Canon PowerShot D10

Shooting Modes (11.00)

The D10 has a wide selection of shooting modes, including a full auto, program and a selection of scene modes. There are 18 in all, including the common program, landscape and other modes, plus a panorama assist mode that helps create panoramic images. As you would expect from a camera like this, there are also modes for shooting at the beach, shooting underwater and shooting at an aquarium.

The scene modes menu of the D10

Picture Effects (4.00)

Canon offers several color modes that produce special effects in images. Examples of all of these modes are shown below.

My Color Examples
My Colors Off	Vivid Boost saturation of all colors	Neutral More muted colors
Sepia Sepia toned greyscale	Black & white Black and white	Positive 'recreates the vivid colors of shooting with film'
Lighter Skin Tone Lightens skin tones	Darker Skin Tone Darkens skin tones	Custom Custom settings for contrast, sharpness, saturation, red, green, blue and skin tone

Focus (8.50)

The D10 uses a single focus area in the center of the frame. You do get the option to change the size of the area , but you can't move it off-center. There is also an option to use face detection to focus in on faces. We did find that the auto focus worked quickly, though; it usually snapped into place and beeped reassuringly in less than a second.

Macro focus down to a minimum distance of 1.2 inches (5cm) is also offered, as well as a manual focus mode.

Exposure (2.00)

The D10 did good job of correctly guessing the correct exposure in our tests, but you can also tweak the exposure if required. You get exposure compensation of 2 stops up or down in the program and scene modes, but there is no bracketing.

Metering (7.00)

The usual options of a full evaluative mode, center weighted and spot metering are offered on the D10. In addition, a face detection mode finds and meters for faces in the frame. We were not able to test if this worked on mermaids, as none were available for testing.

White Balance (6.00)

The D10 offers a full auto mode for white balance, as well as 7 presets and an evaluative mode. In this, you point the camera at something white and press the shutter, and it judges the white balance. 

Aperture (7.50)

The D10 has a very decent aperture range for a point and shoot camera: the 3X zoom lens has an aperture range of f/2.8 to f/9.0. That's a very decent range, and the wider aperture will help get better shots underwater; it allows the camera to grab more light. 

Shutter Speed (4.00)

The shutter speed range of the D10 goes from 1 second down to 1/1500 of a second in program modes, although this can be expanded to 15 seconds in the night mode. That's a decent enough range, but we would have liked to have seen some faster shutter speeds for capturing fast moving objects. 

Self-Timer (8.00)

The D10 offers a lot of options in its self timer feature. As well as the usual simple 10 and 2 second delays, the camera can take a number of photos (from 3 to 10) when it detects a face in the frame. There is also a custom option which allows you to set the delay (up to 30 seconds) and the number of shots that are taken (from 3 to 10). The only things missing are an interval timer, where the camera takes a number of shots at a preset time interval, and a smile detection, which takes the photo when it detects someone smiling.

Drive/Burst Mode (5.50)

Only one drive mode is available on this camera: a continuous mode that can keep shooting for as long as there is space on the memory card.

Shot to Shot (1.46)
We measured the speed of the continuous drive mode at around 1.1 frames a second, which is pretty much spot on with Canon's specs. This is rather slow, but most point and shoots can't shoot that quickly. Some do offer modes that allow you to take a limited number of shots quicker, but the D10 does not. 

Shot to Shot Score Comparisons
		Compare to Fuji Z33WP
		Compare to Olympus Stylus Tough 8000
		Compare to Pentax W80

See how the competition stacked up against the Canon D10
Fuji Z33WP	Olympus Stylus Tough 8000	Pentax W80