Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Handling: The interface is similar to that in other Canon digital compacts, which helps your learning curve. The case is in metal, except the USB and the battery cover. They are both made of plastic and feel very fragile. The metal tripod mount is located closely below the lens. The LCD screen is reasonably viewable under daylight conditions. Canon celebrated that SD300 is the first compact that uses the DIGIC II processing, and with my experience so far, the camera does respond faster when compared with DIGIC based ones. It however appears to be on par with recent Sony and Olympics models. I did not measured the various response times scientifically however. Picture quality: Contrary to other comments, I was not "blown away" by quality of the pictures. The lens produces not serious, but significant purple edges in bright sunlight, and shows problems with dark corners like other compacts. Color production is rich with high contrast, a big plus. Sadly I find the pictures appear noisy when taking under low light conditions. I suspect either I have a faulty unit, or there are some design issues? Complaints: * can't review picture histogram easily (two to three steps) * noisy operations * no battery level indicator So far I find the SD300 a good and decent pocket camera. However in the same market (similar specs and price) there are many other choices, and the SD300 does not excel specifically in any area. -- UPDATE -- I used this camera frequently between October 2004 and January 2005, taking more than a thousand pictures for my trips around. I report more experiences I have with this fun camera: * The lithium battery is surprisingly resilient in cold conditions. I bought a spare battery for my ski trips, thinking that batteries die early in cold weather. It was negative teens and I had no trouble taking more than 50 pictures during the day with one battery. Very good indeed. The auto white balance worked fairly well - some blue casts. Make sure you increase the exposure compensation when taking pictures with snow backgrounds. (I use +2/3 to +1) * The purple fringe symptom has been widely reported and I guess users have to live with it. Else the camera proved to be good at determining exposure and delivering pictures with good color contrast. * As a compact camera it served my purpose well: taking pictures of interesting things I see everyday in my life. Small and quick. I find it difficult however to use SD300 with my gloves. This is no criticism as small cameras all have small buttons, but I still remember how painful my hands were when I needed to take off my gloves to shoot pictures in the mountains.