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Canon PowerShot S200 2MP Digital ELPH Camera w/  2x Optical Zoom

Canon PowerShot S200 2MP Digital ELPH Camera w/ 2x Optical Zoom

List Price: $379.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Canon S200 Lives Up To It's Positive Reviews
Review: I needed to upgrade to a better digital camera and carefully did my homework. The Canon S200 consistently received excellent reviews on numerous sites with many positive comments on compactness, picture quality, and overall design. Of course there was always the ocassional negative review from someone who got the rare lemon but the majority rules. This is a great point and shoot camera with a crisp view screen. It also gives you the ability to tinker with plenty of the settings including shutter speed. It does an outstanding job with two mega pixels, any more for me would be overkill. I have taken photos in numerous lighting situations and it has done a good job in all of them, including a gorgeous macro shot of a flower. I purchased the leather S200 Power Shot case that fastens to your belt and you would never know it's there, it can't get any easier. With a 128mb card in the camera and an extra battery in my pocket I'm ready for anything. The movie mode with sound works great and is easy to send by email(great for new baby clips, etc.). There are three resolution settings for the movie mode: 4,10, and 30 seconds in length with the 10 second setting being my favorite. I have read complaints on the duration of the movie but for email it's plenty long enough unless you like huge uploads and your family and friends like huge downloads. Try holding a camera on most people for 10 seconds asking them to say something and it seems like an eternity. A nifty charger is included which is very compact with it's own pop out plug, just plug it in to the outlet like a glade air freshener and wait for the light to turn green. I have noted some complaints that the camera doesn't warn you of low battery soon enough, how much time do you need? When the indicator comes on you have a few shots left but why push the envelope, just swap batteries. When is the last time your car warned you of an up coming dead battery?, at least the S200 doesn't leave you stranded and the battery is so small you wouldn't even know there is an extra in your pocket. The S200 will plug in to your TV and do an awesome slide show of any or all of the pictures and movies contained in it. It shows a few pictures, automatically plays a movie, then shows more pictures and continues this in whatever order you choose with a staggering amount of pictures and movie clips using a 128mb card. I am more than satisfied with my purchase and hope I have provided you with another interesting angle on this camera. Four stars is excellent, Five stars is perfect?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Top value, surprisingly robust
Review: I've had my ELPH for 3 months and it's been with me almost constantly, in a pocket forgotten about until needed. It takes very good pictures and more importantly takes pictures I wouldn't get with a more bulky and obtrusive camera. A couple of weeks ago in the Great Smoky Mtns I managed to fall crossing a swollen creek and the camera ended up briefly completely immersed: it must have taken a knock on the way because the battery compartment opened and I had to retrieve the battery from 2 feet under water. The camera dried out fine and works as good as ever (though I don't recomment the experiment!). I could have gone up in zoom capability or megapixels, but this does great on-line images and 6x4 prints and the price was right, it's the perfect snapshot camera. Battery life is good, I bought but stopped carrying a spare - it takes a few charging cycles to condition the battery, don't judge it by the first day's use. A bigger compact flash card is essential: 128 MB at max size and resolution complements the battery life nicely.
Minor reservations: small lens so slightly prone to camera shake, background can be dark in indoor low-light shots (best cured by composing carefully). Video clips are a nice feature I didn't expect to use, could be larger but are limited by internal memory. Macro, nighttime shots etc. work good. In short, does everything I wanted it to and does most of it better than I expected.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best camera around
Review: This camera is great. It takes great pictures, is very easy to use, and fits into my smallest purses! I am not a big time photographer, but this camera does the job. I bought the cannon i-850 (i think) printer and i swear you can't tell the difference between the pictures I print and the pics you get from the store. I highly reccomend this camera to anyone who is interested in a digital camera without all the bells and whistles!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Cool cam - cheap price
Review: There are way too many cameras in this category that you could spend months researching them all and you'll probably still be unsure that you made the right choice. The S200 was one of my picks and the fact the my brother has the older S300 and really likes it made my decision to get the S200 easier. Amazon also has the best price when you include the free shipping. I bought this along with the Viking 128 MB card. Below are the pluses and minuses that I've classified thus far:

