Full Review
Best Travel Camera EVER!
My husband and I enjoy traveling. We enjoy not only 'regular' trips in the car to the usual tourist locations, but also spend many vacation days aboard motorcycles and ATV's.
For 'normal' locations, I carry a Cannon Rebel 35mm SLR with an assortment of lenses. Slightly less unwieldy than a 'professional' setup, the Rebel takes great photos of ANYTHING I choose to point it at.
Unfortunately, this kit is just too big, too fragile, and too expensive to throw over my shoulder and pack on a single-track excursion through the woods on dirt bikes, or a 300 mile day on twisty mountain roads on my Ducati.
Because of this, we've owned an assortment of small point-and-shoot cameras over the years that get worn around my neck for quick "on-the-fly" adventure shots. These poor units all suffer through cold, snow, ice, heat, mud, dust, crashes & other assorted indignities with varying results. Although I try to keep the camera cosseted under my coat or tucked inside my shirt most of the time, they still get treated worse than most camera manufacturers intended.
While we’ve had varying luck with photo quality and camera sturdiness, overall quality of the photos has been marginal at best.
It’s so frustrating to tread where few have gone before, view something amazing, and come home with fuzzy, under or over-exposed rolls of film that have you telling friends and family ‘really, it’s an awesome place, the picture just doesn’t do it justice!’.
Over the years, we found that the Cannon ELF series created a nice balance between photo quality and camera longevity. After our last Advantix ELF began having light leakage problems, we began searching for a digital to replace it.
After weeks of study (do their really have to be THAT many digital camera choices out there???), I found the SD10. The price was a bit high, but the all-metal body sounded good.
After holding it in my hand, I had to have it! What a sexy little unit! Oh, yea, and it took great pictures.
For the first month, we used the SD exclusively for eBay pics. This amazing little unit has almost as many options as my Rebel 35mm, in a menu that is quick to understand and easy to use. Focus options allow you to always get the picture you want, and macro is perfect for product close-ups which really help sell those eBay trinkets! I did notice the SD10 is prone to camera shake in macro mode, but the addition of a cheap tripod took care of this (and made still-photo shoots even faster).
The first thing you notice with the SD (if you’ve used other digital cameras) is the speed. You can go from camera off – to – photo taken in about 3.5 seconds. Leave it in point-and-shoot mode and this little gem is as fast, or faster than your 35mm!
After a month of eBay, we were off on our first trip with the SD10. Our first week was spent riding ATV’s in Southern California sand dunes.
Bright glaring daylight, overcast grey mornings, wind-blown afternoons and twilight shots were no trouble for the SD10. Speed shots of sand-rails, on-the-fly snaps of the rider in front of me were flawless, even moody stills of beautiful sunsets went off without a hitch.
I noticed the pictures from the SD had a ‘big camera’ feel, even though the actual lens is about the size of a baby ladybug.
Usually low-light situations will cause a digital camera to create colored or white spots where the camera just can’t figure out what it’s looking at. In extremely low light with no flash, the SD could be made to do this, but only when I put it into situations where even my SLR might balk.
The next stage of our trip was comprised of dirt trails and two wheeled fun. We headed to Southern Arizona and some adventure dirt bike riding through the mountains and sand washes. Again, the SD performed perfectly, coming out with not even a scratch after a flailing over-the-bars crash in a sand wash (unfortunately, the rider WAS scratched – maybe I need to look into a metal housing for MY body??).
On the trip back home, we stopped in Yosemite. My husband carried the SD10 and I took some shots with my Rebel. After arriving home and getting some of the SD prints made at our local processor, along with my regular film developing, we were hard-pressed to tell the difference between the shots taken with the ‘big’ camera and the SD10 pics.
Although the Rebel can create inspirational shots of most any view, the SD doesn’t turn an inspirational view into a flat & fuzzy frustration like our old point-and-shoot cameras!
We’ve owned and used the SD10 for about 9 months now, and have taken it on 5 different vacations. 2 of those trips were by motorcycle, and the SD10 was the only camera with us.
I have been consistently pleased and surprised by the agility and dependability of this camera. Not only does it take great shots, but it has enough options in the ‘manual’ mode to make even difficult pictures turn out pretty darned well!
Last but not least – it’s EASY TO USE. Don’t take this lightly. No camera option is worth paying for if it’s too much of a hassle to use in the real world.
I use a Nikon digital camera at work for advertising shots. The thing takes professional-quality shots of products that are so clear they’ll take your breath away. The downside? It took me over a year to really get a good feel for the camera and all of its options. There’s no way in the world I’d consider it for point-and-shoot subjects.
I’ve also had the distinct disadvantage of working with the Pentax Optio line of cameras, which, in my opinion, have a more confusing and frustrating array of menus than most VCR’s! I know there are fans of this camera line out there, but really, what a counter-intuitive design.
My husband, who hates anything he has to read about to understand, can pick up the SD10 and take a great picture without any problem at all. He has NEVER even looked at the instruction booklet, and after only about 15 minutes of total instruction from me, he’s able to take pictures and movies, view them and delete what he doesn’t want. He takes the camera with him everywhere and has never had any problems getting it to do what he wants. This makes him VERY happy.
Bottom line? If you are looking for a great, basic camera to take pictures of your grandkids, this is it. If you want something bullet-proof to take on a 2 week backpacking adventure, this is it. If you want something for eBay shots and an occasional trip to the zoo, here it is. If you want a digital camera to replace your expensive SLR….well, get this as a great sidekick – there’s no zoom and it’ll never have the quality of a big lens, but it’s darned good.
And did I mention it’s sexy? Yea. I love this little guy!
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