi (pronounced chaay) was going back to Korea in mid-January and he wanted to purchase a digital camera before he left. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to do an exchange of goods. We took his Korean-English dictionary and he took our SONY DSC-P73. We told him about the blurriness factor and that you have to be perfectly still when taking a picture; a skill that takes quite a while to develop. However, he assured us that he would be taking pictures via his tripod most of the time and he really likes the extensive functionality of the DSC-P73. Perfect! Besides, the dictionary is far cheaper than the camera!!

So, after doing a lot of research, we decided to get a CANON SD700 IS. DPreview has a lengthy review for this camera and currently it is rated #13 amongst all the cameras that they have reviewed. I was debating between the 710 and the 700, but after holding both the 700 and 710 in our hands, lunato convinced me to go with the 700. It just looks so much better. Besides, this camera will last us another 2-3 years and I don’t want to carry the bulky 710 with me whenever we go on vacation. The 700 can easily slide in my pocket. Even though it was released before the 710, it looks like a much newer model than the 700. Hey, it might not have every single function and might not allow as many settings as the 710, but it is perfect for amateur point-and-shoot photographers. Professionals, who spend thousands on photography equipment, would probably choose the 710 over the 700. By the way, the IS stands for Image Stabilization, something that we greatly desired after deleting hundreds of pictures over the past few years because of their blurriness. Also, Flickr has an impressive collection of photographs taken from the SD700 IS.

The Panasonic Lumix is another camera that we considered, but most of the reviews complained about the camera being pretty weak under low-light conditions and apparently it creates a lot of watercolor noise; Image #4. It has image stabilization though and the ad campaign that Panasonic is running on TV these days make it look like the best camera ever! Dodob is taking pretty nice pictures with it so I guess its not a bad camera at all… if you know what you’re doing. Personally, I have no idea about ISOs, histograms, white balance, blah blah blah.. i just point-and-shoot :D

So, choi came over on the 2nd and took our SONY camera. He left behind his dictionary which is something lunato needed since she’s been reading a lot of novels these days. We researched cameras for more than a week and finally bought the Canon on the 12th.