So many of our family's vacations are at beaches, lakes, water-parks, or hikes and bringing along the sensitive digital camera has always been a problem. If I carried it then I could not get in water and I spent more time worrying whether the sand would damage it than taking pics of my family. I lost a camera on a Disney Park fun ride when water suddenly splashed into the ride and we were miserable for losing all our pics. With this camera you can drop it in water and not worry about your pics unless you lose the camera (happened to me another time when I fell overboard and dropped a camera in the open sea). I have other cameras that I have been too lazy to review but I am excited about this one so I sat down to write this review.
This is like a regular Canon Camera with all the features and the added waterproof feature. It can be compared to the new SD780 IS which sells for fifty bucks less. The features are similar, except that this one is waterproof and bulkier and does not have a viewfinder (not that you can see much through a fogged up viewfinder in humid conditions).
Some great features:
- Good looking waterproof camera, "cuteness" is very important, I disliked those clear cases that you have to screw on your camera and as one reviewer reported they can still get fogged up
- Rainproof/Waterproof up to 33 ft, good for most pools or waterparks
- Freeze proof lens up to 14 deg F
- SMART Auto mode that detects the right scene mode for each shot (works great)
- Digic 4 processor, auto shots are nicer than some older Canon cameras, optical image stabilization and motion detection to prevent blurring of images
- 2.5 inch extra bright LCD that's covered by a protective surface to prevent scratches and looks good in bright sun
- 3X optical and 12X digital zoom
- Face detection
- "Blink" detection - the camera gives a blink warning if someone's eyes are closed in the picture
- Contrast correction - Can be set while taking picture or even afterward to correct darker areas
- Continuous shooting lets you capture the perfect water shot
- Scene modes - The auto mode does a good job of sensing the conditions but if you want to set a mode you get the choice of - Night exposure, Panorama (stitch together shots in one), programmable mode, portrait, sunset, beach, fireworks, aquarium, underwater, snow, indoor, kids and pets, foliage, long shutter, color accent (keep only one color in a pic, so the water and jeans will be blue while the people black and white) and color swap (change one color to another, swap the color of your boat from beige to red).
Negatives:
- Slightly bulkier than your typical Canon SD, it's built for water, beach and rugged use, and it's rounder shape with no hard edges can take a fall or two
- No threads for filters
- No RAW mode
- No lens cap but the glass shield is scratchproof
The back panel is pretty intuitive and you probably won't need the manual to figure it out. The buttons have been designed for waterproof operations and the zoom in and out is done through buttons on the back of the camera rather than with the shutter button lever like with other Canon cameras. The photo and video mode is toggled through a round button next to the shutter button.
The best thing about this camera? You can give it to your 6 year old to take underwater pics and not worry about it, how many other "real" cameras can you do that with?! Now I can float down that lazy river at the water park with my family and take some nice shots rather than running along the edge trying to capture the perfect moment. And the best thing is that this camera works just as well on land. It's the perfect no-nonsense take along everywhere (really every where!) vacation camera. Canon PowerShot D10 12.1 MP Waterproof Digital Camera with 3x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.5-inch LCD
I've been playing with my new Powershot D10 for about a week and really like it. I have been using Canon SLRs for 25+ years, AE1 Program, A1, Elan 7e, and Digital Rebel. When I started looking for a waterproof camera to take snorkeling, my first choice was Canon, based on my many years of satisfaction with their products, and I was very lucky that this camera was released two weeks before leaving for vacation. (Amazon had been showing the camera as available for pre-order until earlier today. I purchased mine from a local camera store.)
I'm very impressed with the picture quality on this camera. The 12 megapixel sensor, coupled with a dozen shooting modes, produce an excellent image. I'm used to controlling aperture and shutter speed on the SLR, so simply selecting "portrait" or "night exposure" mode and letting the camera do all the work just seems too easy. Or, if selecting "portrait" is too difficult, you can select "auto" and just let the camera do it all. Movie quality is also quite good. The LCD screen on the back of the camera seems huge compared to the 1" screen on my old Digital Rebel. It's a great display.
The controls are conveniently arranged, and easy to use, and the associated icons displayed are both informative and intuitive. You can choose to display all the settings or turn them off and just see the image. One of the useful display options is a grid overlay on the screen to assist with shot composition and the "Rule of Thirds." The optical zoom works great. By the time you get to 12x with the digital zoom, the image is kind of grainy, but that's to be expected.
You can take macro photographs an inch or two from your subject. I've had trouble focusing my Digital Rebel in the dark, but Canon seems to have improved low-light focusing quite a bit. It has a manual focus feature that indicates the distance to the subject as you adjust the focus, just in case it can't get the focus right.
I like the Panorama feature, which displays the previous shot on the viewfinder while you're composing the next shot, allowing the photographer to closely match subsequent shots, resulting in panoramic photos with less distortion when they're stitched together. Panorama mode also locks in the exposure value of the first shot so that the exposure in subsequent shots all match the first shot.
The face recognition and blink detection both seem to work well. As the camera focuses, it will zoom in on one of the faces so the photographer can verify correct focus. After the shot is taken, if someone blinked it will identify the face of the person blinking so you can take another shot. These can be turned on or off according to user preference. Images seem very crisp, which I attribute to the image stabilization features, which can also be turned on or off.
I've had the camera in the sink, and it handles six inches of water with no problems. I'll see how it does with thirty two and a half more feet of water when it meets the Atlantic Ocean in a few weeks! The wrist strap attaches to any one of the four corners of the camera (convenient for carrying in either left or right hand) and seems to be pretty secure, so no worries about losing it if you get knocked over by a wave.
I use Photoshop Elements, so I haven't loaded the Canon software and can't comment on that. And since I edit photos on the computer, I doubt that I'll use some of the in-camera editing features, such as black and white, sepia, color swap, and the various color enhancements. I could see that would be useful to those who print directly from the camera, without editing on a computer.
The camera doesn't allow you to shoot in RAW. I generally don't shoot in RAW with my SLR, so that doesn't worry me. It has a number of white balance modes, custom white balance, and auto white balance. It seems to do a good job selecting the correct shooting conditions in auto mode. Colors appear correct.
A couple of drawbacks: The camera isn't threaded so you're not able to attach filters. There's also no lens cap, and I worry about the lens surface getting damaged. For a rugged "adventure" camera, I'm also surprised that there's no GPS chip so that photos can be tagged with the exact location. I look at old slides taken while I was hiking and think "that's neat, why can't I remember where I took that." It would be nice if the EXIF data included lattitude and longitude. (Watch Canon come out with the Powershot D10 "Gold" six months from now that incorporates these features. The curse of being an early adopter.)
The microphone picks up every movement your fingers make as you hold the camera, so it's difficult to capture movies without some camera noise. The speaker on the bottom of the camera is also difficult to hear when playing movies back on the camera, but movies sounds fine when I pop the memory chip into the computer and watch in Quicktime. Movies are produced in the .mov format, so you'll have to do some conversion if you want to do anything with it in Windows Movie Maker. You can also choose between higher quality 640 x 480, or lower quality 320 x 240. (I should post a video review, but look like a dork in movies, so I'll spare everybody that.)
Tried to take a few infrared photos, but the image has the Hot Spot typical of many Canon cameras and lenses. I held a Hoya R72 filter over the lens and took several shots. Bright sunlight is about a 4" exposure, and all shots have a bluish circle in the center.
The drawbacks are very minor compared to the great images this camera produces.
I'm very impressed with this camera. It feels very sturdy, takes great photos, and seems very easy to use. Although I'll probably continue to use my Digital Rebel as my primary camera, I certainly look forward to many years of fun with this camera.'
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