After trying out the 5-Megapixel Canon PowerShot SD400 Digital Elph and the 4-Megapixel Canon PowerShot SD300 Digital Elph, I just had to experience the 7.1-Megapixel Canon PowerShot SD500. The camera was difficult to get as it was sold out in many stores and I had to pay $401 for it. Ouch!

Pictures

The pictures of the Canon PowerShot SD500 and the sample photos taken with it are available at the address below:

http://www.review-shop.com/Canon_SD500/Canon_SD500_Samples_1.html

You can copy and paste the above address into your browser's address area.

What Is Canon PowerShot SD500?

The Canon PowerShot SD500 is a 7.1-Megapixel super-compact stylish digital camera with a 3x optical zoom, a large 2-inch LCD screen, zooming optical viewfinder, acclaimed fast Canon DiG!C II (DIGIC 2) Image Processor, 9-area smart AiAF auto focus, powered by a compact rechargeable battery.

The camera stores pictures on SD (Secure Digital) or MultiMedia memory cards (32 MB high-speed SD card is supplied) and features fast USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection to PC and Mac computers. It also supports direct printing (without computer) with PictBridge compatible printers.

Two Reviews

I will provide two reviews below. The first one (short version) will be targeted to people who don't want to read through multiple pages of text to figure out if the camera has what they want and if it performs well. It is targeted to a casual user rather than somebody who cares about the small details.

The second version will contain the description of the more advanced aspects for those who are interested in them. By separating this information, I hope to avoid boring casual shooters to death with information about things they might not need.

Short Review

Once my SD500 arrived, I was surprised that it is slightly larger than the SD400. The camera comes with a rechargeable battery and a charger. The charger is a kind that has no wires and plugs directly into the wall outlet. Its prongs fold and it supports any voltage (100-240 V 50-60 Hz).

The SD500 is very cool. It is miniature, looks cool, feels sturdy and heavy in your hand. Unlike the SD400 and below, its case is not made of steel, but rather from plastic. It looks and feels durable, but I must admit that I liked the look of the SD400 better.

The camera has a retractable lens that extends and has a lens cover that opens when the camera is powered on. When the camera is powered off, the lens retracts and the lens cover closes.

The camera has an on/off button on the top deck as well as a zoom rocker, large shutter release button. The bottom of the camera has a metal threaded tripod mount and a battery and SD card compartment lid. The rear houses a bright 2-inch LCD monitor, an optical zooming viewfinder, control buttons and a menu control disk with a FUNC/SET button in the middle (see http://www.review-shop.com/Canon_SD500/Canon_SD500_Samples_1.html for pictures).

There is also a rotating switch between review, movie and 3 still picture taking modes: auto mode, scene mode and manual mode. This switch has well-calibrated effort - not too flimsy yet not too stiff. The side has a plastic cover, underneath which you can find a USB jack, A/V jack and a DC power input jack.

The camera is incredibly easy to use. I have not read the manual (I have not even opened it), but was able to use the camera and all its features in no time, including advanced functions. The camera can be used by any member of the family and by photographers of all levels of expertise from novices to advanced ones (albeit it will not give you much control over the shutter speed or aperture).

The SD500 comes pre-set to Auto mode (red camera icon on the mode dial). You do not have to do anything other than point and shoot - the camera takes care of the rest. The camera uses 9-area intelligent autofocus. You press the shutter release button halfway to make camera focus and the camera shows you (on the LCD screen) where it focused by displaying one or more green rectangles. Then you take the picture by pressing the shutter release button all the way.

If you want more control, you can select one of several scene modes by rotating the dial to the red camera icon with SCN next to it. Then you can use the FUNC/SET button and the menu control disc to set the scene mode (Portrait, Landscape, Beach, Snow, etc.) and other parameters.

If you want more control, you can select Manual mode, which is not a real manual mode where you would be able to select the shutter speed and aperture, but rather a mode in which you get access to selection of several parameters, most notably exposure compensation and ISO. In Manual mode, you can set the ISO (50-400), white balance (several presets and custom), use exposure compensation to make pictures darker or brighter, use picture effects, color replacement effects, etc.

The camera gives you instant access to the flash mode selection (flash off, red-eye reduction, night portrait, auto flash), macro or landscape mode as well as drive mode (single frame, timer or burst/continuous shooting) at a push of a button. Your selection appears as a large icon in the middle of the screen and then quickly moves to the edge of the frame while simultaneously getting smaller. Pretty cool stuff.

