An In-Depth Look at 4 Ultra-compact Digicams

The Design: Canon PowerShot SD400

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The front of the Canon PowerShot SD400 features its telescoping optical zoom lens, which translates to a 35 - 105mm equivalent (35mm) zoom range. Directly above the lens is the viewfinder window and to the left is the AF-assist lamp. This lamp illuminates to help the camera focus when there is not enough ambient light. At the upper right is the built-in flash, which has the farthest flash range of all the cameras in this article when the lens is set to its widest position. Just to the left of the lens is a tiny microphone.

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The back of the SD400 features a 2.0" LCD monitor with 118K pixels. Above and to the right of the LCD monitor is the optical viewfinder along with two indicator lamps that illuminate depending on the camera's AF/flash status. At the top right is the camera's main mode switch. This allows you to select the camera mode from Play, Movie, and Record. Just below this are the Menu button, the camera's speaker, and a 4-way controller with a separate Set button in the middle. This 4-way controller not only allows you to navigate through menus, but each direction also corresponds to a shooting option (AF, Metering, Flash, Drive). Below the 4-way controller are the Display and Print/Share buttons.

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On the top of the camera, we can see the main power button. Just below the power button, there is a small lamp that illuminates when the camera is powered on. To the right of this is the shutter button, which is surrounded by the zoom controller. In Record mode, sliding the zoom controller to the left will cause the lens to zoom out. Sliding the zoom controller to the right causes the lens to zoom in.

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On the bottom of the SD400 is its metal tripod mount, which is located directly under the lens. To the left of this is a sliding hinged door that conceals the battery compartment. The camera uses SD cards as a means of storage. Inside the box, you will find a nearly useless 16 MB starter card. We highly recommend getting at least a 256 MB SD card right away because the 5 megapixel images produced by the SD400 are about 3 MB each. The camera uses a NB-4L Lithium-ion battery (3.7V 760mAh), which is recharged using the supplied wall charger.

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On the right side of the camera is a post for the included wrist strap. Also, we can find a well-concealed tab that hides/protects the A/V-out and USB ports.

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