Canon Powershot ELPH 330 HS

My question is about the Canon Powershot ELPH 330 HS. I looked at the reviews of both the Canon Powershot ELPH 310 HS and the Canon Powershot ELPH 330 HS. I noticed that dpreview did not put how many fps the Canon Powershot 330 HS has, and the Canon Powershot ELPH 310 HS has 3.4fps. Is it because it is terribly slow? Could anyone answer this question for me please? And why is the 330 $100 less than the 310?

Myself I'd be happy if at least some cameras would return to a longer wide end, my feeling is many for the sake of wideness go a touch beyond the sweet spot of the lens, which leads me often to zoom in a bit upon start-up, no biggie but hopefully food for thought.

Anyway I must say my eyes have been most impressed by the shots I've seen by the ELPH 330 HS, so much so that despite not really needing to buy another camera I've ordered one, I suppose the price was right.

The reasoning is that it dawned upon me that this camera ticked too many of my boxes to ignore.

Superb image quality, without that any camera is ho-hum but I'd rather rely on what my eyes see than what reviewers write, many times I'm sure they are biased. Tick

It does not have a super fast lens, always a negative by reviewers but I'll be grateful to not have to raise the f number just to get some depth of field and get a sharper result. Tick

Available in a non bland colour, in my case a lovely pink. Tick.

Pocket size, for a take anywhere camera size is important. Tick.

Price. Tick.

No RAW. Tick, never use it, more trouble than it's worth. I don't care if someone will boast about recovering some obscure detail in the background.

Zoom. The more the merrier but 10x is quite enough for general use.

Flash. Weak apparently. Boo, but for an indoor group shot its higher ISO performance may be good enough to dodge a bullet.

Shape. Looks like it could be awkward to hold. Slight Boo but making it grippier isn't difficult.

After thinking for a while I realised this is a premium compact for a fella like me who wants great image quality but without the fancy bells and whistles that draw the headlines.

I bought this camera through my workplace; every year we replace our compact cameras around this time to take advantage of the great sales. I work at a school and we use them for photographing activities and events to make bulletin boards, scrapbooks, and an end-of-year slideshow. I  got the 330 HS  because I'd heard good things about it but also because it was priced at $129. Once I read more about it, namely that it has the same sensor and processor as the SX260 HS that I had and dearly loved, I was really sold on it. The 10x zoom in such a tiny package is very nice and useful as well. While it looks just like all of the most basic PowerShots, it has a lot of good stuff packed in it. My only complaint is that it only allows me to select "P" mode and doesn't give me as much control aside from that. If it had P, Av, Tv, M, it would be about perfect. Still, it's a very nice camera and the pictures from it look very nice as well Focus is pretty snappy, and the camera does surprisingly well in low light. I'm quite comfortable shooting at ISO 800 and even 1600, something I'd never do on a budget PowerShot. This is a really nice little camera and as long as you know that it's primarily automatic, you'll be quite satisfied and impressed. It's kind of like a 'lite' premium compact camera!

Andy

I have been considering buying one due to its small size, but because I know the SX260 works so well I thought I should buy another one until the failed SX280 came out and the price of the SX260 went through the roof.

I find the little sensor to be brilliant at high ISO but it does lack DR a bit which can be overcome by using Icontrast at the expense of a slightly higher ISO.  I only ever use P mode on my SX260 anyway, but I am curious if the 330 has the same Icontrast and My Colors settings contrast, sharpness, saturation etc as the SX260 has?

Brian

Yes, it has iContrast and My colors. In fact, I have my 330 set up exactly the same way I had my SX260 HS set up.

Andy

To be honest though Brian, I don't know if I'd choose this camera over the 260. Yes, it's smaller but the 260 is quite compact itself, especially considering that it packs a 20x zoom in it. It's still easily pocketable and offers a lot more control. The 330 has wifi but that's not a necessity for me. The main reason I got the 330 is because it was inexpensive and on the company's dime, plus there aren't any 260s available in stores anymore. The 330 HS is a very nice little camera packed in such a tiny body, but I'd probably pick the 260 over the 330 if it were for my own personal use. Just something to think about...

Andy

racollins wrote:

To be honest though Brian, I don't know if I'd choose this camera over the 260. Yes, it's smaller but the 260 is quite compact itself, especially considering that it packs a 20x zoom in it. It's still easily pocketable and offers a lot more control. The 330 has wifi but that's not a necessity for me. The main reason I got the 330 is because it was inexpensive and on the company's dime, plus there aren't any 260s available in stores anymore. The 330 HS is a very nice little camera packed in such a tiny body, but I'd probably pick the 260 over the 330 if it were for my own personal use. Just something to think about...

Andy

Yes, I agree on the points, and the stores that still have some Sx260s are charging like wounded bulls, otherwise I would buy another Sx260 as a backup.

Brian

toomanycanons wrote:

Has anything really changed with these little silver Canon Powershots? The last ones I owned were an SD880 and an SD1000. I went Panasonic 10x and 12x zooms after that. I liked them back in the day, has IQ/noise levels/whatever improved over the years or are they all essentially the same everyday point and shoots? Ya know, don't try to crop too much, just aim and shoot and enjoy what comes out.

I didn't own canon cameras back then, but the 1/2.3 BSI-CMOS sensor is like magic especially at high ISO.

You be the judge:

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Beach Wood

I would wonder why you need more than this.

Brian

toomanycanons wrote:

Has anything really changed with these little silver Canon Powershots? The last ones I owned were an SD880 and an SD1000. I went Panasonic 10x and 12x zooms after that. I liked them back in the day, has IQ/noise levels/whatever improved over the years or are they all essentially the same everyday point and shoots? Ya know, don't try to crop too much, just aim and shoot and enjoy what comes out.

I think they've improved markedly. First of all, you do have to remember that they're small sensor cameras and therefore have limitations, but within those limitations there have been a lot of improvements. I had a PowerShot A710IS back in 2006 or 2007, and I loved the shots up to ISO 400. It could take fairly decent ISO 800 shots but the noise was so clearly visible that it was undesirable to me. With the current crop of PowerShots I feel quite comfortable shooting at ISO 800 and 1600 in most cases knowing that I'll get good pictures. I would gladly print ISO 800 shots at 8.5x11 but perhaps limit 1600 to 5x7. In fact, a lot of the earlier (just a few years ago) PowerShots produced pictures that I don't think I would have been happy with at 8.5x11 at any ISO simply because the quality of the shots wasn't to my satisfaction. To be honest though, that may have been due largely to my lack of PP skills more than anything else, but I really like what I get from the latest PowerShots, at least the ones with the HS sensors. The basic CCD budget PowerShots leave quite a bit to be desired, IMO. Those are just my thoughts; others may feel quite differently.

Andy

Mine finally arrived last week, my first impression is the reviews are pretty right.

A few samples, full pixel sized but saved with more compression.

ISO 800. The sun was rising and I was just having fun.

ISO 160 but ISO doesn't seem very critical.

ISO 80, cropped.

I just did a test on myself, not easy with nobody to help.

One with redeye reduction and one without, there's some focus issues and it was fairly dim so the camera chose ISO 400 with the iAuto setting.

without redeye reduction.

with redeye reduction, focus poor but is was holding my hand in the region to gain focus for the timer.

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