Comments about Canon Canon Powershot SD870 IS Digital Elph Camera, 8.0 Megapixels, 3.8x Optical Zoom, 4x Digital Zoom, 3.0" LCD Screen, Silver:

I have experience with both Minolta and Nikon SLRs. Like most folks, I tend to not want to drag around heavy equipment and lenses when visiting with family, taking a casual outing with friends, etc. I know exactly what I'm giving up when I leave my SLR at home. This is a terrific pocket camera with a wide angle lens so more of what you are shooting makes it into the shot, as well as more people. The face recognition works quite well - lets face it, isn't that what mostly gets shot with these small cameras? I recently used it while doing a real estate search - it did a great job of capturing room detail and I was delighted with the accuracy of the rendition and the wide angle also grabbed exterior shots nicely in varying light. There are enough megapixels to allow for cropping post shoot as well. You can negate the flash and mute all sounds so as to use it totally unobtrusively in museums or gatherings such as church events.
I've also just taken some shots of kids at a family gathering outdoors with terrific color rendition and crisp pics. My sister in law was miffed that her new SLR did not get significantly better shots than this little beauty plus her camera's LCD is actually smaller and less bright than this Elph. Now she wants one. Battery life is very good. The menus are easily accessible and easy to adjust. I'd have given this a 4 1/2 star rating if I could have chosen that option. The only drawback for me is a lack of an optical viewfinder. I'm old school - I like using them at times.