I have just finished taking my new Canon PowerShot ELPH 330 HS camera through a lengthy shakedown cruise. I have learned a number of things about it and will share my findings as clearly as I can.You should know that I have far more digital cameras than one person should own. My experience with them over the years has given me some degree of confidence in what I say about the Canon ELPH 330HS. This is my second Canon camera. I also own a Canon PowerShot SX230 HS which is similar in several ways.
I am an avid amateur travel photographer and my remarks are influenced by using my cameras extensively for that purpose.
I hope the following observations will help you make a decision about the Canon PowerShot ELPH 330 HS.
Pros:
* The camera is quite small and a true pocket dweller.
* Mine is silver in color and it looks great.
* It takes excellent pictures with the AUTO setting, but there are many options for those who think they can do better manually.
* It has an extensive of list of shooting modes for every situation.
* It has face recognition along with blink and smile shooting features.
* The low light capacity of the camera is outstanding.
* 12.1 megapixels put a lot of detail in the pictures.
* The 10x optical zoom is plenty and the anti-shake feature keeps them crisp.
* The image stabilization feature works very well and it is automatic.
* Close-up shots are beautiful.
* The WiFi feature is outstanding technology and that makes this camera special.
* I use the WiFi in my ELPH 330 HS for wirelessly transferring photos to both iOS devices and PC computers. That is amazing.
* The camera stores images on SD memory cards so pictures can be shared with a computer that way too.
* Using the WiFi one can also upload photos directly to social networks or email.
* I used the free Apple app Camera Window to connect with my iPod 5g and it worked better than the Canon suggestions found in the DVD instruction manual.
* Paring with a PC computer is a bit tricky, but it can be done by ordinary mortals.
* The display window on the camera is large and bright.
* The 330HS movies are excellent and there are a number of shooting options available.
* There is even full HD video in stereo sound available.
* The fit and finish are very good and that means this is a solid high quality camera.
Cons:
* Setting up the WiFi feature is not all that easy even though some of it is automatic.
* WiFi photo transfer is somewhat slow, but no problem.
* The camera controls are not made for large fingers.
* I miss the manual shooting mode wheel--poking around on screen based options is too slow to be useful if scenes, locations and objects change rapidly.
* The instruction manual on the provided DVD is confusing for setting up WiFi.
* The Hybrid movie feature is strange and seems to have limited purpose.
* I have yet to determine what the body of this camera is made of. It seems very light in weight which suggests plastic, but maybe aluminum.
* One can get bogged down and confused by the myriad of options available and it is difficult to find the way back out of unwanted settings. There is a way to re-set everything just in case.
That is about all of the first impression information I can offer. I plan to carry my new ELPH 330 HS to Europe later in the spring and hope to take advantage of the WiFi features for sending photos back home to friends and relatives while I am traveling abroad.
UPDATE:
I have just returned from two weeks in Great Britain and almost 700 photos taken with my Canon ELPH 330 HS and I was very satisfied with the how it performed. This little camera did everything I asked of it. Transferring all of those pictures to my iPad and to my Windows 7 laptop via WiFi was a perfect addition to the many other features. I am even more impressed with this camera after putting it to a very rigorous test. I bumped the camera around a lot on our trip and without a case on it. I even dropped it once and it kept on ticking. As a travel camera it is the best of the bunch as far as I am concerned.
I just have to chime in again on this post after almost 2 months of usage. I have bumped this camera rating to 4 of 5 stars (from 3/5). The more and more we use this camera, the more we are impressed with the pictures that it takes. We've really been pushing the camera in its macro shots, different focus points, etc. and we have been increasingly more impressed. One thing you can't get hung up on is looking at the photos on the back of the camera. They always look really dark and under exposed, but by the time you get them on a computer or go to do any processing, it really has produced a great looking picture. The 10x zoom has been very handy for us as well.
I still think my below gripes are valid (and I've left them unchanged) and the low light action isn't as good as I'd hoped, but still works just as good as our phones if not better in low light.
