Manual Control Options
This slim digital camera isn’t designed for professionals. Instead it is made for on-the-go fashionistas who want to snap pictures of friends, pets, and lovely sunsets. They don’t care much for setting the aperture or fiddling with the shutter speed. In case they feel like venturing into manual controls, the farthest they can go is to set the white balance, ISO, and exposure compensation.
Focus
Auto Focus (8.5)
The Canon PowerShot SD870 IS’s autofocus system isn’t as quick as it should be. It’s a little slow to the draw on candid shots. It takes a few tenths of a second to focus and take a picture, and takes a little longer when the lens is zoomed all the way in. More details on its speed can be found in the Testing/Performance section.
The SD870 IS can focus as close as 1.5 feet normally and 1.2 inches in Macro mode. Macro mode can focus as far as 2 feet before subjects start looking fuzzy. The Digital Macro mode can focus from 1.2 inches to 2 feet. Of note is the autofocus assist beam that can be turned on and off in the Recording menu.
The through-the-lens autofocus system allows users to change the focus frame size from normal to small. It also allows users to select AiAF, Center, and Face Detect modes. The face detection system is advertised as being able to recognize up to 35 faces at a time – enough to perfectly portray most extended families.
The freshly upgraded face detection system is one of the biggest perks over the SD850, which can only recognize nine faces at a time. Is it worth it? It depends on how often users photograph incredibly large groups of people. The SD870 tracks faces at sharper angles too, instead of only the straight-ahead profile on the SD850.
When the Canon SD870 is tracking faces, it shows a white bracket around the primary face and gray brackets around the secondary ones. The live view doesn’t always show how many faces are truly recognized, though. I snapped several pictures of a large group of people, and on the screen I saw six frames around faces at most. When I looked at the picture in Playback mode, however, more frames would appear. The most I could eek out of the system was 11 recognized faces in one picture.
Manual Focus (0.0)
There is no manual focus available on the Canon SD870.
ISO (8.0)
The Canon PowerShot SD870 IS has an ISO range that remains unchanged from the earlier model. It has 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1600 options, along with Auto and High ISO auto modes. Like the SD850, it also has an Auto ISO Shift feature that detects blur and warns the user. Users can instantly up the ISO by having this feature turned on all the time, or activate it by pushing the print/share button. The ISO range maxes out at 1600, but users should be wary of setting it above 80. More details are available in the Testing/Performance section of this review, but there is a lot of noise that appeared in the images when the ISO is increased.
White Balance (7.75)
The white balance is found in the Function menu, where it has a big live preview. Auto, Day Light, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, and Custom are the options. Like most other Canon digital cameras, there isn’t a flash preset. The camera’s white balance still performed well, and colors are very accurate. The custom white balance is easy to set; a small bracket appears in the center of the image and an on-screen text prompts the user to push the display button to set the white balance. Easy.
Exposure (7.0)
Manual exposure controls are not found on this simplified point-and-shoot, but users can still brighten and darken the exposure with the Exposure Compensation feature. This is located in the Function menu with the typical +/- 2 range available in steps of one-third. A handy live view helps users decide just how bright or dark to adjust the exposure.
Metering (7.5)
Also in the Function menu and with a live view is the light metering. It has the options typically available on point-and-shoot digital cameras: Evaluative, Center-Weighted Average, and Spot. The Evaluative metering is the default and also links to the face detection mode to incorporate facial brightness into its equation. Spot metering is fixed to the center.
Shutter Speed (4.0)
The shutter speed ranges from 15 to 1/1600 of a second, although most of the time the camera selects a shutter speed slower than one second. The noise reduction system functions when the shutter speed is any slower than that. If users want to photograph stars, planets, or anything else in the dark, long exposures can be manually set by entering the Function menu, accessing the exposure compensation, and pushing the display button to scroll through the 1 to 15-second options. This long shutter feature is quite hidden, but it’s there.
Aperture (0.0)
The SD870’s Canon lens is wider and has a nice f/2.8 aperture at its 28mm focal length. However, when the camera is zoomed to its full 3.8x power, the aperture diminishes to f/5.8 and lets only a small amount of light pass to the image sensor. The older Canon SD850 has a narrower lens, with the same f/2.8 max aperture, but shrinks the aperture to f/5.5 in Telephoto mode. Just to compare, the Fujifilm FinePix F50fd’s 3x optical zoom lens has an f/5.1 aperture in Telephoto, and the Kodak EasyShare V705 shrinks to f/4.4 at its 117mm longest focal length.
