Canon PowerShot S400 (Digital IXUS 400)

Opinion: This was my first digital camera and what luck that I bought it. My girlfriend pick it out as I was considering a larger Canon.
The larger camera would have been a mistake as this little beauty just fits in my pockets. This is a great feature for traveling, which is when I take the buik of my photos.

Awesome picture quality from this little camera. I have seen other photos taken from various Olympus, Nikons, Leicas, etc.
This Canon is top of the heap. Super sharp and bright images.

Opinion: Good quality at highest resolution. A little slow between shots, so you have to strategically choose the timing of your shots. Great feel - nice, solid camera. Great for snapshots.

Opinion: I loved this camera, I notice I get too much red in indoor photos. I have to use photoshop to change the hue or mute that effect. I owned the s330 previously.

Opinion: I did a ton of research before purchasing this camera. I wanted something small, with good megapixels, and with excellent picture quality. From the reviews, it seemed that the S400 would fit the bill.

I was very pleased with the ergonomics and shell construction. I often carry this around in my jeans pocket (and I'm a girl, so they're not baggy like guys' jeans) or in a pocket of my diaper bag (diapers for my kids, not me!), and it has held up to that kind of abuse just fine.

I thought I'd use some of the feautres, of which there are many, but I ended up only using it as a point-n-shoot and a videocam, so I can't comment on how good the features were. I think they had some preset scenes but they were too much of a hassle to access.

I was disappointed with image quality. I don't know if something happened to the lens or what, but I started to get a vignette effect with blurry corners and edges. I'm not talking slight -- I mean that a good 25% of the picture space is blurry and white. In addition, my indoor shots have really strange color whether I use flash or not. Now, if you're a pro, I'm sure you could fix that by fiddling with the settings. But if you want to use it as a point-n-shoot, it's too much of pain.

Still, I was pleased with the camera when compared to the Sony P8, which my dad has. The picture quality was outstanding compared to those two -- less grainy, better color range.

So what's my biggest complaint? THE DANG THING BIT THE DUST A COUPLE MONTHS AFTER THE WARRANTY EXPIRED! I don't expect a $500 camera to die at 15 months, but I started getting memory card errors, unrelated to which memory card I used. Then the camera started to not turn on. Sometimes I could get it on and the card working, and other times not. It's unpredictable, but probably 60% not working. Canon will fix it for me for $250, but I'd rather spend the money elsewhere. I already paid for Canon to fix my video camera and it's already having problems again, and I have a printer they stopped supporting too. I just don't trust Canon to make products that last.

Opinion: GOOD!

Opinion: Be careful of the lens retract crash
This is a great little camera that is convenient to carry in your shirt pocket. There are tons of features including a long movie mode. Image quality & auto white balance are very good. Makes excellent panoramas. Reasonable battery life.

Opinion: REPAIRS! Sent back to Canon twice at $155 a pop for repairs. I can't see how a camera can get damaged so easily. I've had many digital cameras and never had so many repair problems. Build quality is BAD.

I do like the simple point and shoot capability, good image quality. I bought this for my husband who doesn't want any controls to operate and this camera is like that. Images much better than expected.

However I've spent more on repairs than on the camera, not worth it.

Opinion: I've had my S400 for about a year now, and I LOVE IT. For those questioning whether to get the most recent version (S500??), all I can say is, this camera ROCKS. The construction is superb, the display is easy to see except in bright sunlight (but then are ANY displays easy to see in bright sunlight), and the photos I've taken are remarkable. I have read about a Canon engineering error...something with an "18" in it...but so far so good for me.

Opinion: The camera #1 for your pocket

Excellent as second camera

Hi quality pictures

Great close-up pictures