Canon PowerShot SD30

Reviewed October 2005

Test Photos

STILL LIFE PHOTO

This subject is photographed in a room that has a mix of fluorescent and incandescent light, but which is not brightly lit. The camera's flash is used to add fill light. The backdrop is 1.95 m (6.5 ft) from the camera.

The built-in flash of the SD30 is able to provide sufficient light in this case, but with more distant subjects, better — brighter — results are obtained if the sensitivity is set to 100 or even 200 ISO.

Worth noting, Canon offers an optional external flash unit (High-Power Flash HF-DC1) that can be used with the SD30.

ZOOM PHOTO

Now we zoom in on a specific area. The intent is to test the sharpness of the image at the zoom's maximum setting. The camera remains at the same distance as with the preceding photo.

With the zoom set to the maximum 2.4X telephoto setting, the only way to obtain a reasonably bright photo is to set the sensitivity to Auto, and let the camera increase the CCD sensitivity as required.

Although unrecorded in the Exif data of the image, the increase appears to be somewhere between 100 and 200 ISO. Some noise is starting to appear in the image, but it is relatively minimal.

The zoom image's colour remains consistent with the wide angle shot, and the compression — with a ratio of approximately 5.8:1 — softens some detail in this shot as well.

MACRO PHOTO

Selecting the Macro mode in the Function menu of the SD30 allows the camera to focus on a subject that is 10 cm (3.9 in.)from the front of the lens when the zoom is at the maximum telephoto position. At this distance the camera captures a field of view of 4.3 cm (1/7 inch).

With the lens set to the telephoto end, the image the camera captures is very detailed, and totally free of distortion.

BUILDING PHOTO

This image is our outdoor test. The architecture of the building, in particular the angled girders, immediately show the presence of jaggies. The shadowed entrance can also often reveal the quality of the exposure.

The evaluative metering of the SD30 allows the camera to capture a very natural looking and well- exposed image.

The image sharpness however is average and some of the details such as the leaves are a bit softer than one would expect with the Superfine image quality of a 5-megapixel camera.

A light chromatic aberration can also be detected underneath the girders that make up the canopy of the building.

ZOOM PHOTO

Zooming in on the entrance of the building, the shadowed entrance takes on a greater importance for the metering and can cause an overexposure of sections that are directly lit.

Zoomed in, the metering system tends to underexpose the entrance area of the building so as to avoid any overexposure of the background, and the result is that the image is a touch too dark at the centre.

To remedy this, the camera is first pointed at the well-lit but grey-coloured paving stones, avoiding the bright background.

NIGHT PHOTO

As this camera is capable of a long exposure, a photo taken at night is included.

Set to the Manual mode the PowerShot SD30 allows selecting a long exposure time if the option is first enabled in the Recording menu.

The SD30 is equipped with noise reduction and any image captured with a shutter speed of 1.3 seconds or longer is automatically processed so as to reduce noise.

With this subject, the SD30 was able to yield a good exposure as of an 8-second exposure time, with 10 and 13 seconds producing the best results.

To capture this image the sensitivity is set to 50 ISO to avoid as much noise as possible, and the white balance is set to Tungsten (incandescent) to take into account the effect of the artificial lighting.

Seen at full scale on a monitor, the sharpness is a bit soft — noise reduction tends to lower the overall sharpness — but very little noise is visible.