Canon PowerShot SD430

Reviewed August 2006

Image Quality

The Canon SD430 packs a lot of photographic power into a very small package. The SD430 offers a 5-megapixel resolution, a 3X zoom, a 2-inch LCD monitor and an optical viewfinder. More importantly, however, the SD430 captures very well-exposed, sharp and faithful images.

For example, the SD430 is able to capture the strong orange light of the setting sun intensified by smoke coming from a distant forest fire; a type of composition that many other cameras would either over or under expose quite easily.

Photos captured with natural light, and at sensitivities of 50 or 100 ISO, show no trace of noise. Increasing the sensitivity, a bit of noise can be seen in photos captured at the 200 ISO level, but it remains quite minimal. With 400 ISO images, noise can be more readily detected.

Still, even at this sensitivity, images tend to contain relatively little noise if they were captured outdoors with good ambient light, making it possible to obtain higher shutter speeds when necessary, by increasing the sensitivity.

Flash photos, however, tend to be noisier. At 50 as well as 100 ISO, some noise can be seen in shadows areas that have not received enough light from the small flash. As always, at higher sensitivities noise increases and the graininess of the image can be very noticeable at 400 ISO.

Aside from its excellent image quality, the SD430 stands out by its WiFi compatibility. Setting up the camera to work with either a wireless network (infrastructure) or in a peer-to-peer configuration that allows it to communicate directly with, for example, a wireless capable notebook computer, is remarkably easy. The wireless section of the Software and Wireless Guide walks the user through the configuration process in clearly understandable steps, designed to fit a variety of configurations. And connection to a Canon printer, using the WA-1N Wireless Print Adapter is similarly very simple.

If at first the usefulness of the wireless capability of the SD430 is not obvious, after all, plugging in a small USB cable to print photos directly to a printer is not that onerous, transferring images directly, and quite quickly, to a computer can be very handy. The computer makes it possible to inspect the image in great detail — something that is not as easy on a camera monitor — and re-shoot if needed; and allows a much greater freedom of movement, the ability of the camera to transfer the image to the computer being only limited by the range of the wireless access point.

Moreover, the image is instantly safe, the computer acting as a back-up to the memory card.

So, while the SD430 would have benefited from a bit stronger built-in flash, in all other areas, including its wireless capability, the SD430 is impressive. Well-finished, easy to carry, sufficiently flexible to capture a wide range of subjects, the SD430 should be suitable for a wide number of people, and would even satisfy the needs of SLR users looking for a second, more compact camera.