+ Compact size and solid Japanese construction
+ Featured-packed with many manually adjustable features that I don't plan on ever using
+ Comes with rechargeable lithium ion battery and charger (this will save you around $50)
+ Records video and audio and has A/V outputs so you can plug it directly into your TV to view the pics and video
+ Nice packaging and excellent documentation - you get the actual paper manuals, not PDF files on CD. Everything in the box is well layed out
+ Sharp LCD screen
+ Excellent picture quality

- Lack of a case or protective cover of any kind
- Flimsy terminal cover on camera
- Pathetically small 8 MB CF card that was included
- Unlike some other brands, namely Olympus, your PC will not recognize the camera as a mass storage device, so depending on your version of Windows, you'll need to either install Canon's software and/or drivers. I personally don't like installing software on my PC just to be able to download the pics off the cameral. I'm not into touching up pictures, so all I want to do is plug the camera in and drag the JPG files from the camera to my PC's hard drive without going through some custom program; you cannot do that with this camera unless you have Windows XP or ME, according to the manual.

Things you should get along with the camera are: a case, larger capacity CF card, and a CF card reader so you don't wear down the camera downloading pics to your PC. I don't think an extra battery is something that you should get right off the bat because it's expensive and, unless you plan to take pics all day, would not be necessary. The included battery should be adequate as long as you're not using the flash and LCD with every pic. If you do plan to get a battery, I've learned from postings elsewhere that you need to make sure that the battery has the same V and mAh ratings as the stock battery. The third party batteries might state that they are compatible, which is entirely true, but they have lower power ratings than the original Canon battery. You'll be able to use them, but they will not last as long as the original Canon battery.

Overall, I think I made the right decision with this one. It's not the best camera out there, but for $, I doubt you'll find anything of this quality that comes with rechargeable batteries and charger. Most pics that I've taken came out fine. Some pics with flash look grainy while others with flash look great - I'll have to take more pics and experiment.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: COOL CAMERA - NOT PICTURES
Review: When you first get it out of the box you marvel at its small size. Can it really take pictures? - looks more like a toy. Then you look at the user's manual and you are amazed by its thickness - all this for a point & shoot camera? As you read through it you find it hard to comprehend that so many features are included in such a small package - technology has certainly progressed!

And then you take your first picture. It's not good, so you take a second, then a third, then you fill the weak 8mb flash card supplied with the Elph with test pictures. None of them are good. They're either out of focus, or too contrasty, or the background has been 'washed out'. Almost all are badly framed too. What gives? So you go back to the user's manual and re-read and start trying different settings, combinations and shooting techniques. Eventually you manage to produce a really nice picture. Then you realize you have *worked* for it.

The S200 Elph has wrongly been touted as an entry-level camera. Its picture quality in auto-mode-point-and-shoot is nothing to write home about. Lens flare is way, way pronounced (cheap optics, in plain English). To get good photos you have to plan and compose carefully. Which, in my mind, defeats the purpose of going for this camera. It is supposed to be *practical*. Size aside, it's no more practical than all digital cameras. You shoot, you download, there's the picture. They all do that, and it's the reason we have come to love them. Doesn't mean we have to have bad photos.

There are other gripes, many pointed out even in the positive reviews: problematic flash, shutter lag, no camera case, no battery life indicator, inadequate zoom factor, weak software. But all these pale into insignificance compared to the main problem: Picture quality. This is so essential, I don't see why we should even bother with other shortcomings. After all we take pictures because we expect them to come out beautiful, don't we?

