I recently bought a new digital camera. A Canon Digital ixus i, known in some parts of the world as Powershot SD10. This was a replacement to my Casio Exilim S3, which I sold after my Miami trip. Unlike the Casio, which exhibited bad picture quality and minor design flaws, the Canon is really cool. I shall now write up a review of my experiences with both cameras, so you can judge for yourself.
The Exilim S3 is a very SMALL 3.2 megapixel camera. It’s so small in fact, that when you put it in your shirt pocket, it becomes invisible. Unfortunately, its shape is less then ideal for small jeans pockets 
It does however have a huge LCD screen (2″), and its docking station was modified by my friend bigmac to be able to recharge from my USB port instead of having to haul around an AC/DC adapter. All in all, it was an ok gadget, but it was a crappy camera. The worst aspects were its less then perfect picture quality in daytime, and its really bad picture quality in less then ideal light conditions. It also has the ability to make every straight line look like a curve.
The positioning of the memory card was also quite annoying, since it was located where your thumb generally is when taking a picture, you could easilly press on it and eject the memory while taking a picture. (been there done that)
However it’s excellent support of linux and also being able to mount it as a volume in MacOS X were both appreciated details. Moreso, the Casio was quick at taking pictures. It’s lens is fixed and does not need to focus before taking a picture, so you almost never get blurry pics unless it was dark or you are moving the camera really fast. This is sometimes a problem in the Canon since it needs to focus before shooting. I found the battery life quite good, it never ran out of juice, even after 150 pics and movie clips. In general the Casio gave a good impression, except when you were looking at those curvy lines and colorful pixels that inhabited the images taken with it.
If you want a really small camera that is fast at taking pictures, but with less then perfect quality (or only plan on taking outdoors pictures), then it might be a good choice.
For me, indoors quality was important, so I sold it and bought the Digital ixus i instead. The picture quality of the Canon is outstanding, and it’s 4 megapixels make some really huge images. When it comes to size, the Canon is smaller in height then the Casio, and thus is better suited for small pockets. However it is thicker, so it does not look quite as invisible in your shirt pocket. For me it was a worthwile tradeoff.
The Canon also comes in different colors, I got the black one (because it had a special deal with an extra 128mb SD card), and it is slightly cheaper then the Casio.
I have not tested the Canon in Linux, but it does not mount on my desktop in OS X. It works fine with iPhoto and Canon’s own software for extracting pictures and videos was well made, so I am not complaining.
The Canon must focus before taking a picture, which sometimes makes it slower then the Casio, but it has a quick-shoot feature which allows you to take continuous pictures without waiting for auto-focus, and this feature seems to work well. The Canon also has some impressive custom options for picture taking, such as Macro mode for extreme close-ups and other settings I dare not mess with. The keyboard picture you see here was taken with the macro mode.
The camera has some useless theme settings. They allow you to change the background image on the display and also change the sounds made by the camera for different things like shutter sound or timer sound.
When it comes to battery life, I have not yet taken enough pictures to even dent it, but it seems strong. A negative aspect, is that you are unable to recharge the battery with the USB cable. So you need to remove it and place it into the charger. I forgot my battery once… With the Casio, this is not a problem, since it recharges in its cradle.
On the other hand, once you get real and buy another battery, the Casio is no longer the winner of that race, since you can only recharge its battery inside the camera, but with the Canon, you can have one battery in the charger, and another in the camera.
So in conclusion, I can say that I would choose the Canon, if given the choice again. With its better picture quality and its better fit in my pocket, it’s a definite winner. However if the picture quality of the Casio was better, I would have a harder time to decide, since both cameras have good points.
Below is a comparison of two similar images. The image on the right was taken with the Canon, and on the left with the Casio. I had some trouble getting the lightning to look the same, probably because the flash on the Canon is stronger. Still you can clearly see the differences.
Tags: photography, review