An optical view finder for when the glare is too strong to see the LCD display
and a "landscape" or similar setting that forces the focus to infinity so you
don't accidentally take a perfectly focussed shot of the inside of the canopy or
the string :-)

Forest Baskett wrote:
At 20:12 13 June 2007, Dan G wrote:
On Jun 13, 5:12 pm, Markus Graeber wrote:
I am looking closely at the Canon PowerShot SD800
IS
Just got one of these - I think it's rather good. The
killer feature
is the 28mm wide-angle lens - no other camera the size
has one, and
while it doesn't sound much wider than (say) 35mm it
makes a big
difference to what you can fit in the frame. The image
stabilisation
should also help with zoom shots.

Worth noting that the other new Canon SD - the 900
- has no wide angle
(37mm), and no image stabilisation, trading them for
more megapixels
(which you don't need) and a titanium body (ditto).


Dan


The Canon's seem to have substantially faster shutter
response than most, a very important feature to me.
Several of them, like this one, have image stabilization,
another good feature when you are in a moving platform.
A third feature important to me is a close to the
eye viewfinder. A large number of small cameras require
that you use the big screen on the back of the camera
as the viewfinder. I find those really hard to aim
by comparison. If you like AA batteries you can get
that with a 'slightly' larger camera body. With all
that, look at the Canon A570 IS and the Canon A710
IS. The latter has a 6x optical zoom, both start at
35mm. Both are 7 MP.

Forest