The camera uses the latest version of Canon DiG!C processor - DIGIC II. It is the same processor used in larger Canon digital SLR cameras and it gives this Digital Elph amazing speed. The camera takes less than a second to power itself on in review mode and only about a second to power on and extend its lens in shooting mode. It feels instantaneous. This is extremely fast performance.

The SD500 can capture images at about two per second in burst mode (I used Kingston Elite Pro SD memory card for testing). In single-frame mode, the camera could snap pictures as fast as I could push the shutter release button - about every 1-1.5 second. The focusing takes less than a second at both wide angle and telephoto and the shutter lag, when pre-focused, is almost unnoticeable.

Even in dim light, with or without focus assist light, the camera focuses in under a second. Very impressive! The zooming from wide angle to telephoto (or back) takes less than two seconds and is responsive.

The camera uses a custom rechargeable battery that is larger than the ones supplied with the SD400 and SD300 and should let you take 100-200 pictures. I took about 70 so far (about half with flash) and the battery warning still has not appeared.

The flash is rather bright for its size. It has an effective red-eye reduction mode and is sufficient at up to 10-12 feet away. It has a recycle time of about 7-10 seconds.

The camera produces excellent photos with well-exposed, sharp, contrasty and richly-colored images (see the samples). The sample photo taken early in the morning can be seen at:

http://www.review-shop.com/Canon_SD500/Canon_SD500_Sample_1_1.html

(you can copy and paste the above address into your browser's address area). This photo was taken using negative exposure compensation, as the camera tried to use too high of the exposure value by default, causing highlights to blow out (some leaves). This photo shows that the camera produces very good shadow detail and has a good dynamic range.

The white balance is on the warm side. The skin colors are slightly warm, but true to life and pleasing. The photos taken with the SD500 are sharp from corner to corner with only the very edges of the frame being slightly softer than the center. This will not be noticeable in printed pictures however since corners normally don't make it to the print due to the aspect ratio difference and other factors. Plus, the blurriness is so small, you have to enlarge the image to 100% on the computer screen to notice it.

Usually, the smaller the camera and the higher the optical zoom it can provide, the softer the image becomes, especially at the corners of the frame as it is difficult to produce compact optics with high zoom levels. Surprisingly, the lens on the SD500 is so good, there is only a small amount of blurring in corners. Overall, the lens produces sharp results at all zoom levels and has impressive 3x optical zoom range.

The image noise is virtually absent at ISO 50. It appears (slightly) at the ISO 100 in the shadows, gets more pronounced at ISO 200 and gets worse at ISO 400. Still, if you are printing 6x4 or 5x7 pictures, the noise should not be visible at all and will only be slightly visible at ISO 400 with larger prints. Even wall-mountable 10x8-inch prints are feasible at ISO 400. With 7.1-megapixel shots it produces, you can print your photos at up to 13x19 inches with good detail (ISO 50-200). I printed a couple at 13x19 on a friend’s Canon i9900 printer and was rather pleased.

Recommendation: I highly recommend Canon SD500 if you want a miniature, cool yet capable camera with 7.1-megapixel resolution that produces excellent photos with print sizes of up 13x19 inches. It is extremely fast, easy to use and utterly capable.

If you want more durable smaller metal body, can live with 5-Megapixel resolution and want to save about $90, you might want to check out the Canon PowerShot SD400.



Full Review

Features and Specifications

- 7.1 Megapixel 1/1.8-inch CCD sensor for up to 3072×2304 resolution
- 2.0" color LCD with Night Display function
- 3x optical 7.7-23.1 mm (37-111mm equivalent) f/2.8-4.9 zoom with digital Macro capability
- Shutter speeds of 15 seconds to 1/2000 second
- Auto ISO or selectable ISO 50-400
- Evaluative, Center-Weighted or Spot metering
- Exposure compensation: +/-2EV in 1/3-step increments (in Manual mode)
- White Balance: Auto, 5 presets or Custom
- Photo Effects: Low Sharpening, Vivid Color, Neutral, Sepia and B&W
- My Colors - customize your colors while shooting
- Advanced TTL AiAF 9-point autofocus system with focus-assist lamp
- Program AE automatic, Manual and Scene exposure modes (Manual is not "real" Manual - see below)
- Continuous 2fps shooting until memory is full (with fast SD cards)
- Movie mode with sound 640x480, 320x240 or 160x120 with clips up to 3 minutes each
- Built-in microphone and speaker
- Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery and charger included (charger works with 110-240V 50/60Hz)
- Secure Digital (SD) card storage, 32MB high-speed SD card supplied
- High-speed USB 2.0 connectivity for PC and Mac
- Direct print and PictBridge Compliant

More on Features and Controls

The camera uses a small rechargeable battery that looks like a cell phone battery, but slightly larger. The camera has a bright low-light focus assist illuminator that helps it focus in low light.

