Canon PowerShot SD750 Digital Camera Review
By Emily Raymond
Reviewed.com Editorial Staff
August 14, 2007
The Canon PowerShot SD750 resembles a flat screen TV with its 0.77-inch width and enormous 3-inch LCD screen. The features are otherwise fairly basic: 7.1 megapixels, a 3x optical zoom lens, and Automatic Exposure modes that make the SD750 very easy to use. The SD750 had an initial price of $349.
The SD750's large LCD screen is mostly responsible for its relatively high price. Canon’s SD1000, at $299, has the same resolution, exposure modes, and features, but with a smaller 2.5-inch LCD screen. The giant screen on the SD750 is great for reading menus because the font is larger, but viewing images on either is just as good because both have the same smooth 230,000-pixel resolution. The 8.1-megapixel Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T100 has a 3-inch LCD screen and a 5x optical zoom lens for $399. It's a bit more expensive but has a longer zoom and more resolution. If you don’t need the 3-inch LCD screen, the Canon SD1000 is the better choice. If your eyes are failing and the large font sounds enticing, read on.
There is more to the Canon SD750 than its LCD. For being such a small camera, the SD750 performs very well. It produces accurately-colored pictures in bright and dim light. Face detection is one of its highlighted features: this automatically detects and focuses on faces in the frame. Canon's face detection can recognize up to nine faces in a frame, the same number as Samsung's system in the 10-megapixel, 5x zoom S1050.
Automatic Exposure modes headline the menu, including 10 Scene modes and a Movie mode. The Scene modes cover the basics, such as Portrait, but there are also more exotic choices like Aquarium and Underwater. The Movie mode records TV-quality clips that look and sound great. Most compact digital cameras have subpar audio, but the Canon PowerShot SD750’s audio is high quality.
The Canon SD750 is a great little camera to stuff into a pocket and carry to the park, library, museum, work, party, or wherever else life takes you. Its stainless steel body makes it pretty durable, too. However, the SD750 isn't the only sturdy camera around: the Nikon Coolpix S500 has a stainless steel body, 7.1 megapixels, 3x lens, and is less expensive at $299.
Because the SD750 is small and its LCD screen is large, sacrifices are made in control. The buttons on the camera are small and close together, and the SD750 isn’t very comfortable to hold.
When you hold it, watch out for the flash. It sits on the front where the left fingers wrap around the camera, so you’ll probably take a few pictures with a dark blotch from your fingers blocking the light.
The Canon PowerShot SD750 allows you to organize pictures into folders or categories in Playback mode. Pictures can then be printed all at once, by date, folder, or in these categories: People, Scenery, Events, Category 1-3, or To Do. The print order lets you select 0-99 prints of each image on the camera so you don’t have to spend as much time picking and choosing when you connect to a PictBridge-compatible printer.
In the end, the SD750 is a convenient digital camera that takes high-quality pictures and comes with an enormous 3-inch LCD screen. The LCD bumps up the retail price by $50, which may be too much for some to justify. The SD1000 has the same great performance, but with a smaller LCD and lower price. The cheapskate in me chooses the SD1000, but my eyes lust after the big screen on the Canon PowerShot SD750.
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