Canon PowerShot SD550 Digital ELPH Camera

With the PowerShot SD550 and SD450 Digital ELPH, Canon has once again stood its stylish ELPH digicams on end, packing even more features into the stylish compacts. The 7.12-megapixel SD550 and 5.0-megapixel SD450 have the same shell and specs as the SD500 and SD400 models (which continue to be available), but offer more options. Canon has retained their acclaimed optical viewfinder but matched it with a large 2.5-inch LCD monitor, redesigning the user interface to take advantage of the new screen. Both continue to offer the extremely unusual (and frankly, rather cool) "My Color" modes that allow you to selectively replace any color in your photo with a different one, or to make the image black and white with the exception of a single color. Overall, the SD550 is one of the more appealing subcompact digicams we've seen to date: Read on for all the details!

Camera Overview
The same size as the predecessor PowerShot SD500 model, the new Canon PowerShot SD550 features the great looks and sharp design that are a signature of Canon's ELPH cameras. Canon refers to the SD550 as having "Perpetual Curve Design", which basically means that there are few flat surfaces or right-angled corners on the camera body -- it has a very smooth, comfortable feel in your hands. Very compact and quick on the draw (thanks to a smoothly operating retractable lens design), the Canon SD550 is a convenient point-and-shoot digital camera with a handful of extra exposure features for added flexibility. That includes a few features that you might not use every day, but that add some "wow" factor. With the lens retracted, the Canon SD550's front panel is smooth and pocket friendly, and its all-metal body is rugged and durable (although it will show scratches, so expect to buy a soft case if this bothers you). Equipped with a 7.1-megapixel CCD, the Canon SD550 captures high quality images, suitable for making sharp prints as large as 11x17 inches, or 8x10 inches with some cropping. Smaller image sizes are also available for email transmission or Web applications, and a movie mode captures video clips with sound

The Canon SD550 features a 3x, 7.7-23.1mm zoom lens, equivalent to a 37-111mm zoom on a 35mm camera. Aperture is automatically controlled, but the maximum setting ranges from f/2.8 at full wide angle to f/4.9 at full telephoto. A maximum 4x digital zoom option increases the SD550's zoom capability to 12x, but keep in mind that digital zoom decreases the overall image quality, because it simply crops out and enlarges the center pixels of the CCD's image. Image details are thus likely to be softer when using digital zoom. Focus ranges from 1.6 feet (50 centimeters) to infinity in normal AF mode, and from 2.0 inches to 1.6 feet (5 to 50 centimeters) in Macro mode. Digital Macro mode locks the lens at wide angle, where focusing is closest, but enables digital zoom, which usually only kicks in after optical zoom has reached its telephoto setting. As with the regular digital zoom, this is accompanied by a decrease in overall image quality. An Infinity fixed-focus mode is also available. The Canon SD550 employs a sophisticated, nine-point AiAF (Artificial Intelligence Autofocus) system to determine focus, which uses a broad active area in the center of the image to calculate the focal distance (a feature I've been impressed with on many ELPH models and have been happy to see continued). Through the Record menu, you can turn AiAF off, which defaults the autofocus area to the center of the frame. Also built-in to the SD550 is an AF assist light -- a very bright orange LED -- which aids the focus mechanism in low light when it's enabled via a menu option. For composing images, the SD550 offers a real-image optical viewfinder, as well as a large 2.5-inch color LCD monitor. The LCD reports a fair amount of camera information, but excludes exposure information such as aperture and shutter speed. In Playback mode, a histogram display reports the tonal distribution of a captured image, useful in determining any over- or under-exposure.

Because the ELPH line capitalizes on ease of use, exposure control is typically automatic, increasing the line's appeal to point-and-shoot users. The Canon PowerShot SD550 sticks to this trend, with a series of unique Scene modes, but does provide a handful of manual adjustments. Main camera modes are controlled by a mode dial at the right of the camera's rear panel. Choices include Auto, Manual (similar to Program Auto), Scene (with choices being Portrait, Night Snapshot, Kids & Pets, Indoor, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, and Underwater), and Movie. Shutter speeds range from 1/2,000 to 15 seconds, with the one- to 15-second end of the range only available in Long Shutter mode (which also automatically invokes a Noise Reduction system to eliminate excess image noise in longer exposures). In straight Auto mode, the camera controls everything about the exposure except for file size, flash, etc. Manual mode provides more hands-on control, with White Balance, Exposure Compensation, ISO, and some creative effects, but it is not true manual control because the user is not allowed to set -- or even to know -- the aperture or shutter speed settings. Camera operation is straightforward, as you typically just point and shoot most of the time. Pressing the Shutter button halfway sets focus and exposure, and the small LEDs next to the optical viewfinder let you know when the camera is ready to take the picture.

The Scene modes tweak exposure variables to accommodate common photographic situations. In Portrait mode, the camera opts for a large aperture to blur the background, making the subject stand out. Night Snapshot mode uses the camera's flash and higher sensitivity if necessary to try to obtain an exposure with your subject and a dark background correctly exposed. Kids & Pets mode opts for a faster shutter speed to freeze quick motion. Indoor mode biases the white balance system toward tungsten or fluorescent lighting, attempts to reduce camera shake with wider apertures and higher sensitivity, and avoids using flash where possible. In Foliage mode, saturation is boosted to offer bold colors in foliage. Snow and Beach modes both bias exposure so that the camera is not fooled into underexposing images because of a bright background; Snow mode also adjusts white balance appropriately. Fireworks mode uses a long exposure to capture the trails of fireworks. Finally, Underwater mode -- designed for use with an optional underwater housing -- uses a white balance setting appropriate for correcting the cold tones of an underwater photo, and also attempts not to use the camera's flash.

