Canon PowerShot SD300 Digital ELPH/Digital IXUS 40 Review
Simon Joinson, November 2004

Review based on a production Canon PowerShot SD300/Digital Ixus 40

Announced at the end of September 2004, the SD300 (which goes by the names of Digital Ixus 40 in Europe and IXY DIGITAL 50 in Japan) is the latest in a long line of ultra-compact 'ELPH' or 'IXUS' cameras stretching back to early 2000 (and a lot farther back than that in the film camera world). The SD300 (along with little sister the 3MP SD200) is the smallest, slimmest and most powerful ELPH yet, and features several key improvements over the previous generation. The SD300 and SD200 are the first cameras to incorporate two UA (Ultra-high Refractive Index Glass Molded (GMo) Aspherical lens) elements which has allowed Canon to produced its smallest cameras to feature a 3x zoom. It may be smaller than a credit card, but Canon has still managed to cram a fairly comprehensive range of features into the SD300;

• 4.0 megapixel CCD
• 2.0-inch color TFT monitor
• 35-105mm (equiv.) F2.8 - 4.9, 3x optical zoom
• 640 x 480 movies at 30fps
• Print/Share button
• Fast Frame Rate movies (320x240 pixels @ 60fps)
• Voice annotation (sound memos)
• Custom white balance
• Spot, center-weighted and evaluative metering
• DIGIC II and iSAPS
• 9-point AiAF
• Six scene modes

Canon PowerShot SD300 Key specifications

* Supplied accessories may differ in each country or area

If you're new to digital photography you may wish to read the Digital Photography Glossary before diving into this article (it may help you understand some of the terms used).

Conclusion / Recommendation / Ratings are based on the opinion of the reviewer, you should read the ENTIRE review before coming to your own conclusions. Images which can be viewed at a larger size have a small magnifying glass icon in the bottom right corner of the image, clicking on the image will display a larger (typically VGA) image in a new window. To navigate the review simply use the next / previous page buttons, to jump to a particular section either pick the section from the drop down or select it from the navigation bar at the top. DPReview calibrate their monitors using Color Vision OptiCal at the (fairly well accepted) PC normal gamma 2.2, this means that on our monitors we can make out the difference between all of the (computer generated) grayscale blocks below. We recommend to make the most of this review you should be able to see the difference (at least) between X,Y and Z and ideally A,B and C.

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