The full auto mode of the Canon PowerShot SD40 places control of most of its features in the hands of the camera itself, turning it into a true point-and-shoot camera. Most users would shoot almost exclusively in this mode.

The camera can record videos at a resolution of 640 x 480 and 320 x 240 pixels at frame rates of 30 or 15 fps. The smaller QVGA size can also record 60 fps for one minute of smooth video. There is also a video mail size of 160 x 120 pixels that records 15 frames per second for up to three minutes. Movies are saved as Motion JPEG AVI files, with mono sound from the built-in microphone. Movies can be recorded up to 4 GB of memory.

A reasonable continuous shooting mode is available, which can continuously take photos at a rate of 1.6 frames per second until the SD card is full. There are no first or last shooting modes, though; the camera keeps capturing all of the images in continuous mode until you release the shutter.

The Canon SD40 offers a variety of playback tasks, including the ability to create slideshows, set up favorites and perform basic video editing. However, this is limited by the size of the screen; a 1.8-inch screen isn’t really something that a group can gather around to view. An AV output feeds from the camera station, so if you want to show your photos off from the camera, you’ll need to take that along as well. Pictures can be viewed and magnified from 2-10x. They can also be sorted into categories and calendars, then jumped to with the multi-selector. Pictures can be rotated and the array of My Colors modes can be added. Voice memos can be added too.

 

Scene modes for Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Stitch Assist, Night Snapshot, Kids & Pets, Indoor, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Underwater, Color Accent and Color Swap are available from the shooting menu. The latter two modes process the image, with the color accent mode removing every color except the selected one (so you get a black and white image with one color) and the latter swapping over the two selected colors. Setting the colors in those modes is much like customizing the white balance in the Func./Set menu.