The camera features selectable Evaluative, Center-Weighted and Spot metering modes. The camera has a built-in flash that is quite powerful or its size and has a red-eye reduction function. The SD500 has a shutter speed range of 15-1/2,000 sec and selectable ISO of 50-400 as well as Auto ISO.

The available movie mode records movies with sound (the camera has a microphone and a speaker) at 640x480, 320x240 or 160x120 with movie clip lengths of up to 3 minutes. At 320x240 you can select 60 fps frame rate and at 640x480 you can select 15 or 30 fps with 30 fps providing very fluid recording.

The aperture range is f/2.8-5.6 at wide angle, f/4.9-10 at telephoto. It seems that the aperture is a two-step type with no fine control over aperture. The camera doesn't let you control the aperture or the shutter speed directly, but even if you select landscape mode or try shooting in different lighting conditions, you will soon discover that your resultant photos have only one of two aperture values at any given focal length. For example, I only get f/2.8 or f/5.6 at wide angle.

This might explain the fact that there is not indication of the aperture (or shutter speed) on the screen during the shooting or even in preview. I believe Canon is trying to conceal the fact that the aperture is of cheaper, two-step non-adjustable type.
Perhaps they had to use this kind of aperture control not because of the cost reasons alone, but because of the size constraints as well. In any case, although it works OK for most situations, it would be nice to have indication of these parameters to be able to estimate if the picture will come out blurry or not. It is rather useful to know the shutter speed when shooting handheld or while shooting fast-moving objects. And it is good to know the aperture while shooting at telephoto to figure out if the background will be blurry or not.

You can use the exposure compensation in the manual mode and it comes in handy in the sunset hours (or in the early morning as in my sample photo) as the camera overexposes the picture trying to preserve the shadow detail. Sometimes, you can see the click when the camera switches from one aperture value to another when you adjust the exposure compensation.

There are a bunch of scene modes as well, which help the camera tweak the focusing and exposure settings according to the type of scene.

More on Image Quality

The SD500 produces contrasty photos that have a pleasing "Canon" color with slight oversaturation and nice blue skies - the kind of color consumers like. The dynamic range of the photos seems to be slightly limited (as in other consumer-level digicams), but seems to be slightly wider than average for consimer-level digital cameras. In harsh lighting conditions, the highlights can be blown out, but the shadow detail is rather good. Overall, the dynamic range is very good, comparing to other compact camera of similar price.

The complete absence of noise at ISO 50 was a pleasant surprise as was very minimal amount of noise in the shadows at ISO 100. Even at ISO 400 the noise is so fine-grained that it (combined with 7.1MP resolution) is invisible at 5x7 inches and barely visible at 10x8 inches.

I was not able to find much chromatic aberration (purple fringing) in the areas of high contrast. The camera uses a 1/1.8-inch CCD sensor, which makes for slightly shallower depth of field than when using 1/2.5-inch sensors or smaller. You can see from my sample photo that the objects in foreground are noticeably out of focus, whereas it is much less pronounced with the samples I took from the same location using a Canon SD400. In both cases, I focused on the trees in the background.

Color and Picture Effects

You can adjust color saturation by selecting Vivid or Neutral color in addition to the standard setting. In Vivid mode, the saturation is increased and I find that it provides too much saturation. I don't use this mode. In the Neutral mode, the saturation is decreased. I find it useful mainly in the low light conditions to reduce noise and make images more true-to-life.

Also available Black and White, Sepia and Low Sharpening effects. The former two are nothing to write home about - just regular modes that are quite useful if you want to give your photos an old look. The Low Sharpening effect reduces in-camera sharpening and lets you sharpen your photos later, in software (e.g. Photoshop). This gives you more control over sharpening.

Additionally, there are modes called Vivid Green, Vivid Red and Vivid Blue. They do exactly that - make the stated color vivid.

Also, the SD500 has funky color effects. You can replace some colors with others - a feature I don't care for.

