Rating: 
Summary: Excellent camera, easy to carry and use
Review: I highly recommend the Canon S300. It is wonderfully small so you can easily carry it in a pocket or purse. It has a very solid feel and is very stylish. The pictures are excellent. In automatic mode it does everything very well: focus, exposure and white balance. The 3X optical zoom is very effective. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible little camera...perfect for travel!!!
Review: I spent weeks researching a digital camera for my recent trip to Europe. I wanted something very portable, easy to use, that didn't drain down batteries like crazy. After much thought, I decided to go with the Canon Digital Elph S300 and boy am I glad that I did! I couldn't be happier with this item. It has a nice durable metal case, a fully retacting lens and integrated lens cover, which is great for simply slipping it into your pocket when not in use without worry of scratching the lens. The battery useage is another incredible selling point. I shot nearly 200 pictures (about six days of sightseeing in Holland) before I needed to charge the battery pack! If you buy an extra battery pack ... you'll never be caught without enough power on the road. The 256MB FlashCard I purchased with it was more than double the amount of storage space I needed for my entire 8 day trip. ... Upon my return home, I used the supplied cable to review my shots on my 36" TV and WOW...the pictures are incredibly sharp, colorful, and lifelike. The camera performs very well, even in low light conditions. The controls are easy to use and easy to figure out. A five minute read through the well written user's manual and you are good to go. My only complaint is that ... Canon doesn't give you a little protective pouch or case to put it in, like they do with their ... APS Elph Cameras. This camera is truly amazing. If you're at all considering this stylish little camera, JUST GET IT! It is definitely worth the price. The Elph S300 will not disappoint you!
Rating:
Summary: Easy to Use and great fun!
Review: This was my first digital camera after coming from using feature rich standard/regular cameras and I am very impressed! It is small and very versatile. I did a great deal of research on several sites and found that the S300 had fantastic point and shoot ease with no noticeable lag time between snapping pictures. There are just enough manual features to bring a beginner to an intermediate level without much confusion. It is simple and intuitive. The cannon instruction manuals are very good and the included software rated much better than the others. Only cons I can think of (to be objective)
- The 8 Meg CFlash Card is worthless. Invest in a larger card.
The prices for the 128M and 256M look to be coming down.
- An extra battery is helpful.
- The optical viewfinder is positioned directly over the LCD so if you use this expect some LCD smudging It's really an excellent investment. I use it constantly.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent choice in 2.1 meg cameras
Review: Outstanding performance. High quality pictures. Versatile. I do recommend that you also purchse an additional memory card of at least 64M. It is necessary to take a large quantity of pictures. If you can afford it, go with the 128M card. Also, buy a compact flash card reader. Not only can you use it to store photos, but also store or backup important files from your laptop or PC. I store a lot of media files and Powerpoint presentations on the cards. You will not be disappointed with this camera. Top notch overall performance. The video feature is handy, and you can even take pictures in panoramic format and stitch them together. In my opinion, it is the best camera in it's category for the money.
Rating:
Summary: Size, picture quality, and video - Wow!
Review: When I convinced my wife that we "needed" to spend more money on a video camera setup, and finally stop using our traditional cameras, she was skeptical. I promised her that we'd take more pictures if we had a digital camera. Once she agreed to the purchase, she warned me that we'd better actually use it a lot more than our traditional camera.
So I searched high and low for all types of cameras and finally found the S300. I was originally drawn to it for it's size - I can slip it in my pants or coat pocket whenever I want. The size really makes all the difference because we've now used it 20 times more than our traditional camera due to the convenience.
Our old camera wasn't huge, but it wouldn't fit in my pocket (and didn't fit easily in many of my wife's purses). So we'd leave it at home (or in the car) on many occasions. With the S300, it comes with us anywhere and everywhere.
But here's where it gets good: we've been amazed at how the picture quality is and how much fun it is to take small video clips (with sound) on this tiny device. I'm no expert photographer, but I do enjoy being to have some amount of manual control for certain shots, and it gives me just the right amount of control, if I want it. And the panoramic feature is really awesome - not something you can't live without, but impressive when you use it. Here are the only cons that I can think of (but none of them are bad enough to avoid the product, merely for information):
1) Battery could last longer (we bought a spare and use it often)
2) 8MB card is worthless, so just make it easy and buy a 256MB card - you'll never run out of room even if you take bunches of video
3) Flash could be a bit brighter to cover more area. It gets great flash pictures in a close area, but at a distance it gets very dark.