Do I think that a very good camera phone like the S4 or iphone 5 would match this still "all around" (indoors and outdoors)??? Perhaps the S4 given the pixel density, but I think that the color reproduction on this camera would still be better than the phones. We've taken thousands of pictures with it by now and most of them come out pretty spectacular. That said, the S4 does have some unique camera modes that this camera just can't handle.
Overall, we like this camera and use it frequently.
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We just received this camera last night and we took about 200 photos in varying light conditions as well as a few videos. Our hope was to get a camera that would be better in low light than our Samsung GS3 and GS2 phones. We were also looking for something to be able to hand to someone to take a picture of us, as handing someone your phone usually ends up with blurry pictures and/or potential for a dropped phone! (or if they run off with your life!) Our phones take pictures indoors that usually result in blurry pictures of our daughter and dog, we hoped that a dedicated point and shoot would remedy this issues for us. The last P/S we owned was purchased 5+ years ago and its just too slow to take any quality pictures anymore....so we finally wanted to upgrade. Finally, we HAVE to have a good WiFi connection and features with this camera so we can easily move and share photos. That's the biggest reason why we don't whip out our DSLR very often because of the hassle of transferring cards and photos manually....its a hassle.
So, let's get started. There definitely are goods and "mehs" with this camera, hence the "it's okay" rating of 3 stars.
#1. Low Light photography ---> This was one of our biggest concerns in a new camera. I would say that this camera is barely above the quality of our cell phones. The megapixel count is higher, but the overall noise in the photos are about equivalent. We tried the auto modes as well as manually adjusting the ISO and metering. Nothing seemed to improve the situation over the "auto" mode. There was less blurring with the 330HS over our phones in similar photos, but overall this problem was not fixed by purchasing this camera. Disappointing to say the least. However, the shutter speed and timing is quite fast for a point and shoot. It is on par with our phones for speed of taking photos. I would say though that the burst modes on our phones are superior to this camera.
#2. Normal light photography (indoors and outdoors) ---> I found that this camera did a very good job with color reproduction in normal light conditions or outdoor photography. The colors were less blued and yellowed than from our phones. Like most cameras, if it can't perform here, it might as well not be sold. So I wasn't "impressed" by this to say the least.
#3. Video capture at 1080 -----> I thought this too was adequate. I could not tell a difference between our phones (which do a really good job with video) and the 330HS. The 330HS does have better video stabilization and obviously a zoom, which are nice touches that will keep us using this camera for videos for sure. We also have a Canon video camcorder HD and the quality exceeds that camcorder in my opinion with handling less favorable light conditions. The stereo sound is also good from the 330HS on video recording.
#4. Flash -----> It appears to us that the flash is not "even". The bottom of our photos appear brighter than the tops. We will see if this is just the LED bulb reaching some sort of usable state and I'll report back.
#5. Menu system ----> Its nice there are physical buttons on this camera and the menus seem fairly intuitive once you figure out the modes. The manual really has nothing in there about the menus and structures. The manual is pretty much completely written for WiFi connections.....speaking of which....
#6. WiFi connectivity (part 1 connect to phone) ----> This was, as mentioned above a big reason why we got this camera. The Canon Camera Window app is supposed to connect easily to the camera as long as they are both on the same WiFi network. The advantage of the 330HS over the 320HS is that the 330HS is able to create its own "Access Point" so you can connect the phone directly to the camera when there is no WiFi network to share. So...connecting the Android GS3 phone through the same WiFi network does not ever connect. ###EDIT: MAKE SURE THAT YOUR WIFI NETWORK SSID IS BROADCASTING! AFTER I DID THIS, IT CONNECTED INSTANTLY VIA THE ANDROID CANON CAMERA WINDOW APP.#### Creating an access point with the camera itself and connecting the phone to it does work and works pretty well. Photo transfer is surprisingly quick when this mode connects successfully.
