Whew that’s a mouthful. That’s probably the longest name for a camera that I can think of.
PCMag reviews the Canon PowerShot SD430 Digital Elph Wireless and writes – ‘Moving pictures via wireless is slower than using a USB cable. In my tests, it took about 3 minutes to transfer 24 pictures to my laptop wirelessly. When you compare that to a USB 2.0 connection, which took just 16 seconds, it seems pretty slow. Still, there is something enjoyable about not having to hook up any cables, instead letting your wireless network handle the connection. Of course, you can transfer video clips, too, but this will take longer, since those files are larger. Your transfer speeds may vary depending on your wireless adapter, your computer, and your network environment. I have also noticed that the wireless cameras I’ve tested drain my laptop’s battery more quickly than standard digital cameras do.’

Steve’s Digicams reviews the Canon PowerShot SD430 Digital Elph Wireless and they write – ‘Shooting performance was very robust with power up until the first image captured taking only 1.6 seconds! Shutter lag, the delay between depressing the shutter button and capturing an image, was almost instantaneous (less than 1/10 of a second) when pre-focused, and only 2/10 of a second including autofocus. In single image drive mode, the shot to shot delay averaged 1.2 seconds without flash, and 2.2 seconds with flash. Using its continuous (burst) mode, I was able to capture 10 frames in only 4 seconds. When shooting in burst mode, the LCD briefly displays the last image captured making it difficult to follow moving subjects; You’ll achieve better results using the optical viewfinder.’

Digital Camera Resource Page reviews the Canon PowerShot SD430 Digital Elph Wireless and writes – ‘ The biggest selling point on the SD430 is its built-in 802.11b wireless transmitter. Once you get that set up (which is pretty easy), you can transmit photos without wires to your Windows PC, either as they are shot, or later in playback mode. You can also use Canon’s RemoteCapture software to control the camera right from your PC. In addition, the bundled Wireless Printer Adapter hooks into any PictBridge-enabled photo printer, so you won’t need a USB cable for that either. The downside here is that none of the wireless features are Mac compatible, though that will change in May of this year when a firmware upgrade is released.
Like Canon’s other cameras which utilize their DIGIC II processor, camera performance on the SD430 is excellent in almost all areas. The camera starts up quickly and shutter lag and shot-to-shot times are minimal. Autofocus speeds, while good, aren’t as fast as on some other cameras in this class. The one disappointing area in terms of performance on the SD430 is battery life, and it’s even worse than the estimates if you use the Wi-Fi a lot.’

 CNET reviews the Canon PowerShot SD430 Digital Elph Wireless and writes – ‘Using Canon’s RemoteCapture utility, which currently runs only on Windows XP SP2 (Mac OS X support is due this spring), a PowerShot SD430 user can remotely control zoom, image size and compression level, ISO speed, white balance, metering mode, color mode, focus point, macro mode, autofocus type, and flash mode. There is a live image preview that can be turned off to preserve the camera’s battery (though an optional AC adapter is recommended for remote shooting), and images can be saved to the memory card, the computer, or both. In automatic interval shooting mode, the number of images that can be saved is limited only by disk space, up to 99,999 shots.’

I’ve always been a fan of the Elph line myself – I love cameras that are small enough to take anywhere. Of course, that doesn’t explain my current 10x optical zoom, gigantico Kodak, but that’s neither here nor there. The SD430 Wireless seems to be a rather solid device, with great picture quality, excellent speed, and of course the fantastic form factor. It is rather pricey,with weak battery life, and wifi transfers are slower than cable ( did anyone NOT see that coming? ) However, what is it worth to eliminate yet another cable from your computer area? Priceless to me, which is why I’d vote for this device. If it were in an election or a contest of some sort, which I’m not aware that it is. So nevermind. Anyway, another solid device from Canon, on the way to making the perfect digital camera.

Related Posts:
Canon PowerShot SD430 Digital Elph Wireless Review at CNET
Canon Powershot SD450 Review at CNET
Canon PowerShot A700 Review at Let’s Go Digital

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 4:58 am and is filed under Canon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.