delmoi, I have the 520 (my first digital) and it does not seem so bad. No Nikon 35mm but not bad.

I like the depth of field on the macro stuff, but those light artifacts are seriously meh. My old Nikon Coolpix 700 takes better night shots. Heck, my super old 640x480 Ricoh 300z does better.

Here's the Digital Photography review for the Canon SD450.

There's no official DPR site review, just stats, and the user reviews for this one aren't exactly informed from what I glanced at.

arse_hat's post reminds me I have real film I need to develop. I love my old manual SLR Nikon FE2 35mm, but damn it's expensive to properly feed it. I keep thinking I should sell it and get a digital SLR, but it's something of a family heirloom. My mom would kill me, even though she now has a Nikon dSLR.

WooT! I'm sure you're going to continue to get all geeky with the boys, but I still maintain that a little something to start working with is better than sitting on the sidelines pining away. Nice to see you back on the proverbial playground!

1) Use a tripod whenever possible.
2) Turn off the dinky, useless flash.
3) Get as much light as possible.
4) Adjust exposure.

Remember, the photons convey the information. More photons, more info.

4) Adjust exposure.

That's another thing I can't do. I can change the ISO setting, but not the shutter speed, so I'm stuck with whatever setting they give me. Not too much fun. The three main variables I changed on the Sony were Shutter, Focus, Aperture, and ISO. Here I can only change the ISO.

Seems like the dynamic range on this sensor is low too...

Ah, here's a review for the SD400. They say to turn off the AiAF system which "attempts to guess where the subject is in the frame" didn't work very well and "not only slowed down focusing, but resulted in far more focus errors than the simpler center-focus setting. We would advise turning AiAF off, as we did for this review."

I just turned AiAF off, and it seems to be working a bit better. Seems like half the photos were out of focus.

I'd much rather set the focus myself.

It sounds like you bought the wrong camera. The SD400/450/500/550 are meant for snapshots, for people who aren't too serious about it. If you want a camera that lets you control exposure and focus, check out the Canon S80.

That's a bad camera. delmoi doesn't look anything like the way I imagine him.

Man, I wish I had me a big plate of spam fajitas right now.

That's something of a bummer. You'll be able to get great shots with that camera -- you'll just be limited in *when* you can get them. It looks like night photography is a out. Drag.

Also, the trick to appetizing food photography is to backlight it. The majority of light should be from behind and the rest can be filled in by putting in white cards in front of the food for the backlight to bounce off.

knave, I beg to differ. I take my photography pretty seriously these days and my main camera is my SD500. I use it because I keep it with me all the time, as opposed to a full sized rig. And I have been able to achieve some pretty darned spectacular results with it.

You know, looking at your night exposures, I now see that the problems you find are not strictly your camera's fault.

There is wildly varied lighting in those night scenes. But the predominant tone is very dark, so the camera is exposing a lot to bring that out. But, that overexposes the street lights and what-not -- that's what your seeing there. The sensor's reaction to overexposure.

The best camera in the world will run into this. It's particularly annoying with the full moon and some foreground detail, say a city and a lake. It is impossible to expose both the moon and the foreground correctly. There is nothing that can get them together and correct. Either the moon is blown out and the foreground is correct, or the moon is correct and the foreground is dark. (You can take two images, one exposed for each and try to composite them, though).

That's what you're seeing here.

You also need to use a tripod at that shutter speed.

That's another thing I can't do. I can change the ISO setting, but not the shutter speed, so I'm stuck with whatever setting they give me.

Your camera has a manual mode, indeed the photo above was taken in manual mode. So you have complete control over the exposure unless "manual" means something very weird on this camera. The meter will measure the scene -- you will pick whatever aperture and shutter speed you want, using the meter as your guide. If you want to intentionally underexpose, you undershoot what the meter says, and do the opposite to overexpose. (Ok reading up on your camera, I see you can't set the aperture and shutter speed, which is lame, but you can set exposure compensation, which will give you the same effect, minus the ability to pick a particular aperture or shutter speed. Manual mode means you pick the shutter and aperture, so that is slightly deceptive labeling.).

So for the scene with the blown highlights, intentionally underexpose it a bit in manual mode next time. The sky doesn't need that much exposure, anyway.

The interesting thing about the small Canons is that they don't have an adjustable aperture at all. There's a small size and a big one. If you hold it up to a bright light, or block it with your hand, you can hear it click as it switches them. That means it does almost all exposure adjustments with the shutter speed.

fenriq, I didn't mean to imply that the quality of the SD- series is lacking. They produce damn good results IMO. But delmoi sounds like he wants more control, and you just don't get that with a point & shoot. The S80 I recommended is still pretty well pocket-sized, but with much greater flexibility (and optics).

I have a Nikon D70 and I definitely would like something that's in my pocket at all times, and I've been tempted by the SD550 more than once.