Best Compact Digital Camera

This is definitely the camera to throw into a bag or a pocket, head out the door, and just have some fun. Canon SD1200's quality is good enough as a pocket snapshooter, probably not great for photography enthusiasts, however. Color is generally good from the Canon SD1200. Video quality is pretty good, easily replacing the family camcorder for simple video snippets. *

FEATURES OVERVIEW This camera comes with a number of features that make it easy to use. Image Stabilization This camera has an internal image stabilization system that gets rid of the "shaky hand syndrome" that many photographers have, including yours truly. *

The pocket-friendly Canon SD1200 is well built and does cover all features expected of a point-and-shoot plus a few extras such as AE-L (Auto-Exposure-Lock) and the choice of 3 metering modes. *

The Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS is an affordable pocket camera with an interesting variety of shooting modes, excellent image quality, and optical image stabilisation. Colours looked vivid and accurate, and exposure, for the most part, was good, though sometimes details were a bit blown out. The 10Mp Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS camera has as solid feature set for a novice photographer who's ready to move beyond snapping photos in automatic mode. *

The combination of performance and quality make this an excellent camera for the family or as a small backup to a larger camera. Despite its size, it's packed full of useful features. Our indoor image quality was excellent. Image noise is also kept very low, allowing for ISO settings of 400 and under to show very little or no noise. Image quality of our outdoor sample shots is very good, which we have come to expect from Canon. *

The bottom line: While its design is less than thrilling, the Canon PowerShot SD960 IS still has great photo quality to fall back on.

The camera's 3,200 ISO setting limits
soft. ISO 100 Printed results look good at 16x20 with good color and detail, except that the luminance noise is clearly visible where it could be a little smoother. ISO 200 looks good at 13x19, which is just about right for a 10-megapixel digital camera. ISO 400 shots are good at 11x14, though with some lost detail on close inspection; otherwise they're good enough for wall display. ISO 800 shots are usable at 8x10, and better at 5x7. Image quality is pretty good at wide-angle and telephoto, with strong blurring in only one corner of the frame at each setting, and mild blurring in the others. Color is quite good, as is exposure, though noise suppression is somewhat high at the mid-range ISOs. *

Measuring a mere 0.87 inches thick and made from rigid aluminum, the SD960 is easily transportable in a jeans or shirt pocket, and only weighs 5.11 ounces. *

The 12-megapixel Canon PowerShot SD960 IS belongs to Canon's motley crue of radically designed PowerShot compacts, including the PowerShot SD960 IS and PowerShot SD970 IS. The PowerShot SD960 IS is marketed as the “girly” version of the pack, thanks to its pastel color schemes and minimal controls, and we found plenty of advanced functionality under the hood. The camera also has one of the best LCDs in its class and rocks Canon's latest swanky menu system. We loved the touch-sensitive Control...

The SD960 is very responsive: It can boot up and snap its first picture in an average of just 3.7 seconds. *

The ultra-compact Nikon Coolpix S640 is a near perfect general-purpose camera that's especially useful for candid people shots and street photography. *

The S640's wide-viewing angle Clear Color LCD is relatively sharp (230,000 pixels), fairly bright, hue accurate, and reasonably fluid. *

The S640's Auto White Balance is dependably accurate over a wide range of lighting conditions. Contrast is balanced and colors are hue accurate. *

The CoolPix S640 is a cool digital camera from Nikon that comes with all the great features any digital camera enthusiast has come to expect out of such a camera. *

The S640's wide-viewing angle Clear Color LCD is relatively sharp (230,000 pixels), fairly bright, hue accurate, and reasonably fluid. *

The sky colors were just unreal. You're better off using the Casio H10 at ISO 200 or lower, making only smaller prints with ISO 400 and up. Image quality for this 12.1 megapixel camera was very good in general with accurate color and good contrast. *

The 10x optical zoom EX-H10 is geared towards a younger crowd, thanks to fun in-camera features.

The H10 won't send Casio's stock skyrocketing—it's really nothing groundbreaking—but it is one of the better cameras in its class. Indoor and daytime outdoor photos are crisp, bright, and color-accurate. *

Migrating high-speed technology into an ultra-portable chassis seemed like the next logical step for Casio. The Casio Exilim EX-FC100 rocks most of the Exilim EX-FH20's features in its pint-sized camera body and even flaunts a 5x optical zoom range. We had a blast with the Exilim EX-FC100, thanks mostly to the cavalcade of high-speed shooting options and quirky Best Shot modes. However, most of them functioned on a mediocre level and at the end we were left with the same gimmicky feeling as w...

Launch price


A slim, dependable snapper that’s ideal for action scenes – but that price tag’s a little too high

Video quality is very good, although as with most other cameras, you cannot use optical zoom while shooting video. *

Image Quality The 9.1-MP photos we captured with the EX-FC100 looked lovely. The resulting picture looked smooth, not jerky. *

Unique high-speed features make this a great camera for action shooters, but it's not the best model for normal video.