We just got a new Canon SD800IS, right before a trip to Europe (a few cities in the Netherlands and Belgium and Paris, and London).

We had a Canon S40 which served us well, but on our last trip while we were in Vancouver we started having trouble with the sliding lens cover and with the camera not turning on or powering itself off because of poor switch contact. I made some attempts to fix it and had limited success, but it’s not perfect and I’m not confident that it will continue to work reliably. So we figured we’d take the chance to upgrade and take advantage of the latest technology like image stabilization, orientation sensing, and ridiculously big memory cards that cost little more than a burrito.

I love the small, pocketable size. The user interface is snappy. It’s much quicker to turn this camera on and snap a photo since you don’t have to wait long for the barrel to extend and for the camera to “boot up”. Another feature that I dig is the orientation sensor – looking forward to not having to rotate photos that are taken sideways. With a 4 GB SDHC card, we have room for 1000+ pics at the highest resolution and medium compression. Newegg threw in a bonus 2 GB SD card with it too, so we should have plenty of room. Amusingly, the camera comes with a 16 MB SD card in the box, which is a joke. When the camera arrived, I popped it in and took 8 pictures before the card was full! I don’t know why they bother. I’d rather they not include the 16 GB card and knock a few bucks off the price that I could put towards a reasonably-sized memory card.

The thing that I don’t like about this camera so far are a few aspects of the build quality – namely the door over the battery and memory card compartment and even worse, the door over the USB and A/V ports. The hinges on these doors are extremely flimsy – shockingly so for what I’ve come to expect from Canon. Luckily, I probably won’t use the latter door very much, because otherwise I can’t imagine it lasting a week. The battery and memory card door is a tad sturdier but will get used a lot more so I’m a bit worried about that. Maybe I should pack some duct tape in my bag? 🙂

It will be interesting to see how the camera performs in the real world, on vacation. I am hoping that the small size and image stabilization will be features that I will appreciate a lot. And I hope that I don’t leave a broken-off battery door somewhere on the streets of Amsterdam…