4) It takes a little while to process one picture before it's ready to take the next one. The delay can be annoying at times when you want to take a picture immediately after taking one.
5) 3X optical zoom is among the best available, however, I crave more zoom power. If I didn't want the small size of the S300, I would have gotten a bulky camera that does 10X optical zoom.
6) The camera has a special light that flickers before taking a picture to determine distance, lighting, etc. Unfortunately, it is impossible to turn off this light, even when the flash is turned off. So you can't use the camera in a dark place where a small stray blue light will disturb others. That's it. I'd recommend everyone buy one of these. I thought that I might want to eventually get a higher mega-pixel camera, but I've compared pictures with other cameras and I don't notice any difference until after 8x10 size pictures (which we rarely print out). Kent
Rating:
Summary: Simple, small, easy and takes great pictures
Review: Our first digital camera.
So very simple with so many features.
Get the 128MB memory card. I bought the viking (sp?) one. Next will get an extra battery but it's not essential unless plan on taking lots of pictures at a time between rechargings.
It fits in my shirtpocket! Great picture quality up to 8 by 10. haven;t yet tried larger but it could still be very good.
The zoom is good but digital zoom is a waste of time as picture quality declines rapidly. Overall a great buy.
Rating:
Summary: Great Camera
Review: I bought my camera while on vacation last year. In a very few minutes I was up and running and taking pictures. It is very simple to use, yet has a wide variety of features. I have several friends that own digital cameras, some much more expensive than this one, that don't have the features and don't take as good of pictures. The only complaint that I have, and it might be due to my clumsy nature, is that the power button is right next to the shutter button so I have found myself occasionally turning the camera off instead of taking a picture. Otherwise, it is great!
Rating: 
Summary: Small size, good pictures, software bugs.
Review: I bought this camera based on size and 3x zoom. The image quality was better than I expected. You will need several accesories. I bought four extra batteries, two 128 & one 256Meg compact flash cards, a padded neck strap, and a little CaseLogic nylon case to hold everything. Pros:
Small Size
Great Image quality
Camera software speed
USB cabled remote control
JPEG compression very clean, artifacts hard to find even at highest compression setting. Cons / Missing Features:
Camera does not draw power from USB cable.
Battery life is short.
Autofocus delay makes candid shots impossible.
Small lens aperature makes action shots difficult in all but brightest of light
No IR remote
Movie length limited to internal memory not flash card size.
Camera does not hold "motor drive" setting through power cycling.
Creation dates of files all set to 1979.
Supplied Image Browser software sets file modification date to date file downloaded, not date picture taken. There is no provision to have camera name files with embedded date format like 2002_02_12_14_56 00002.
Many button pushes go unrecognized. You must watch screen carefully to make sure correct mode is selected. Simply counting button pushes may get you self timer instead of "motor drive".
Supplied 8meg card is useless because of small capacity.
The batteries are very expensive and the supplied charger only charges one at a time.
Automatic white balance setting does poor job, can't even recognize daylight. You must manually select correct setting, or risk nasty blue cast to outdoor photos.
Tripod socket not centered on lens opening.
No provision to turn off digital zoom.
No optical viewfinder indication of digital zoom range access.
Zoom non functional during movie capture.
Macintosh users shouldn't suffer with the included image browser software. Try Cameraid and GraphicConverter instead.
Rating:
Summary: Smaller means you'll use it more often
Review: The quality is excellent.
Buy an extra battery and more memory.
A small s300 case is available...
Learn to use the white balance for indoor pictures. So small you can put it in your front jeans pocket. You'll love it!
Rating:
Summary: Great combination of size and quality
Review: I own an Olympus E10 which is a 4+ Megapixel camera, and although the image quality is superb, it is hardly the camera to take out for the "fun" shots or to carry around all day (the thing is the size of a standard 35mm SLR). That is why I purchased this S300. And I am pleasantly surprised with the quality of the images considering they are half the resolution of my other camera. Not to mention it is packed with features that even my E10 does not have (or should be as easy to use). I'll stick with the E10 for the professional photography, but for everything else, this camera surpasses my expectations. By the way, the first thing I did was put a 128MB CF card in. The 8MB card makes a good storage card for the Visor handhelds.
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