PowerShot ELPH 300 HS 12.1 MP Digital Camera (Black)

I have to say this really is honestly the only camera youd really need unless you are a professional photographer. It is small enough to carry around anywhere and not have any excuse not to bring it with you when you go places and it takes good quality pictures that dont look like they were taken with a cheap consumer camera right away if framed properly. Not only that but the video quality of the camera is as good as if not better then most consumer HD camcorders out there. Now at first you may think well such camera would be useless for good videos because it being so small there is no way to really keep the video steady. Thanks to optical image stabization the camera stays very steady even handheld. Its image stabilization is actually superior to my Canon HD camcorder which i paid 3 times as much for. This is wonderful as it means you can have one device thats small enough to take anywhere that can take good pictures and excellent video and the video is at 24 frames per second which is rare for a consumer small camera that is the same rate as film so you can get a nice cinematic look.The camera has a very nice wide angle lens that really stands out as you can get more stuff in the shot like people and enviroments (is also great for taking pictures of indoor things like rooms in your house or places you visit) compared to my mothers kodak easyshare camera the view that it capture is significantly more. It also is great for video too as was the problem with my older camcorder i felt i had to back up most times to get things in the shot.I have used a Digital SLR and dedicated HD Camcoder (that used tape) and i must say this is a real joy to have. I had not been using my SLR and Camcorder that much as having an ipad now i just didnt feel like carrying them all around and switching back and forth. (the Powershot also has better auto white balance then the SLR i used) for a pro you might want a more advanced camera but for the average user this is a wonderful camera to havethe only downside i saw is that sometimes apparently the battery cover may come off, but thankfully you just snap it back into place with no problem. Also battery life is a bit on the low side as if you are out on a trip or out and about for like a day and taking a lot of video and pictures the battery will not last all day , my suggetion would be to to get a spare battery from amazon and then have both so you are set!a 16 gig memory card will net you about 1 hour of HD video or about 6,000 photos (photos are only around 1 meg each ish so dont take up a ton of space which is nice)If this thing was out 6 years ago at the price it is now i would have gotten this instead of paying $2,000 for the camera and camcorder i got. It really is a great little camera (it also does non-HD slow motion video which is a neat bonus too!) the video quality is superb and picture quality is very good as well.a great camera expecally for around christmas. Yeah most cell phones have cameras now days but most cell phone cameras are so so at best this wuold easily in my opinion beat any cell phone camera and the video expecally would beat any cell phone video (or even the iphone/ipad2 video)and this in my opinion also beats the flip video devices you can get. as this camera offers more steady shots (which in my opinion is absolutely essential with HD video the steadier the video the better it is)great product! Having it means theres no excuse not to capture great pictures or video!

Updated review from 2012-07-08.I cannot count the number of times that this camera has let me down.This camera has excellent sensor, excellent optics, excellent industrial design, but an absolutely horrible firmware.In the prior SD300 and SD1000, you would have to select the Macro focus manually on those few occasions when you did need to take a picture from the very up close. You could also select the Macro and Normal modes even in the Auto mode. Not anymore with 300HS.Try to take a picture from within the car through a window? Blurred, thanks Canon.Try to take a picture in the dark with poor lighting? Blurred, thanks Canon. So much for the excellent BI CMOS sensor, Canon found a way to make it useless!Try to get into the manual mode, and select the Infinity focus mode, then turn the camera off, then back on? Guess what? The picture will again be blurred, since your focus setting gets lost! Thanks, Canon!Try to have the camera by yourself at all times to always be ready to take a good shot? Guess what, with the macro mode always being considered in the auto mode, you'll likely miss all the action before it finds a good focus, focus times are very noticeable slower than SD1000 or SD300. Thanks for letting me down again, Canon.Try to disable the Macro mode from Auto? No way to do so with 300HS.This is the worst upgrade ever, and I'm very disappointed that I didn't realise it in time. If Canon continues with such poor innovation, then it remains to be seen why would anyone be buying these broken point-and-shoot cameras when even the iPhone can make much better pictures and in much less time.Below is my original review from 2011-08-18; I bought the camera on 2011-08-03.====Original Rating: 4*Original Title: No more competitive advantage to know the configuration rules!Original Review:For me, this 300HS camera comes as an upgrade from SD1000, which in turn was an upgrade from SD300. From my prior recollection, I was not all that impressed with SD1000 iteration, but this one seems to be a very nice upgrade.First thing you notice, is that there's no longer any shortcuts to change ISO levels or use the micro mode. That's because there's no need! Now micro focus is activated automagically, and ISO can go quite high automatically as well, without any HIGH ISO options as was the case with SD1000.Night vision of the sensor seems very impressive, too; I'm totally sold on this BI CMOS! The contrast as it appears in the viewfinder is often better than what you see with your own eyes as is, and you don't even have to change any settings from AUTO! Impressive. The only thing that appears to still be missing is HDR, I guess. :-)A nice thing in my upgrade path, from SD300 (Dig!c II processor) to SD1000 (Dig!c III) to 300HS (Dig!c 4), is that the battery format remains the same, and all the batteries are still compatible, in cameras of entirely different generations!However, I came across a few annoyances (I'll update this list as I go on):* it is not possible to use digital zoom at all if you change the aspect ratio from the default of 4:3, only optical zoom is available. This is especially annoying if you like to reduce the size at which the pictures are saved, and use digital zoom to specifically crop only the objects in which you're explicitly interested in.