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"It doesn’t have a lot of manual control."

"Perfect for point-and-shooters who can afford it."

"Given its excellent image quality and speedy performance, I'm not complaining."

"The Canon PowerShot SD850 IS takes excellent pictures. And in the end, that’s what matters."

"The camera captures plenty of detail, yet retains the "smooth" look that Canon's cameras are famous for."

"Noise is kept fairly low at ISO 80-400 with Canon concentrating mainly on the ugly chroma noise (color blobs) though as we've seen with other recent Powershots there's more luminance noise reduction than we're used to seeing on Canon compacts."

"The lack of - or limited - noise reduction smoothing means photos shot in low light will stay sharp."

"The PowerShot SD850 produced a beautiful night scene of the San Francisco skyline."

"The Movie mode on the Canon PowerShot SD850 IS is fairly elaborate considering it’s a compact digital camera."

"You can record over 32 minutes of 640 x 480, 30 frame/second video with sound. There's also a "Fast Frame Rate" mode available, which lets you record up to 1 minute of 320 x 240 video at a whopping 60 frames/second. This is great for videos of fast moving subjects."

"…a very capable Movie mode."

"It stylish, ultra-compact, and well built…. It's a compact camera made almost entirely of metal, and it feels solid in your hands."

"The Canon SD850 is rugged enough that you don't need to protect it in a case, but you'll probably want to anyway."

"We found that the mode dial...felt a bit flimsy and occasionally skipped a couple of notches when we were trying to move only one."

"Battery life, like most models in the SD range, is on the low side of average; approx 230 shots (CIPA standard) per charge, with the saving grace being that the majority of the power is drawn by the fairly large screen, and if you switch it off and use the optical viewfinder you can extend the battery life to as much as 700 shots per charge."

"Battery life was average in the ultra-compact group."