Canon PowerShot S100 Digital Elph

Three-megapixel cameras are all the buzz, but there's no shortage of new two-megapixel models that merit a look. We recently reviewed five of the latest offerings (see www.macworld.com/2000/07/19/reviews/cameras.html ), the most noteworthy being the Canon PowerShot S100 Digital Elph. Built on Canon's popular Elph (an APS film camera), the Digital Elph is lightweight and small enough to fit in the palm of your hand or in your shirt pocket. A small size doesn't mean a small feature set, however: you get 2x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom, a built-in flash, a bright LCD monitor, USB connectivity, and a complete set of menu functions.

We compared the Digital Elph with the Nikon Coolpix 950, whose standout picture quality and ergonomic features set the standard for two-megapixel cameras last year. Like the Coolpix, the Digital Elph produced images with good skin tone and color fidelity. However, they did exhibit noticeable levels of noise.

The Digital Elph includes a proprietary Canon battery and recharger; the battery requires between 90 minutes and 2 hours to charge. Our tests showed that a fully charged battery will let you take dozens of shots. The Elph stores images on an 8MB CompactFlash card, but you can upgrade to a card that holds as much as 192MB.