A great secondary digital camera
Written: Nov 11 '02
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Pros: Compact and portable, takes vivid and brilliant color photographs
Cons: Weak flash, poor battery life
The Bottom Line: A great secondary digital camera, the S330 takes vivid color photos in good light condidtions. If you're looking for more manual control, buy something else.
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| MediaLabGuy's Full Review: Canon PowerShot S330 / IXUS 330 Digital Camera |
The Powershot S330 is the largest of all of the Canon Elph digital cameras, but it sports a nice 3x optical zoom and takes reasonable quality photos in areas with good lighting. It has the largest zoom lens of any of the Elph cameras, and it sports lots of improvements over its S300 predecessor.
The S200 and S230 (the other 2 Digital Elphs on the market today) are lighter and thinner; but they only have a 2x optical zoom instead of the 3x zoom that the S330 has. Beware of the zoom though; the lens is really small, and at the full 3x zoom, the image appears blurry because the lens cannot gather enough light; you'll need a tripod to get a good shot at the maximum zoom.
The color and auto-focusing on the camera is amazing. The color reproduction is top notch; Canon really does an excellent job with this in the S330 (and also in the S230). Scenery comes out nice and crisp, and the auto-matrixing feature makes your vacation photos to Yosemite National Park come out postcard like.
The camera only has a 2.1 Megapixel sensor. This means you'll get good 4"x6" prints and even reasonable 5"x7" prints. But if you want to do 8"x10" prints, it'll start getting fuzzy; invest in the Canon Powershot S230 (which has a 3.2 MP sensor) or S30 (3MP sensor) or S40 (4 MP sensor) if you want to do enlargements.
On the downside, the flash is a bit weak. It nicely illuminates subjects that are 6 feet away from you, but if your subject is any closer, the photo is overexposed, and if the subject is farther away, the image gets a bit blurry. Even worse, using the flash cuts down on your battery life significantly; I tried using the S330 at a wedding reception and was only able to take 40 or so photos on a fully charged battery with the flash on.
The S330 comes with Canon's new and improved lithium-ion battery, which is supposed to get better battery life then the previous S300 model. However, the battery life is still rather poor; it lasts only about 75 shots (some with flash) before the low battery indicator comes on. I highly recommend you invest in an extra battery (which will set you back another $50!).
Anyhow, for serious photographers, the S330 makes a good secondary camera (you'll want a heavier and more expensive one to print out enlargements). It's portable, and it's great if you want to take lots of snapshots. However, the fact that it only has a 2 MP sensor, and that the lens isn’t optimal for indoor or low-light shots, means I’ll have to buy a better camera for those hard-to-photograph conditions.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 320
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use
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Epinions.com ID:
MediaLabGuy
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Member: Wesley Chan
Location: Cambridge, MA
Reviews written: 48
Trusted by: 29 members
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