The Canon PowerShot SD550 uses an Evaluative metering system by default, which means that the camera divides the image area into zones and evaluates both contrast and brightness among all the zones to determine the best overall exposure. A Spot metering option ties the exposure to the very center of the frame, and is useful for off-center or high contrast subjects, letting you pinpoint the exact area of the frame to base the exposure on. There's also a Center-Weighted metering option, which bases the exposure on a large area in the center of the frame. Exposure Compensation increases or decreases the overall exposure from -2 to +2 exposure equivalents (EV) in one-third step increments. A White Balance option offers Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, and Custom (manual) settings. The Canon SD550 also offers a creative Photo Effects menu, which adjusts sharpening, color, and saturation. Sensitivity equivalents include 50, 100, 200, and 400 ISO settings, as well as an Auto setting. The SD550's built-in flash operates in Auto, Red-Eye Reduction, Forced On, Forced On with Red-Eye Reduction, Suppressed, and Slow-Synchro modes.

The "My Colors" mode, accessed through the Function menu, is available for both still image and movie shooting. This mode offers nine settings: Positive Film, Lighter Skin Tone, Darker Skin Tone, Vivid Blue, Vivid Green, Vivid Red, Color Accent, Color Swap, and Custom Color. The Positive Film setting attempts to replicate the bold colors of positive film in the red, green, and blue channels. The Lighter Skin Tone and Darker Skin Tone settings attempt to alter skin tones appropriately, without affecting the rest of the photo. The Vivid Blue, Vivid Green and Vivid Red options emphasize saturation in one channel only. Most unusual are the Color Accent and Color Swap features, however. In Color Accent mode, you place a small square in the center of the camera's LCD over a color you want to accent, and press the left arrow on the Four-way navigation controller. A narrow band of colors surrounding the color you selected will remain untouched in the final image; the rest of the photo will be in black and white. In Color Swap mode, you similarly select two colors with the square at the center of the LCD (one by pressing the left arrow; the other with the right arrow). The camera will then replace one color with the other in your final image -- for example allowing you to make a green car appear blue. Both effects allow a little fine control over the color you selected using the left arrow key; you use the up and down arrows to slightly adjust the color you want to accent or swap. You can't, however, fine-tune the color you want to replace the swapped color with for Color Swap mode. Both the Color Accent and Color Swap modes are rather fun, and they're definitely very unusual, but the effects can be rather unpredictable. You generally end up with a slight fringe of the old color surrounding your replaced color in Color Swap mode, and it can be difficult to control the exact color you want to affect in both modes. For this reason, it is rather nice that Canon has provided the ability to set the camera through the Record menu to capture a duplicate copy of images captured in My Colors mode, without any color changes made. If you end up throwing away your color-altered image, you'll still have your original source image to change with an image editor, or just enjoy in a more normal manner. Finally, the Custom Color mode allows you to manually fine-tune the saturation of colors in the Red, Green and Blue channels (plus the saturation of skin tones), with five steps of control over each.

A two- or 10-second self-timer option counts down by flashing a small LED on the front of the camera before firing the shutter, giving you time to duck around the camera and get into your own shots. In addition, a Custom timer function allows you to set the camera for a delay of 0-10, 15, 20 or 30 seconds, and a number of photos to be captured once the delay has been elapsed (from one to 10). After the timer expires, the camera will capture the number of photos requested with an interval of approximately one second between photos, and the flash does recharge quickly enough to capture 10 photos in a row with flash. This could be rather nice for people trying to take photos of a large family gathering -- 30 seconds gives you plenty of time to get into your photo, and with the ability to capture ten images with one press of the shutter, there's a better chance you'll get a shot where nobody blinked or made a funny face.

Stitch-Assist mode is the Canon SD550's panoramic shooting mode, which lets you shoot as many as 26 consecutive images. As each image is captured, a portion of it appears alongside a live preview of the current scene, helping you to line the next image up with a proper overlap. The series of images can then be "stitched" together into a single panoramic frame with the accompanying software. A Continuous Shooting mode captures a series of consecutive images (much like a motor drive on a traditional camera), at approximately two frames per second, for as long as the Shutter button is held down. The actual frame rate varies slightly with the resolution setting, and the maximum number of images will also depend on the amount of memory card space and file size.
The Canon SD550 also has four Movie Record modes, which record moving images with sound. Focus and optical zoom are fixed at the first frame. Movie modes include Standard (either 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 pixels at either 30 or 15 fps, up to 1-GB each), Fast Frame Rate (320 x 240 pixels at 60 fps for up to one minute), Compact (160 x 120 pixels at 15 fps for up to three minutes), and My Colors (either 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 pixels at either 30 or 15 fps, up to 1-GB each). The camera's Playback mode allows cropping of movies, with a minimum length of two seconds for the cropped movie. You can preview the change, and opt to save the new movie over the old one, or as a new file. During playback, you can also step through images frame by frame, and you can play them at one of four reduced frame rates (without sound).

The My Camera settings menu lets you customize camera settings to a specific theme. Everything from the startup image to operating sounds can be assigned to a theme, either one of the pre-programmed themes or one downloaded from the camera software or stored on the memory card. The PowerShot SD550 also lets you record short sound clips in WAV format to accompany captured images, via the Sound Memo option, great for lively captions to vacation photos or party shots.