Oh my your entire thoughts on this camera are based upon only MY opinion! That's a lot of responsibility for one guy to take on, but I'll try..lol.

BACKGROUND
Drum roll please maestro....
Ok after an exhausting 4-5 months of researching cameras online, offline and borrowing countless numbers from friends and co-workers, I have finally bought my first digital camera. My choice was made with only one or two regrets, but overall I am very happy with it.

My story starts six months ago, my wife and I decided that we would need a new camera, we were tired of borrowing cameras from other people (immediate family mostly) and we started looking around. We decided almost immediately that a digital camera has a lot more options that we were looking for. This is also about the time I discovered epinions.com, which is where I have based my own decision to buy and recommended others to buy based upon.

What appealed to me the most were canon's digital elph series of cameras (s100,200,300 & 330). The small size, the extreme portability, the good picture quality, and lets face it..the sexy metal frame. The problem was that even with their top of the line s330 model, it only came in a 2 megapixel format. While this would be fine and dandy for most shots, I wanted the ability to print 8.5 x 11 prints, the 2 megapixel just limited that option. I also wanted to be able to zoom in while not loosing so much resolution, the 2 megapixel also limited this.

I literally was having to weigh in the differences between the less expensive s30 & s40 vs the more expensive but much more optioned G2. Of course right when I was about to choose (in my mind the lesser of two evils, neither screamed "this is the right choice" for me), the new line of the s230 and the G3 came out. - Chorus of angels sing here.

Here finally was the Elph camera that was everything I wanted, it didn't have that weird lense cover that the s30 & s40 have (that can and does break making it difficult to turn on the camera), and of course it wasn't even a 1/3 as bulky as the g3. Here was the 3+ megapixel camera that I have been waiting for. When I read about this camera everything said to me that this was the one.

So after buying it from best buy (for only $10 more than the best price online, and best price meaning someone who was reliable i.e. harmonycomputers.com:$289), I now have this camera in my possession. After using it for about a week, here is my outlook on it. Yes it has many good points, but like anything you will buy it has some cons as well.

So read on fellow epinion.com users and enjoy.

SIZE
Well who are you, you sexy little camera? This is what I want to say to my elph camera every time I remove it from its carrying case. You will not find a camera this small that is anywhere near its quality. According to canon this is the worlds smallest 3 megapixel camera, measuring in at a shocking 3.4 x 2.2 x 1.1 inches. For such a small camera it does have a little heft to it, a little more than 7 ounces maybe 8, depending on battery and cf card.

FRAME
Like all of the digital elph line of cameras, the s230 has a brushed aluminum metal frame, very box-like in appearance but also very small. This metal frame gives the elph series of cameras a more solid feel to them that I for one found very appealing. This is a far cry from lesser cameras that have a cheap plastic frame that, when you squeezed them, you can actually feel it move and give. The metal frame from the s230 is not like this, the entire camera “feels” solid.

SPEEEEEEED
Now the s230 has a lot of assets but speed isn’t one of them. This camera will not be the one you choose if you need to take a lot of action shots. The delay from pushing the shutter button to the shot is minimal, but the recycle time for the next shot is a substantial 2-3 seconds. This means you will not “capture” that amazing series of your friend falling over in his chair because he is laughing too hard. For this I would recommend the s30 or s40, also the G2 & G3 because these cameras use a memory buffer that allows you to take 5-8 shots in quick precession before it has to store them on the cf card. The s230 (mainly I think because of its size) does not have this ability. This among some others is one thing you will be sacrificing for the very small size of the camera. Now that I have put a little doom and gloom on its recycle rate I do have to say that the startup speed is speedy. It only takes a little more than 1 second from pushing the “on” button to ready to take a shot. Some cameras require as much as 5-10 seconds before they are picture ready. Sure some other cameras might let you take 5 really fast shots but if its not ready to take a picture before the action is over, then 1 or 2 shots of the action is a whole lot better than 5 or 6 after the action.

BUTTONS
I am a big guy, 6Ç” 240 pounds but even at my size this small camera is easy to manipulate. The zoom is nicely positioned directly in front of the shutter button, and the buttons on the back of the camera all have enough bumper space so that you aren’t going to press two at once by mistake. Because the lens is placed just slightly left of the center of the camera, this gives you a lot of space to the right to hold the camera, really good for banana handed people like me. If you want to see a picture of the button layout, this one is a good’un. http://www.powershot.com/powershot2/s230/images/prod_img.jpg

MOVIES
The movie mode on the s230 has improved a great deal over its predecessors. It has removed the limitations on the length of the movies you can take. The quality of the movie ranges from low:160x120, medium:320x240, high:640x480. The length totally depends on the cf card you have installed. For instance on high setting, using a 128meg cf card you can take up to 124 seconds of movies, but on low settings you can take up to 973 seconds of movies. Now the times that canon says it can take is based upon a max card size of 256 meg. I have used this mode extensively (my wife does irish dancing and I use it to record her foot movements) and it does a good job of capturing live action. So if your friend ever says “hey watch this” this is your cue to switch it to movie mode and hit the shutter button.

