BargainCell

Canon’s PowerShot SD3500 IS is sort of a follow-up to 2009’s SD980 IS in that it has a touch-screen LCD and features the same ultrawide-angle 24mm-equivalent lens with a 5x zoom. This time around, though, the resolution’s been bumped up to 14 megapixels and the screen is larger with better resolution. But outside of those core features, the camera is somewhat unremarkable.

Typical of the Digital Elph series, the SD3500 IS is reasonably small, good-looking, and available in different colors: black, silver, and pink. It’s stylish without being flashy and can comfortably slip in a pants pocket or small handbag. The LCD and ultrawide-angle lens give it some weight, though, and the all-metal casing makes it feel sturdy. The only real issue with the overall design, however, is the position of the flash high on the left side, which can be blocked by a finger if you’re not careful.

The SD3500 IS is controlled much more by touch than the SD980 IS. That camera still had a number of physical controls, while the SD3500 drops to just power, play, and shutter release buttons and a shooting mode switch on the top of the body. There’s a zoom ring around the shutter release, but otherwise the controls are touch-based. The screen is twice the resolution and a 0.5-inch bigger than that model’s, too.

The screen is fairly responsive and can be calibrated to your touch, but the interface itself can be a little trying at times to navigate. For example, when navigating the option lists in the main menu system, instead of using simple up and down arrows, you drag the lists with your finger. This would be fine if it operated smoothly, but it doesn’t, and if you use the right side of the screen you may accidently change settings to boot. In its favor, though, the shooting options specific to the mode you’re in can quickly be changed with a couple of taps and Canon includes a couple options to rearrange the layout.

The best use for a touch screen is for focusing on specific subjects by tapping on them, which this Canon does. It will also track the subject, making the feature even more valuable. However, unlike many newer touch-screen cameras, you cannot tap to focus and shoot. Canon even dropped the onscreen shutter release that appeared whenever the SD980 was turned vertically.

In Playback mode, the touch screen can be used for flipping through or scrolling between images, selecting photos to delete or mark as favorites, starting a slideshow, and magnifying a section of a photo by tapping on the part you want to see more closely. Canon also includes its Active Display technology letting you move back and forth between photos and checking focus on still images by tilting the camera left or right. You can also tap the left and right sides to move one frame at a time through your shots. Photos can be tagged as favorites or quickly categorized by subject for easy filtering when looking through a lot of images.

The shooting mode switch on top of the camera has three options: one for Auto, one for Movie mode (capturing up to 720p HD resolution), and a camera mode (that’s what I’m calling it since it’s designated by a picture of a camera). The camera mode gives you access to a Program Auto mode as well as all the scene modes including Portrait, Night Snapshot, Kids&Pets, Low Light, Indoor, Beach, Foliage, Snow, Fireworks, and Long Shutter. Canon added a Smart Shutter option, too, which includes a smile-activated shutter release as well as Wink and Face Detection self-timers. Wink allows you to set off the shutter simply by winking at the camera and the Face Detection option will wait till the camera detects a new face in front of the camera before it fires off a shot. Both work well.