Canon PowerShot SD940 IS 12.1 Megapixel Compact Camera, Silver

Before I purchased this camera, I was sharing a big, old, bulky, 6 Megapixel digital camera with my mom. It was just an all around bad camera. So i decided to get this little camera and coundn't be more happy. Its a lot smaller and more portable than my old one and the picture quality awesome. It has a lot of usefull featues. The HD video is really cool. It does take up a lot of room on the memory card, but you could always slightly lower the video quality and still get a good quality video. Also, I really like the "color accent" feature and it works really well. The only feature that fell below expectations was "color swap". It rarely works correctly and often makes the picture just look wierd. But no camera can be perfect so, don't let the very few cons keep you from purchasing this amazing camera!

I got this camera about a year ago and I am pretty much pleased. The only thing I dislike is the picture quality in low light situations and how ridiculous the camera acts while taking a video. I had an old camera before this for years that took excellent video. At concerts you could hear everything perfectly. There were no crunchy sounds whenever it got loud. I can't even take a video in the car when there is music playing. Also, sometimes I would press the button for the video to start and it wouldn't and I would not realize it and not take a video. I am annoyed that I spent money on a new camera when my old (almost 5 years old) camera works somewhat better. My old one couldn't take pictures in low-light at all but this camera isn't much better.

I've used several Canon cameras over the past few years, and this one is the worst in terms of image quality. It seems that Canon chose to apply too much compression to the images, and that hugely degrades image quality. My old 4MP Canon S410 produced excellent quality photos approximately 1.6Mb in size. This 12MP SD940 also produces 1.6Mb photos (fairly complex scenery with people and lots of plants in it). Imagine the kind of compression Canon is applying if megapixel count increased 3 times. Because of such high compression, photos come out grainy and miss fine detail. Another problem is soft focus on many photos, even ones taken at full daylight. Effective flash range is only about 8 feet. Also, for some reason camera selects very high ISO settings (640+) for most photos when ISO is set to Auto. That again degrades already poor image quality. On a positive side, HD video quality is surprisingly good for such small camera. Mine is going back to the store tomorrow.

I returned two other Cannons that were less expensive just to buy this one that my sister has because there is virtually no delay. It is worth the extra money, especially when you have kids and you want get their expression at that moment not 2 seconds later when it is gone. I like the date stamp and pics are crystal clear. I like how small and easy it is to use too.

I bought the SD940IS because I thought it was time to replace my old 5-megapixel SD400 with only a 2" LCD screen (which I loved and was really happy with and therefore decided to buy another Canon). Since this is a 12-megapixel camera, I expected to see a big improvement in the photo quality with nice clear, crisp pictures. However, I was disspointed that the quality was not that different from my old SD400. In fact I felt that the 'smart AUTO mode' is more difficult to use and I had a really hard time focusing my shots especially at parties and weddings where lights are dim and people are in motion. I already read the users manual on focusing my shots, I would repeatly try pressing the shutter half-way down to refocus but it takes a while. The 'smart auto' doesn't always get it right and would think I'm taking a digital macro shot many times when I am not- so basically I would get a blur until I try to re-focus again and again. I have had this camera for about 2 months now and already the camera lens got stuck once. I had to keep turning it on and off and finally the lens retracted back to normal, though it only happened once luckily. Overall the camera is ok. The desgin looks great, but the buttons are flat. It works and it takes nice pictures in general but I guess I keep comparing to a 5-megapixel so I just expected more.