#7 WiFi connectivity (part 2 connect to web services like Facebook and Twitterz) ----> Once you get the camera, connect it to a computer and install the CD that comes with it. You can't seem to download this software anywhere, so it'll be interesting to see what those with ultrabooks and computers without disc drives will do for this.....I imagine they will get the link up soon. After you connect the system and make a Canon iMAGE Gateway account (free), then you can use the utility to add webservices to your camera. The application you want to use is IMAGE TRANSFER UTILITY to set these things up. It'll connect to your camera and it will allow you to add the webservices. This process is entirely NOT INTUITIVE. I doubt that less savvy folks would be able to get through this....then again, less savvy folks probably don't use all the online sharing services. Once you get this all completed though, the image sharing to Facebook works quickly and the pictures show up in your timeline or whereever you appoint them to go. The Twitter posting just posts a link to your image on Canon iMAGE Gateway, does not put it in your feed. There is no access to Google+, which I think is a really big omission as that network is the one I like best and hopefully they will add this feature in the future.
#8 WiFi connectivity (part 3 stability of connection) ---> I thought I'd put this in a separate category. There doesn't seem to be a way to keep the camera connected to the internet if you wanted to move a few pictures in a short amount of time. Every single time the camera has to go through the SSID and password to connect back to the network. This takes probably about 30-60 seconds to complete. Sure that doesn't sound that slow, but when you are trying to share something and are used to an instant 2 taps to make it happen. This can feel like an eternity.
Wrap-up (and I will update this if we keep the camera longer than a week):
I was hoping that this camera would have wowed me considering that its 2013 and the camera tech is now pretty amazing, but instead its just "meh". I think that this camera is adequate for someone looking for a basic point and shoot that doesn't have a high end phone like the GS3, iphone5, LG Optimus Pro, HTC One, etc. If you have one of those phones, you will probably be a little frustrated with this device. We most likely will keep this camera just to have something to hand to someone to take a photo of us, since we rarely do that with our phones. Unfortunately though, I think that the touted features of this device like the WiFi connections (90% of the manual is dedicated to this) need some work. It seems frustrating that Canon would not learn more from the current phones on the market and emulate those same features and ease of use. So I will continue to use my phone and other devices for instant connections and use this for handing to people to take photos of us, I guess. Time will tell, I will update this post the more we use it. The good news is that some of these gripes can be fixed by software updates and app updates, but will Canon care to fix them???? They better if they want to stay relevant.I want to use my DSLR whenever possible, but it is often not practical to take with me as a "walkabout" camera due to its size and the need to carry additional often bulky equipment. A point-and-click camera is something I still use often and can carry with me at any time with barely a second thought.
I'd previously owned several Canon point-and-click models most recently a Powershot A2000 that I've taken almost 10,000 photos with so far and is still going strong. It is getting a little long in the tooth now though, with just a CCD sensor rather than a CMOS, and fairly limited operation and speed due to the old Digic 3 processor, (rather than the Digic 5 in this ELPH 330 model.) The Digic 5 processor is noticeably quicker than my old Digic 3 based camera and of course it has to do a lot more as well both due to shooting in much higher resolutions, but also because the camera has a lot more automated features. The fact that this camera had the Digic 5 processor was a big selling point to me. It offers a huge improvement over previous iterations of the chip, (I won't detail them here but Canon's website provides this information if anyone is interested.)
When I received this camera, the first thing that struck me was how tiny it is especially bearing in mind the fact it has a 10x optical zoom that is required to extend out so significantly and retract back into the main body. How Canon has achieved this is beyond me, but I'm glad they did.