Image Quality Settings

The camera lets you select between Super Fine, Fine and Normal compression levels (regardless of resolution). You can detect occasional JPEG artifacts in the mode of highest compression (Normal) and some fine detail may be lost. But the two lower-compression modes (Fine and Superfine) are rather good. The sample provided is in Large compression. Its size is 2.25 MB.

White Balance

The camera's automatic white balance is usually quite accurate with the exception of the incandescent lighting, where you are better off either selecting Incandescent white balance setting or using the available manual white balance. I used the incandescent setting in my macro shot of a dollar bill to make paper appear white. In auto mode it was yellowish.

Focusing

You let camera focus using its AiAF 9-area focusing system and the camera will show you green rectangles over the areas where it focused so that you can confirm the focus areas. You can also select one-point focusing (center). There is no manual focusing provision.

The left arrow button switches the camera to Macro mode (and also to landscape in manual mode).

Camera Sounds

The camera is rather quiet in operation and you can customize the sounds it makes from its speaker.

Macro

I have not tried the macro mode yet.

Build Quality and Ergonomics

The camera has solid feel and very good build quality. The camera a bit small but for its size it is convenient to hold and its compact size lets you put it in a jacket pocket or a purse easily. The major controls are within easy reach and the tactile response is good. The battery compartment door could be more solid however and I liked the other digital elphs (SD400, SD300, etc.) better for their solid metal bodies.

Tripod Mount

The camera has a metal tripod mount. It is useful if you want to take macro pictures or pictures with long exposures (e.g. nighttime). The camera has a timer (2-second or 10-second), which you should use to avoid blurry images when the camera is on the tripod. The camera has noise reduction that is activated with longer exposures and takes a picture with the shutter closed and then subtracts it from the original picture, thereby eliminating hot pixels.

Menu System

I have not read the manual, yet was able to use the SD500 in all modes. Usually, I am not a big fan of Canon menus but this Digital Elph is very easy to use. Not only I find the menus intuitive, they also appear very fast (instantaneously), unlike the menus on Canon A520 and A510, which take about a second to appear.

The camera is extremely fast and responsive. The large bright LCD screen shows pictograms of selected modes (e.g. Macro, Flash mode, etc.) appear large and legible on the screen and then move to the side of the screen. A very cool and useful feature, especially for people with impaired vision.

LCD and Viewfinder

The camera has a 2-inch non-articulated (fixed) LCD screen and an optical zooming viewfinder. The LCD coverage as about 100% - you can see exactly what will be recorded. The viewfinder, however, cover only about 80% of what will be recorded. The LCD is bright, fluid, has good visibility in sunlight or darkness and very good resolution.

Computer Connectivity

The camera uses USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection to transfer pictures to a computer. You can also remove the SD memory card and use a memory card reader (if you have one). The file transfer is fast at about 1,200 KB/s. I do not use the software that was provided with the camera since I have Adobe Photoshop CS2.

Histogram

The camera can display a histogram in the review mode to show you if you have overexposed the highlights or underexposed the shadows. I useful feature when you don't trust the LCD. There is no live histogram (histogram while shooting).

Bottom Line

I highly recommend Canon SD500 if you want a miniature, cool yet capable camera with 7.1-megapixel resolution that produces excellent photos with print sizes of up 13x19 inches. It is extremely fast, easy to use and utterly capable.

If you want more durable smaller metal body, can live with 5-Megapixel resolution and want to save about $90, you might want to check out the Canon PowerShot SD400.


My Reviews of Other Similar Digital Cameras

Canon:
Canon PowerShot SD450 5-Megapixel Digital Camera Review
Canon PowerShot SD500 7.1-Megapixel Digital Camera Review
Canon PowerShot SD550 7.1-Megapixel Digital Camera Review
Canon PowerShot SD600 6-Megapixel Digital Camera Review

Panasonic:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ3 5-Megapixel Digital Camera with 6x Optical Stabilized Zoom Review
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ5 6-Megapixel Digital Camera with 6x Optical Stabilized Zoom Review

Olympus:
Olympus Stylus 600 Digital Camera Review
Olympus Stylus 800 Digital Camera Review

Sony:
Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P200 Digital Camera Review
Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T5 Digital Camera Review
Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T7 Digital Camera Review
Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W5 Digital Camera Review
Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W7 Digital Camera Review

Fuji:
Fuji FinePix E550 Digital Camera Review
Fuji FinePix E900 Digital Camera Review
Fuji FinePix F10 Digital Camera Review

Kodak:
Kodak EasyShare V550 Digital Camera Review




Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 401
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts