Canon PowerShot S200 2MP Digital ELPH Camera w/ 2x Optical Zoom

What I liked:

-Ultra portable
-Very stylish stainless steel design
-Excellent color reproduction
-Great for closeups
-Outstanding low-light shooting capabilities, for all those nightime pictures! (please use a tripod)
-Fast battery charger (about 2 1/2 hours for a full charge)
-Excellent value for your money

What could be better:

-Image sharpness was slightly soft-looking (is that a Canon thing?)
-Average battery life (about 3 64MB cards)
-Small flash does not have a lot of power

The best thing about this camera is not only that it delivers great point and shoot pictures (for us amateurs!)but that it is extremely portable and provides a decent amount of experimentation and control via its straightforward LCD menu system.
I highly recommend it.

Rating: 2 - Excellent compact camera.... but has major problem.
Quick Update : The picture quality of this camera is horrible. Too many blurred and/or out of focus pictures. Had to sell off my S200 because it can't take sharp/crisp/clear pictures even in daylight ! Many other users on dpreview forums have same problems & Canon hasn't released any firmware update to fix it. My suggestion now is to avoid S200/S230/A40 because of focus problems.

My old review continues below :

Canon has another winner in its new S200 model just like the S110 and S100.

It has the following positives,
1. Excellent looks/build quality.
2. Great night shots, not found on any other compact 6 oz. camera, new long shutter feature in manual mode for upto 15 secs (tripod a must for this).
3. Very reliable and tons of features like charger works all over the world, PAL/NTSC video out, all cables included (unlike Sony).
4. Accepts cheaper Compact Flash cards which are easily available in sizes upto 256MB. Not expensive 64MB sticks here :)
5. Very much pocketable. Easily goes into any pocket.
6. 2.1 MP may looks low compared to other 3/4 MP cameras but this one offers more features without sticking you with any sticks ! Don't just use MPixels as your sole criteria when selecting camera. If you won't print them bigger than 8x10" then 2MP should be enough for now unless you have that extra cash :) Also Canon can't have a 3MP on the Elph's since they have to sell their S30/S40 also !
7. 2x zoom very faster to start and fold back. Works smoothly. You can turn the digital zoom off permanently.
8. LCD is superb, pictures look great on the 1.5" LCD. (a bigger 1.8" LCD on other need not neccessarily mean better quality, my last years Fuji had 1.8" and comes no where near this 1.5")
10. I haven't encountered any problems downloading pics till now. I don't see any reason to buy a CF card reader, the included cable works fine took just 3 mins for 100 big pictures
11. Comparing this with S330 is really very tough. S330 is heavy and feels rock solid, looks even better than S200 and has 3x zoom. S200 because of its light weight and smaller significantly smaller size is better to carry around. Play with both in your local store before deciding between the two.
11. Great user interface... think of these Elph's as Nokia's of digicams. Other cheaper camera's out there might not have same reliability, features, user interface and picture quality.

Things that could be better,
1. Only 2x Zoom, Canon needs to get this up to 3x next year. (And 4x on S330's replacement).
2. Battery... you might have to buy a second one for extra 45 bucks depending on your needs... I guess this is the case with any ultra compact camera
3. The battery/CF doors feel flimsy.
4. Canon's ZoomBrowser EX software is very unstable. It has crashed atleast 5 times in one week on Windows XP. also it takes long time to "update its database" whenever any pciture is deleted or addedd to the directory. Canon needs to iron out the problems in this. You may be better off using some other SW for editing/managing your pics, use this one just for downloading pics.
5. Price is still high for a 2MP camera, although its become much more affordable than last year.
6. Movie mode is almost useless because of 5 sec limit on decent sized clip. Its just a marketing thing.
7. Included CF card is just 8MB ! Someone has to start including these necessary things like a decent 64MB card along with new cameras.
8. Camera gets pretty hot in a few mins of use and the buttons on S200 feel tough to use compared to S330. This is part of the deal in buying a such compact camera.

Spend few extra bucks on this cool camera and you won't regret ! Getting a camera this compact has some compromises but well worth the ultra portability you get.

Rating: 3 - You give up some things to gain others
I've had my Canon S200 for a month. I have 3 main problems with the camera. #1- The Zoom. 2x zoom is just about like having no zoom at all. Forget the 2.5 digital zoom, it makes the pictures too fuzzy. #2- It has problems in low- light situations. I often have to use photo editing software to brighten up pictures. #3- The display is not very clear.

For the same amount of money, I wish I had gone with the Fuji Finepix 2800. It has the 6x optical zoom with a much clearer display.

With that said, it is a very small camera. Slip it in your pocket and no one has to know that you're a tourist. Also, the video with sound is very cool. With a 128 MB card and up you can store many video clips (up to 60 seconds per clip depending on what you're filming. Complex backgrounds such as trees will eat up the time quicker then if you were videoing sky). Also the software that comes with the Canon is very easy to use and the video software is neat too. I've heard people complain about the battery life but I took a whole weekend of videos and pictures with the display on without having to charge it.

So it boils down to: if you're looking for the small size, go with the Canon. If you're looking for zoom in the same price range as the Canon, go with the Finepix 2800.

For more details and to buy the Canon Powershot S200 from Amazon, you might like to try:

Canon PowerShot S200 2MP Digital ELPH Camera w/ 2x Optical Zoom