Anyone who has ever used a previous Canon digital camera will be right at home using this new model. The auto mode is fantastic I never thought I'd say that about a compact camera and it takes great photos in a variety of environments I've tested it in, (at night under artificial light with and without the flash; outside on a sunny day and outside after snowfall; indoors during the day, outside in close to darkness, etc.) To be honest, I'm fairly experienced when it comes to photography I know my way around f-stops, shutter speed, ISO, exposure, etc. as I own a DSLR, but for use as a "walkabout" camera, I'll probably only somewhat rarely take this camera out of "Auto" mode. The pictures are so wonderfully focused, clear and full of color. The semi-auto and manual modes are still there, (with the omission of the old "landscape" mode although there is an "infinity" mode now that appears to be a similar thing.) There is a Program (P) mode too which I've always found incredibly useful and my default mode to use with other Canon point-and-shoot models that mode allows the camera to handle the aperture and shutter and gives control to the user to set other factors of the photo namely the ISO, flash mode, exposure compensation and white-balance. The camera does still retain a "Portrait" mode too, which is useful for taking photos of people up close and allows the camera to blur the background a little using a large aperture (i.e. small f-stop) automatically.
This camera has built in wireless connectivity, but, to be honest I probably will never use this capability. I prefer to copy my images to my computer and edit/crop them in Paintshop Pro prior to uploading them anywhere.
Insofar as video recording goes, I was very impressed by the quality both of the picture and the sound. I briefly tried full 1080p recording, and was quite astounded by the quality once I downloaded the video to my computer. However, for my purposes the 720p resolution is good enough, (and a much smaller file size to work with and edit.) As with all point-and-click cameras you can audibly hear the camera zooming in and out on the recording if you decide to do so. It's not too imposing though so it's no big deal. Most of the video I'll ever take with this camera will be wide-angle anyway, so I'll probably never touch the zoom lever while recording anyway.
The 12.1mp CMOS blows away all the 16mp CCD cameras I've seen and used. I know a lot of people believe that a digital camera's specification all but ends at the megapixel level, with the more the better, but this is a false belief. A camera with a good CMOS sensor is FAR better than a cheaper (but perhaps more megapixel) CCD based camera.
I'm trying to think of negatives to balance my review, but am struggling. I'd like Canon to stop ripping off their customers with the price of additional "official" batteries. True, there are cheap clones at less than 20% of the price of a Canon brand, but if the reviews on them are anything to go by, they should be used with caution and may invalidate you camera warranty if they cause damage. Ah... I just thought of a negative thing about the camera itself -the buttons on the back are flat and almost flush with camera body. This can make them a little harder to press than with previous camera models which had raised or rounded buttons. Sorry, that's the biggest negative I can think of. This is a terrific camera.
P.S. The camera comes with a decent little "Getting Started" manual. However, there is a much more comprehensive and detailed manual available (for free) from the Canon USA website, and also on the disc supplied with the camera. Amazon doesn't allow web-links in their reviews, so I'll post the link to download the full manual as a comment on this review instead, (which does seem to be allowed by Amazon.) Anyone considering buying this camera also may wish to download the manual to ensure the ELPH 330 is the model for you, or to familiarize themselves with operating it while you wait for Amazon to deliver it.I bought the ELPH 330 to replace a Canon PowerShot ELPH 310 that was 'appropriated' by a family member. I quite liked the 310, and the other ELPH models that we've owned previously (SD100, SD200, SD400). To give this review some context, I also have a Canon PowerShot S5, a GoPro Hero, and various film cameras dating back to an Olympus OM-1 and a Rollei 35. While Canons may not always be the 'best' cameras on the market, I've become used to the Canon menu system, and my collection of accessories are compatible with my previous ELPHs. So I assumed the ELPH 330 would be a satisfying addition to my photographic arsenal.
Alas, I was sadly disappointed. What's wrong with it? In a word, the user interface. It has regressed significantly compared to the 310. The biggest shortcoming is the all-important '5-way' controller (the up, down, left, right, and the central FUNC/SET buttons). On the 310, the 5-way was slightly raised above the body of the camera, making it possible to position one's thumb on the desired portion of the controller by touch alone. On the 330, the buttons are completely flush with the body. This may sound like a small detail, but I've found this design change makes it much harder to operate the 330. I've found it tricky to register my thumb over the 5-way without looking, and I don't have terribly big hands. The tiny FUNC/SET button in the center of the cluster is actually recessed just a bit, which is terrible from an ergonomic perspective. One needs a tiny thumb to reliably click on the FUNC/SET button. In the short time I've had the 330, I've accidentally activated the wrong button numerous times.
