camera review

The stainless-steel case and well-designed controls make it look bulletproof. Canon still managed to include some extras, a movie-capture function and a panorama mode. The 1.5" LCD may be small but it's very bright, sharp and best of all has one of the best anti-reflective coatings. The small Lithium-Ion battery, this pays off two fold, first of all it’s considerably smaller than an equivalent power NiMH battery and secondly it's far lighter. The fully retracting lens with automatic lens cover, front "grip lip" and rear thumb indentation make it easy to hold, protruding mode dial is right under your thumb, as is the zoom controller. A lens which extends quickly, the S300 lens is extended and ready in just 1.1 seconds and takes the same amount of time to retract (compare this to nearly 3 seconds for most extending 3x optical zoom lenses, and most of those don't have automatic lens covers either), this adds up to fast startup times that may make the difference between getting "that shot" or not. Power and size constraints mean that the S300 doesn't support Type II CF cards, and thus doesn't support IBM's Microdrive. Canon only supplies an 8 MB card with the camera. The S300's controls are very easy to operate: A mode dial on top of the camera selects from among the major operating modes of the camera, with options of Playback, Automatic Exposure, Manual Exposure, Stitch Assist, and Movie modes. A good complement of rear-panel controls let you control the most frequently-used camera functions without having to resort to the LCD menu system, As for it's major exposure modes, Automatic exposure mode places the camera in charge of all exposure decisions, except for flash mode, macro mode, the self-timer, and Continuous Shooting. Alternatively, Manual mode allows you to adjust things such as white balance and exposure compensation (EV) through a menu system employing the LCD screen and rear-panel controls.

Pros – sharp bright, lcd with anti reflective coating, mostly all metal construction, fast ejection and retraction of lens, with automatic lens cover.

Con - Poor battery life, rubber cover to the av out and digital connections, images may be flat, can require digital darkroom work.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/S300/S30A2.HTM

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_reviews/s300.html

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canondigitalixus300/page3.asp