New camera - first impressions of the Canon SD1400

I sold my Samsung PL100 digital camera

Image from Best Buy website

My final impression of the Samsung PL100 Camera

To summarize the next half page of text, I do not recommend the Samsung PL100

I chuckled when I saw it on sale at Best Buy for $149.99 CDN this week. I bought it April 11th (3 months ago) and it was $249.99 CDN. Do you know why the price dropped 40%? Because the camera is lousy!

You can read about my first impressions of the camera here but after taking it on three trips (Canmore, Vegas, Kansas City) I had enough.

(1) The video quality is absolutely poor and you can see a video if you scroll down the post here. Sadly that is actually one of the better videos too - I'm talking about an extremely poor pickup of sound through the microphone and lines appearing on and off the screen during a video. Not to mention how grainy the video image is.

(2) It's impossible to take a clear nighttime picture. I could not get even one clear nighttime picture from this camera. It was always blurry no matter what mode I shot on, no matter if the flash was on or off, or if the camera was held steady or even placed on a ledge. The recent nighttime shots I took in my Vegas post were taken with my sister's Canon. I was really frustrated after a couple of nights out in Kansas City and not being able to capture a moment on film.

Features I like about the Samsung PL100 that are not on the Canon SD1400

(1) I will miss the front LCD screen. Reality is, even though I bought the Samsung PL100 with intentions that the front screen would help with FOTDs and such, I was always placing the camera in front of a mirror if I was alone. It defeats my initial purpose but there's really no replacement for a mirror if you're taking a self portrait.

(2) I very much love the glossy black finish on the Samsung PL100 and how seamless the front LCD screen blended in when turned off. The Canon SD1400 is matte feel with a slight metallic finish.

(3) I liked how I could charge the battery without removing the battery from the Samsung PL100. Because the more often I have to open that battery door hinge, the higher the probability I will snap that hinge off :\ With the Canon SD1400, you have to remove the battery from the camera to charge it.

(4) Ability to crop images and save it as a new file directly on the Samsung PL100.

(5) I will miss the jog dial that had options to switch to different shooting modes. There is no jog dial on the Canon SD1400. Instead, there's an ugly flimsy plastic hinge for the A/V out HDMI cable

My Canon SD1400

I used a gift certificate Dale gave to me to buy this camera from Best Buy. Thank you Dale :)

I walked through the camera section at Best Buy like three or four times and was quite disappointed. I initially thought I would get the Canon S90 because the specs sounded really good and one reviewer said she could fit it in her skinny jeans. Okay - I saw the camera in person and it's huge by my standards. I don't know what skinny jeans she's wearing....or maybe my jeans are just too tight haha ;)

So why did I settle on the Canon SD1400? Well it was the slimmest Canon in the store. I'll only settle if it's slim or ultra slim. And I'm not about to go without a camera. Plus, Best Buy has a great return/exchange policy where for the first 14 days if I don't like the camera I can get a full refund. My boyfriend who use to live in Isreal told me everything in that country is final sale - refunds don't exist. Yikes! Can you imagine if there wasn't a return policy in your country?! I can't!

What camera did I use to take these grainy pictures? Why it's my iPhone!

See that plastic hinge I'm lifting up in the top right corner of the camera?

This is the first thing that turned me off about the camera. The plastic hinge looks and feels cheap. Canon should have put this A/V HDMI slot more discretely on the corner side of the camera like most other models.

Some Nighttime pictures taken with Canon SD1400

Any decent camera will take crisp pictures in the daytime. The real test is at nighttime and in dim lighting.

Around midnight last nigt, I went around my block and took a few pictures to test. The following six pictures were taken with no flash on regular shooting mode.

Night mode vs Regular mode in Nighttime

You'd think the "night" mode would come in handy when taking a picture at nighttime. Basically, it just activates a flash and to me, it's more blurry than just using a flash in regular mode.

See what I mean?

And now I removed the "night" mode and switched to just regular mode with a flash

My other quick test pictures turned out similar results. And funny enough, in the same way my "night" mode on the old Samsung PL100 actually took worst pictures at night than the regular shooting mode.

Does the "night" mode on your camera actually help you take better pictures at night?

And this one picture turned out wonky. About 80% of the pictures I took at night with my Samsung PL100 turned out like this (yeah, terrible!)

Flash vs No Flash in Nighttime

No Flash in this picture

Nex up I added a flash. I find the flash to be very distorting.

The only time I use a flash is when I must (like in a night club)

Do you use the flash much on your camera?

Overall first impression of the Canon SD1400

I'm quite impressed with the nighttime photos. Compared to the Samsung PL100, the quality of the nighttime photos it is like day and night. I also like how quick the camera focuses and how the shutter speed is quite fast.

I took one really short video clip as well and it's not bad. The microphone picks up voice pretty well like most other digital cameras (ah hem Samsung PL100). But, for a camera that shoots HD quality video with 720p resolution I was expecting it to be more crisp. Maybe I have to fiddle with a couple of the video features to tweak the quality?

Over the course of the week I will make several videos and take more photos. I'll upload a post in the near future on what I think of the camera then :)

What do you think of the nighttime photos above so far? What camera are you using to take pictures? Does it take good nighttime pictures?