Canon SD110

My Canon SD110 has been a real work horse.  I used it at home, on the road, on the plane, in airports, in my car, on campsites, on waters, on canoes, in forests, under canoes while portaging, in the rain, everywhere.  It had a problem with the LCD but Canon offered a free fix.  Why am I bringing the subject of this camera up now?

Well, I do like the compactness of the camera--easy and light to carry around anywhere you go.  It however takes an awfully long time to power up and and the shutter lag often misses the moment.  Is there a camera that offers speedy power-up time and near instant shutter lag?  I am contemplating at getting a Canon G10, a Canon S90, or a Nikon P90, but for almost $400, why would I spend the money on a point-and-shoot compact camera?  I could get a decent DLSR with a kit lens for that much.  I am now looking for a used G10, S90, or P90, somewhere around $100.  Even that seems pricy for a point-and-shoot, for some reason.

Point-and-shoot ain't so bad ...

On Sunday, after a fairly long morning of hiking and shooting, my friends and I went out golfing. I could not imaging carrying my DSLR around for 6000 yards so I just took my trusty Canon SD110 3.1MP point-and-shoot.

This is a great camera for day use. It has a landscape and macro mode. In macro mode, you can get pretty close to a subject and blur the background out. This photo of the daisies was 100% cropped and sharpened in Irfanview.

This shot of the golfer was cropped and colour-adjusted (increasing contrast and lowering the gamma in Irfanview). The original photo does not show much of the orange hue in the sky but the colour adjustment really brings it out.

Not too bad for some older technology!

How wide are they anyways?

Seeing that the compact camera Canon SD110 was able to shoot at f/2.8 at 5mm, I started to wonder how wide 5mm on a compact really translates to. I cannot imagine how wide the field of view would be through a 5mm SLR lens. So, here is a quick test.

From one place, I shot my window frame. It is clear that the SLR lens at 18mm captures a wider field of view. At the shortest focal length, the 5mm of the tiny lens of the Canon is equivalent to about 24mm or 28mm on an SLR lens.

Canon SD110 at 5mm:


Nikkor 18-200mm at 18mm:



BTW, I did not know how to expose the shot for the outside with the Canon SD110 so I underexposed the shot manually by 2 f-stops to get the blue of the sky. Also, at an equivalent 24mm, the Canon SD110 can shoot at f/2.8 (see the previous post). That is faster than the Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 !! :)

As a side note, if you wanted to shoot the window frame with the blue of the sky, underexpose the shot as I have done and turn on flash. In effect, you are exposing for the sky and use the flash to fill in the foreground. This is from the Canon test shots:

Always have a camera on you

There are days I feel my D80 would be an encumbrance to carry around. On a night into the city for example, I would have more fun if I didn't have to worry about a camera. You should always bring a camera though.

Last night, I left my D80 at home and brought my old Canon SD110 along. The SD110 is a neat camera that fits into a small Lowepro pouch. Use it without flash and some results can be surprisingly good -- the truth though is, I never knew how to use it properly in the past until I started playing with the D80. I have always used it the way it was marketed -- point and shoot. The camera will figure out everything for you -- almost everything.

So here were a couple of shots I took. The shot outside the bar was untouched. It was fairly sharp (and this was handheld) and a bit noisy, but it turned out quite colourful. The shot was taken in auto mode at 5mm f/2.8 at 1/8 seconds. ISO was auto -- no idea what was actually used.

This bar (not the Rhino lounge above) was quite dark. The original shot was darker than what is shown -- I increased the Gamma values and the contrast a bit. I should have overexposed the shot but being that it is a compact camera, its manual settings were not as easy to change and so I did not even think of overexposing the shot then. The shot was taken at 5mm f/2.8 at 1/8 seconds. It would appear then this was the limit of the camera. It increased the aperture to the maximum at f/2.8 and the best it can shoot at was 1/8 seconds.

The bike shot, well, is a little washed out. It had to be taken with flash, but the point was, I would not have been able to capture anything had I left both cameras home. That bike didn't need a chain. It was entombed in snow and ice!

Canon SD110 broken CCD

Well, after five years, my Canon SD110 has finally shown its age. I cannot take any more pictures with it. Everything about the camera is still functioning fine except for what I believe is the CCD. The menu works, the LCD works, the shutter works, the flash works, the zoom lens works. All the buttons and knobs work. This camera is built solid, with a metallic frame. The camera just cannot take pictures.

This afternoon, I took out the camera. I remembered seeing distortion of images in the LCD a couple of months ago. I thought it was just the LCD so I did not care much, but I got curious. My niece used my camera to take some pictures. I never transfered the pictures out of the camera until today. I wondered whether it was the LCD or maybe worse, the CCD. To my dismay, some pictures she took turned out fine, but some not. It was not the LCD.

Before transfering the pictures out, I thought I would take one picture as for a brief five minutes, the LCD looked somewhat clear -- there was still a purplish band at the top of the LCD. I knew it was not vignetting as I have never seen it with the built-in lens.


The purple band is there. There is a horizontal line running across the image at about half way down. There is also a vertical smudgy line in the image.

That was the last picture I could take with the camera. Now, every picture I take is completly dark.


I checked with Canon's website. There is an advisory for the SD110 and several other Canon point-and-shoot cameras, about the CCD. In a hot and humid environment it is possible for some bonded electronics to come separate. Canon will repair it for free, even if the warranty has expired. I will send my camera in and will see what they say. I hope they can repair it as I like this camera a lot, and repair it fast because I need it for interior camping in a couple of weeks.