PICTURES
The digital elph series of cameras has always taken good pictures. I have to only say good because they simply don’t have the carl zeiss lens that the G2&G3 have. With the smaller sized lens it has certain limitations, you might see a little tube effect on the end of the zoom range but only if you are really looking for it in the corners, but at zero zoom you won’t see any change. The picture quality ranges from 2,048 x 1,536 at the highest resolution (taking full advantage of its 3.2 mega pixel capabilities going all the way down to 640x480 at the lowest setting. All and all there are a total possible settings of 12. Now the PowerShot S230 is one of the few digital cameras to feature wide area 9-point auto focus for taking crisp, sharp images no matter where the subject appears in the image frame. What this means is that the camera will look at nine subject points in whatever picture you are taking, it compares the points to each other, that way it gets much more clear photos, in fact I haven’t had one picture out of focus. This is also a selling point for me because I didn’t like the standard 3 point auto focus of the other digital elph cameras. The s230 has a range of common photo options, the S230's Photo Effect mode lets you do more with your still images. Choose from Low Sharpening, Vivid Color, Sepia, Neutral, and Black & White. Some of these like sepia make really cool shots, sort of antique like.

ZOOM
The zoom is pretty standard, I wish I could say its some whopping 6 optical zoom, but alas it is just a measly 2 optical zoom, and if you don’t know…optical is the only zoom really important. Past the 2 optical zoom all your pictures are just zooming in on the 2 optical photo and this means you are getting closer to the image and that means degradation of the image. You are taking off from that 3.2 mega pixels when you zoom in past 2 optical.

OTHER COOL STUFF
One cool feature is the Intelligent Orientation, basically the S230's Intelligent Orientation Sensor senses whether your images were shot horizontally or vertically. So, when you play them back on the LCD screen or download them to your computer, your images are always right side up. This is actually really cool because it lets you easily see them on the screen the correct way. Yes I know you could just turn the camera 90 degrees to the right and look but hey I’m lazy.

One feature I don’t use is the direct print option, this lets you either connect your cf card or the camera itself via a usb cord to the printer (I believe only canon printers have this option) and then direct print the photo in question. This is probably great for people with slow computers or no computers at all.

COMPATIBILITY
The s230 is easily hooked up to both macs and pc’s, you won’t have much problem with either. One important thing to note for macs is that the cable connection via the s230’s USB port is limited to genuine Apple Computer brand models with a built-in USB interface (Power Macintosh NEW G3/G4, PowerBook G3, iMac, iBook). PC’s all you need is a usb port.

SOFTWARE
Uggg I couldn’t really touch this until the end because it sucks so much. Yup it really is surprising that with a camera such as the s230, canon didn’t include some kind of editing software that is really no better than a slideshow viewer. Don’t think that you will be correcting red eye shots with the canon software because you can’t even edit your pictures. Plus ontop of this, don’t think you’ll email that largest/finest shot you have because you can’t even shrink it down. One solution I found was to open up the pictures using MS art program (the standard one that comes with windows), copy the picture, open up WORD and then size down the picture, copy again, open up a new art file and paste the smaller size picture. This way I can get the pictures down below 50,000 kb size. If anyone from canon is reading this, for shame that you would make everything really nice but drop the ball on the software. Apparently the s30 & s40 comes with similar software while the G2 comes with photoshop, which I’ll end up buying and resenting canon just a tad bit because of it.

BATTERY
Yes the battery is small, yes it is in a different compartment than the cf card, and yes you can carge it up outside the camera. These are all often sore spots for owners of other cameras, and the batter on the canon will last oh probably about 60-80 shots using the lcd screen heavily. I have heard that this battery will last a shorter amount of time in very cold weather. I live in a temperate zone so I can’t say this one way or another (unless I used it in my freezer).

ACCESSERIES
The s230 has a ton of accessories available for it because the other digital elph cameras (that are pretty much the same size dimensional speaking) have been around so long. These range from car adapters for the batter, to water proof casing for under water use. There are a few special modifications you can find too, some including macro fish eye lenses (clap ontop of the existing lens) to the super zoon lens, while I don’t think that anyone will think this is a super duper pro camera these might be useful to the ordinary person who wants to use it once in a blue moon at a location where they will need a long zoom.

THE END
Well that’s about it for me, I enjoyed writing this review as much as I am enjoying owning the camera, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions regarding this camera or any of the other cameras I have reviewed. Don’t worry because I have contacted members looking for advice myself (i.e. howard creech!!!).


Update 6/09/03: I have had the camera now many months and I still love it, with the birth of my daughter I use it a TON! I still get great quality pictures with it and have not had any problems. The only thing I have noticed that sometimes is a bit annoying is that the rubber cover on the side for the AV plugs sometimes has a bit of trouble staying closed. I have had a few epinions people email me with questions about this camera, and I'll say anyone else please feel free to email me, I'm always willing to answer questions.







Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 399.00
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use