The second failing of the 330's UI is the bizarre slide switch. Canon has taken what was a great step forward on the 310 UI and totally trashed it on the 330. On the 310, the slide switch selected between AUTO or MANUAL modes of operation. The former was great for taking quick'n easy point-and-shoot tourist snapshots. When the photographer wanted more 'creative control', a simple flip of the switch put the camera into manual mode. User could then choose from a large variety (too many) of special shooting modes (portrait, nighttime, backlit, sports...), adjust ISO, override shutter speed, etc. This arrangement was extremely versatile and I've come to love it.
On the ELPH 330, the slide switch now activates a glitzy new Canon feature: photos plus a Movie Digest. When you slide the switch to the 'up' position, the camera takes a still photo in Auto mode AND a 3-second movie clip captured immediately before every still photo is taken. It then composes a daily sequence of these clips, all concatenated together. So if you were to shoot 60 pictures on a given day, you'll end up with 60 still photos, plus a 3-minute long movie containing the 'live action' as you composed each shot. With the switch 'down', the Movie Digest feature is turned off and the camera operates in whatever mode is chosen from the Record Mode menu (not necessarily Auto mode).
The side effects of this fancy Digest feature are non-trivial. First, the camera goes dormant for a few seconds after the shutter is pushed, while the captured movie clip is compressed and concatenated onto the daily movie file. During this interval, the green 'camera busy' light is flashing. This means you can't take another photo until the movie processing is completed. No rapid-fire picture taking when in Digest mode. Perhaps more important is the potential impact on battery life. When the 330 is in this mode, it's capturing video continuously. It doesn't know when you're going to trip the shutter, so it constantly records video into an internal 3-second buffer memory, which is then saved to the SD card after each click of the shutter. I haven't yet measured the impact on battery life but continuous video capture and storage will surely shorten run time.
Fortunately, the ELPH 330 still has both Automatic and Manual picture modes, but you now have to make a trip down into the menu system to select one or the other. The slide switch, which occupies a fair bit of the limited real estate on the back of the camera, is totally wasted (unless one becomes enamoured with the Movie Digest mode). I'm astounded that Canon would deem this feature so important that it qualified for 'top billing' with a dedicated mode switch. Perhaps there is a big demand for this feature in Japan, but I can do without it.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the improvements in the 330. The longer telephoto (10x, vs 8x in the 310) is a small but welcome enhancement. Likewise, the wide angle is a little wider (24 vs 28mm). I haven't yet mastered the WiFi features. Canon's user manual describing them meets their usual standard for convoluted & confusing documentation.
Occasionally, the orientation sensor (sensing landscape vs portrait) messes up and misclassifies the orientation of a picture. This may be a defect with the sensor in my unit, or could be a design issue that affects all ELPH 330 units.
Frankly, I'm undecided whether to keep the ELPH 330 or not. I'm tempted to carefully place a tiny dollop of hot-melt glue on the FUNC/SET button. That might partly alleviate the ergonomic shortcomings of the 5-way controller. But there's no way to make the stupid Movie Digest slide switch useful and achieve the versatile functionality found in the ELPH 310.I used a Canon Power Shot A1000 IS for almost five years and love Canon quality. What I love about this new Canon is how user friendly it is. So simple, and I very quickly was able to load the software, register on line and send pictures to my computer, on line social media and iPhone with the Wi-Fi ability. Going from picture to movie mode is the push of a button. Has great options for an amateur photographer like me. You can also purchase a tripod separately. Can't wait for our next vacation or holiday event to really have fun with it. Want to get a compatible printer to use it to the fullest!! Still picture and movie quality is really good. If you are looking for an easy to use, technology minded camera, I recommend this one without hesitation.
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