I do. If you think like me, pass on the Elph. If, on the other hand, the beauty of the camera is important, get the Elph. It's small and techno-loaded, it's shiny and oh-so-cute. It delivers big in the 'cool' category. Just don't ask it to deliver pictures.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Pictures, Very Durable, Excellent Camera
Review: I bought mine over a year ago after spending weeks looking at different brands, features and megapixels. What sold me on this Canon S200 was the quality of the pictures, the built in features ( flash, zoom, rechargable lithium-ion battery), the reliabity of the camera based on previous owners reviews, the portability or its small size, and the fact that Canon used a metal enclosure when most of the other cameras did not.

So my reviews after a year of using it is as follows: The camera is great, the lense allows for clear, sharp pictures. Even 8 x 10's look great. The computer software is very good and easy to use. This camera is also very reliable. I have used it for over a year with no problems at all. Also, I have dropped the camera accidently twice. Once on a hardwood floor from a height of about four feet and the hinge hook on the inside of the door for the memory card broke. I used a piece of transparent tape to hold the door to keep it closed and then ordered the replacement door on the phone for $8 directly from Canon. That drop did not effect the camera at all otherwise. Then recently the camera accidently dropped out of my aftermarket velcro belt case from about three feet up onto solid concrete. It landed on a corner with a solid "thump" and the lithium battery popped out. I was sure the camera had to be damaged ! I picked it up and the outside metal case didn't even have a dent in it, only a tiny scratch on the corner where it landed against the ground. I put the battery back in and turned on the camera and to my surprise everything worked perfectly. This seemed impossible to me but I took a few pictures checked the lense and its motors. The pictures were all there in memory without a glitch. A three foot drop onto solid concrete and nothing but a tiny scratch ?

Hats off to Canon for making one durable little camera. I don't know what metal they used to encase this thing but after my two accidental drops I would not recommend anyone buying one of these expensive digital cameras without a sturdy metal casing. I do not recommend doing this but I have also read several other reviews people accidently dropping this camera into water without effecting it. These Canon Powershots cost more than many others with similar specifications but the others are not as durable nor do they all have the same quality lensing. You get what you pay for and Canon one of the first into this digital market and they know how to build them with the best enginneering and materials. I highly recommend this or any of the Canon Powershot "S" series digital elph cameras.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: powershot? more like, really cool camera and stuff!
Review: this camera is sweet. totally sweet. i bought it a year ago before i went to japan. i took beautiful photos. if you're a big photography-phile, then get something else. but if you want a simple, small digital camera that takes nice photos, buy this. you might consider gettting the new one that has more megapixels, especially if you want to print the photos. but this one is cheaper. you should buy an extra battery and you might as well buy a 256 card since they're cheap.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: upgraded to s200 from s100
Review: I used to own an s100, and my decision to get an s200 was based on the great service I got while using the s100. The size is a factor, cause I like to travel light and not bulky. The pictures are great and easy to take, just point and click. I will be a Canon customer for a long time most likely. I dont give it 5 stars only because I couldn't tell how to turn the flash off and instruction booklet was not handy, but I needed the shots. It was a one-time chance for shots in an old ante-bellum home on a tour where we could not use flash, but they only told us after starting the tour! So I tried to figure it out using the LCD menu but it's just to complicated to turn off flash. It should be duh-duh simple for users like me. So I had to miss a lot of interior shots.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Small and Super Sassy..
Review: Small and Super Sassy is the best way to explain this camera. The size is the best thing about it. I can put it in my pocket and take it anywhere. It takes great pictures for a 2.0 MP camera. I used Ofoto to get the pictures printed on kodak paper and you can't tell they are digital pictures. The only downfalls are the 8MB memory card they provide you with and getting used to the life of the lithium battery. Amazon helps with one of these downfalls by providing you with a free 64MB memory card that makes all the difference. All I want to add now is a carry case and few spare memory cards. I highly recommend this to someone looking to buy their first digital camera.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a must buy
Review: i got this camera by word of mouth, and i would definitely want to spread the word to you guys!!! This camera is worth the investment. 2Mpixels is good enough for developing photos 4x6 max.. anything bigger becomes blurry.. great BUY!!! and after that i put my photos on ofoto.com .. it's a free service by kodak films..


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