The Canon Powershot SD870 IS is one of those rare ultra-compact cameras with a wide-angle lens, actually Canon only makes one other camera with a wide-angle lens, the ultra-compact Canon Powershot SD800 IS.

 

Some aspects of the SD870's performance are quite good. Its speed, white-balance system and metering are particularly good. Even though the white-balance leave a slight color-cast under artificial light, it is much better than most such cameras. Unfortunately for the SD870, what makes it stumble is its wide-angle lens. The most pronounced problem is vignetting which makes nearly everything shot at wide-angle look like its shot in a tunnel. Zoom-in a little and the problem goes away, but it beats the purpose of having a wide-angle lens. Corner softness is also quite noticeable, but that is common for ultra-compact cameras.

 

Noise levels are generally good and ISO 400 is usable for bright subjects. There is also lower-than-average chromatic aberrations. On the ergonomic side, the large size of the rear LCD (3") poses the usual problem among small cameras of not leaving any room to hold the camera's back. There is a touch-sensitive wheel that most reviewers did not like, but it can be safely ignored by using the 4-way controller in its center instead.

 

The most significant challenge to the SD870 is Canon's own SD800. Between these two, the SD800 is probably better because its lens is actually usable at wide-angle, although the SD870 has improved over it in terms of white-balance and exposure. Ergonomics are also better as a consequence of having a smaller LCD, plus there is an optical viewfinder for framing in very bright light.

 

There is also the 8 megapixels wide-angle Fuji Finepix F480 which we just reviewed. This is also a point-and-shoot but its feature set is much more basic. In terms of performance, the F480 has a better wide-angle lens with good sharpness and no vignetting. However, the F480's shows higher image noise, slower shot-to-shot and playback speeds, poor battery-life and a questionable interface. The negatives gave the Fuji F480 a lower rating than the Canon SD870. Panasonic also has some wide-angle ultra-compact, such as the Lumix FX30 which has rather poor image quality due to high noise, limited dynamic range and poor white-balance, plus other problems in terms of speed and a non-exposure-priority LCD. Considering the failings of these other wide-angle ultra-compacts, the SD870 therefore manages to be second-best behind the Canon Powershot SD800 IS.