Canon is one of the trusted names in the field of photography. Be it modern digital photography or classic film-based photo shooting, Canon has always been the top choice for photography lovers. Maintaining the trust of its users, Canon has launched PowerShot Elph 330 HS camera. With affordable price of $250, this compact camera is packed with so many advanced and useful features. The understandable user interface of the camera makes it easily operable by all. The 12-megapixel CMOS sensor with 10x optical zoom allows you to click sharp photographs. With built-in Wi-Fi, you can share your favorite photos with your friends and family immediately after clicking.
Let us discuss some of the attractive and valuable features of this camera:
Canon PowerShot Elph 330 HS Features and Design:
This is a midrange camera of Canon that has a sleek look with metal exterior and curved lines that make it comfortable to hold. The camera is available in pink, black, and silver colors, and measures 2.2 X 3.8 X 0.9 inches with weight of nearly 5.1 ounce. The ’10x’ zoom covers 24-240 mm field of view with a variable aperture, which starts at f/3 and closes at f/6.9 (when you zoom all the way). The bright display of this camera enables you to use it outdoors. Elph’s small frame is not cluttered with buttons, but you have everything there that is required for making quick adjustments.
You can easily shoot in your camera’s Hybrid Automatic mode, which takes most of the controls from your hand. You can set the self-timer and decide the time for flash to on or set it in automatic mode. The switching to program shooting via a toggle switch provides you more control. In this mode, the rear control button that adjusts the EV Compensation works and lets you make your photos darker or brighter.
Now, the flash control – you can force your flash to fire or adjust it for firing properly when using a comparatively slower speed of the shutter. You can find and access other shooting controls through the overlay menu, which can be activated by Set or Function button. These shooting controls contain ISO settings, contentious drive mode, metering pattern, white balance, and the ratio of image aspect. Moreover, you have a number of scene modes, which include some old standards (such as Snow and Fireworks) and modern artistic modes (like Miniature Effect, Toy Camera, and Smooth Skin). However, you do not have any specific mode for sports, for getting faster shutter speed for capturing the action, but you can boost up the ISO as high as you feel comfortable and shoot your photographs in Program mode.
The Wi-Fi implementation of this camera is not as full-featured and easy-to-implement as in Samsung cameras or Android Galaxy Cameras. These models allow you to post your photos very easily from your camera onto social networking sites and control the shutter and zoom of your camera through your smartphone. However, Canon has not gone so far in including Wi-Fi in their Camera. Initially, you have to enable the Web services, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter through the Gateway software of your Camera. For this, you need to attach your Elph to your PC or Mac, which is not a difficult process. You can pair your camera easily with your smartphone and tablet through peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection for transferring your photos. While shooting your photos, if you leave your Camera Window app running, then you can easily enable location logging that adds GPS data to your phone during the transfer. This application is free for iOS and Android devices.
You also have the old option of transferring your photos directly to your computer from the camera; however, using the SD card reader is a more preferred method over this. Transferring photos via the card reader is faster as well as it does not drain the battery of your camera. Apart from all this, you can transfer photos to a supported wireless printer through Wi-Fi and send or receive photos from another Canon camera via the same Wi-Fi mode. The transferring from one Canon camera to another is not that difficult or crucial task, but giving your photo to the printer for printing requires more thorough working, as you may want to crap a photo before printing it.
The Performance of This Camera:
This efficient camera starts and grabs a photograph in just 1.8 seconds. The shutter lag is an impressive 0.15 seconds and the camera fires off the shots at 2 frames per second. The Sony WX150 is a quite speedy camera than this, as it starts and shoots the photograph in just 1.4 seconds, it has almost negligible shutter lag, and can fire off around 10-shot burst in about 6.7 frames per second, but it makes you wait around 8 seconds before shooting the next photo after the burst is captured.
If you use Imatest for checking the sharpness of this camera, then its score does not come bad. It comes around 1800 lines per picture height, which is calculated by using the center-weight average. The camera scores 2069 lines, which is an impressive result for compact. The Imatest also checks your camera for noise. It is seen that camera’s image quality gets poor when camera’s sensitivity to the light, which is measured in ISO, is increased. The Elph keeps the noise of the camera under 1.5 percent via ISO 16000, which is a good result for a camera that has small image sensor. For managing sharper quality of your images, you are advised to shoot at lowest ISO that you can manage, but do not hesitate to push it to ISO 1600 when the lightning calls for it. You can go as high as 3200 in a pinch, but it is advised to avoid ISO 6400, as in this, ISO images for sure get noisy and details can go missing.
The videos are recorded in QuickTime format in 1080p24 or 720p30 quality. The footage of the video also looks very good, but the frame rate, which is 24fps, is a bit slower for capturing fast action. This quality of video is generally used in cinemas and using it in the movies of your home gives them a cinematic look. In addition to this, the camera allows you to reduce its resolution to 720p for hitting 30 frames per second; however, some cameras (such as Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS) are capable of shooting 1080p60.
You can easily zoom in and out while shooting; however, the sound of the lens moving in and out is quite audible. The auto-focusing feature during shooting a video is quite fast, accurate, and silent. The mini HDMI allows you to connect your camera directly to HDTV and the mini USB port lets you attach it to your computer. The rechargeable battery is included in the camera and it supports SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory cards. This Canon camera still includes the plug-in wall charger, whereas other compact cameras allow you to charge the battery of the camera in the camera itself.
Pros of Canon PowerShot Elph 330 HS Camera:
The sharp lens of the camera enables you to click clear and pointed photographs. The integrated Wi-Fi allows you to share your photographs on social networking sites. The marvelous ISO performance rate with 10X optical zoom gives your photo a poster effect. The short shutter lag clicks photos quicker than ever and the external battery charger is also a useful feature.
Cons of Canon PowerShot Elph 330 HS Camera:
We can specify the Canon PowerShot Elph 330 HS Camera problem in some points as – it has a smaller aperture lens, it lags in providing full manual controls, and the 1080p video is limited to 24fps only.
Conclusion or the Verdict:
Canon PowerShot Elph 330 HS is one of the best cameras that you can purchase in this rate of $250. With the 10x zoom of the camera, you can click beautiful photos and share them immediately with your loved ones over the Internet. The 1/2.3 inch image sensor of this camera provides you an excellent experience for clicking photos. The video mode of this camera is a bit disappointing and the wider aperture lens would lead you to a long way for enabling you to use lower ISO settings in dim light. In addition to this, the external charger of the camera makes it possible to recharge your batteries externally. However, you cannot find it as one of the finest cameras, if you compare it with D-SLR in image quality; but among its contemporaries, it is the finest one.
If you leave the video mode apart, then the camera needs an award for providing excellent picture quality in such reasonable rate. Therefore, if you are planning to purchase a digital camera in this range, then opting for this is the best option available so far.
