Canon PowerShot SD4000 IS

Viewfinder (0.00)

There is no viewfinder on the SD4000 IS: all images are previewed on the LCD screen.

Display (5.80)

Dominating the back of the SD4000 is the 3-inch LCD screen. This has a resolution of 230k, which is a little on the low side. Despite this, the screen looks good: images are clear and bright enough to make sure your images are in focus. The screen does get somewhat dim in bright daylight, but maxing out the brightness helps to some degree.

Flash (2.25)

The small flash is located to the left of the zoom lens. It is a little close to the lens, and we did see quite a lot of red-eye in images as a result. The flash is also no very powerful: Canon claims a range of up to 20 feet with the zoom at wide angle, but this seems very optimistic. We found that it only illuminated objects up to a distance of 8 to 10 feet at most.

A slow synch mode is also available, but there is no flash exposure compensation: the flash is either on or off.

Lens (4.40)

The lens of the SD4000 IS is a 4.9 to 18mm Canon branded zoom. That’s equivalent to a 28 to 105mm zoom on a 35mm film camera, which is a good wide zoom range for a compact camera.

The 28mm wide angle setting should provide for good group and landscape shots, but the 105mm zoom is a little short for getting close to the action at a football game.

Zoom Ratio Examples
4.9 mm	11.0 mm	18.6 mm

Battery (5.50)

The SD4000 gets its mojo from the NB-6L battery, which can hold about 1000mAh of charge. Canon claims that this should last for about 250 shots, which is acceptable in a small camera like this. The battery cannot be recharged in the camera; you have to remove it and place it in the included charger.

A spare battery will cost you $59.95 from Canon.

Memory (3.00)

The SD4000 IS uses SD Cards to store photos, but it is also compatible with the newer SDHC and SDXC standards. The latter has a maximum theoretical capacity of 2 Terabytes, but the biggest cards currently available are 64GB cards.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs (6.00)

Two ports are located under the cover on the right side of the body: a mini HDMI port and a combination USB/AV output. Both of these ports use standard connector types, so you can buy your own cables and use them. The exception is the analog audio./video output, which requires a special connector from Canon. The included cables are for USB and analog video & audio outputs: there is no HDMI cable.

We did find that the port cover is often a little hard to close: you have to push it closed on both sides for it to lock into place. If you don’t, it sticks out a bit and could get caught on something and torn off.