I'm thinking about buying a Digital Camera, specifically...

the Canon Powershot S400 (Aka Digital IXUS 400). Anyone here who has experience with this camera care to share pros and/or cons?

I should point out that I'm not a hardcore shutterbug, just want a decent camera that's small enough to carry around everyday, and take some reasonable pictures with.

I've used a Canon Powershot A70, which is a bulkier, slightly cheaper model, and I was blown away by it. All the reviews have said that the s400 is much better. I'd go for it.

Well, kind of. My dillemma was between buying what I wanted (Canon G3) and what was more economically feasable, the S400. Ultimately I got the G3 because I'm probably what you would call a hardcore shutterbug and wanted the fully manual mode.

The main other reason I got the G3 was it's size. I'm never going to leave the G3 in my pocket when I wash my pants. The elph series runs that risk, specifically with me. That may or may not be a problem with you but it's something to consider.

I would say this, if you're not a "hardcore shutterbug" you might want to consider a cheaper model with around 2.0 megapixels. The S400 has four megapixels, thats a lot. Looking through the Canon page however it seems like they don't go much below 3.2 anymore. 4.0 megapixels is big, real big, the quality is super nice but almost too nice. Your average person isn't really going to need images that print at over a foot in length (they're really that big). As an example check this out:

WARNING TO DIAL UP USERS OR THE IMPATIENT IT'S A REAL BIG PICTURE.

http://moremonks.com/cory/small_town_blocks. jpg

***ON EDIT: I realized that posting the whole URL included the picture in my post, it's real big and didn't want to subject people to that if they didn't want to bother. To see it just copy and paste the line and then delete the space before jpg at the end.***

If you're in internet explorer and the picture resizes itself to fit in one screen, put your mouse over the picture, a box with arrows pointing out at it's corners will appear in the lower right hand side of the picture, click on that to see the full size.

This is four megapixels. You can choose a lesser quality (and therefor smaller picture) but I usually don't. If you don't need four megapixels it don't get it and thats about the extent of my advice. Now I'm off to drool over the G5 which I didn't know was out yet.

As far as megapixels, better to have more than not enough. My 2.1 is more than enough for web images, but if I wanted top quality prints, more is better.

Here is an example of one with the digital.


BTW, get Photoshop Elements. Cheap and good.

I had an Optio 330GS and I was very happy with it until it got stolen. I've used the A70 as well and find it to be very similar in terms of picture quality and optics with a slight edge in the Canon for it having a smoother stepless zoom (both are 3x optical), but an edge to the Pentax for it being cheaper. Canon makes good stuff, the G5 is awesome and can be found for as low as 630 on ebay, but I'm guessing that's a bit out of range. For everything I do, 3.2 mp is fine with me.

And by the way, if you are looking for a good, cheap photo quality printer, you can still find Epson 785EPXs for under 100 bucks. Nothing up to 3 times the price approaches it in terms of picture quality although it's slow and gobbles ink. You can also get a wide carriage version that's also a steal.

Thanks for the input so far. I was actually looking at the G3 cause all the reviews raved about it, even more than the G5 something about more noise on the G5 at a higher ISO.

So it looks like the S400 it will be. I did look at the Pentax line actually, I think I checked out the Optio S. It looked pretty reasonable as well, but the Canon seemed to garner higher praise. I'm gonna buy it this weekend, give me a couple of weeks to practice with it before the trip to Tokyo.

I don't actually have to worry about washing the camera, because usually my wife does the laundry (thanks to her:) ) and on the times I do, my mom beat it into me enough times to check the pockets before doing the laundry, not after...

Thanks again.

And the only two I really had to decide between was the S400 and the S50. I liked the S400's small compact size but I thought the S50 had a better quality to the image. The S50 is about twice the size of the S400 and it does take about 4 seconds to warm up before it can take pictures, (which is a pain if your child is doing something really cute and you want to take a picture right away). On the other hand the S400 is only a 4.0 megapixel camera while the S50 is a 5.0. I went with the S50 it was about $50 bucks more but I really like it.

and it's totally idiot proof, but with GREAT features like a zoom....