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(4.5 out of 5)
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The S330 is the big brother in Canon's PowerShot Digital ELPH line of powerful, yet compact and stylish cameras. The other Digital ELPH is the S200, virtually identical except that it has a 2x optical zoom instead of a 3x optical zoom, is quite a bit smaller, and costs about $50 less. Even so, the S330 is small. It fits in my jeans pockets easily along with a few other items I might happen to have in there.
Think that size doesn't make a difference? It does. My parents never bring along their camera (a Kodak DC280) anymore when we go to family gatherings, because it is too large to comfortably put anywhere except a backpack. My college-aged brother didn't even take his camera (similar to my parents': a Kodak DC240) with him on a weeklong trip because I was going along and would have my camera. It can fit in a pocket.
I bought this camera along with a discounted, bundled 128MB Compact Flash card from Amazon.com. I definitely recommend getting an extra card with your camera. The included 8MB card is too small to hold more than a few pictures. 128MB may be too big or too small for your needs. Research your decision, and go with it. My opinion is that having a single card that can hold your pictures is a lot more convenient than having multiple, smaller cards.
It takes 2-megapixel pictures. Although that seems low compared to today's offerings, the photos turn out great. If you need a higher resolution, you're going to need a bigger, more expensive camera. The 3x optical zoom works for most casual picture taking needs. If you need more, you're going to need a bigger, more expensive camera. I don't even know what the digital zoom is on this, I never use it. You shouldn't, either.
Like most digital cameras, the S330 has an LCD display that allows you to see your picture before you take it, and to see the pictures after you take them. I would recommend turning the display off for taking pictures (to save batteries), but unfortunately, the optical viewfinder doesn't show everything that your picture would take, so you can't accurately frame your shots.
The S330 uses a propietary, rechargable battery. It is small and light, powerful enough to take a lot of pictures, and will fully charge in about two hours. The downside is, you're probably not going to be able to buy one if you find yourself in a situation without the charger. Oh, the charger. It is small, light, and the plug folds in to save space.
The only real problem I have is that sometimes in can take several seconds for the auto-focus to finish so I can take my picture, but that is minor. It more than makes up for it with great pictures.
Real-life experience
Around the end of July I went to a Catholic youth rally in Toronto, Ontario (which is in Canada). It was called World Youth Day, and the Pope was there, along with 800,000 people from around the world. Now all that may not matter much, but it was a weeklong trip, and I had a lot of friends on the bus with my camera and I. Over the course of the week my camera took more than 150 photos, although I never did get close enough to the Pope to get anything more than a speck of white.
Anyways, my friends all loved my camera. It was small, it was beautiful, and it worked. Sure, there were more powerful cameras there, with the interchangable lenses and all-manual controls, and those are great for their own purposes. But the S330 is a point-and-shoot camera, and works great for that.
My friends especially liked seeing themselves after the picture had been taken. I also let them take a lot of pictures, and they liked to see those. The camera got its fair share of being used to look at pictures taken rather than to take pictures.
Since my brother and I spent the nights in a private home, I was able to plug in the battery if I thought it might be getting low. One day I was exhausted and went to bed without charging it. The next morning, while at an event, my batteries ran out of juice after a couple pictures. Panicking would have been pointless. I got up, walked to the back, and found some volunteers who let me plug my charger (which, thankfully, was in my bag) into a wall outlet. A couple of hours later, after the bishop had given his talk and said Mass, I went back and picked up my fully charged battery.
After I got home, I transferred my pictures to iPhoto using a CompactFlash reader. The S330 is supported in Mac OS X, but things are always quicker and simpler with an adapter. Anyways, I looked over my photos, deleted ones I did not want, and uploaded 36 of the best to a website that my friends would visit and see themselves on a computer screen. Previously they had only seen themselves on the small LCD on my camera. There is something to be said for digital cameras. They are great.
One more thing. Canon has software for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X that can transfer your pictures and do some other fine things. I tried it, it worked, and it was pretty smooth. However, in my opinion iPhoto and Image Capture worked better.
Here are some sample pictures I took. Disclaimer: usually they were taken in not very good light conditions, by people who know how to push a button but other wise know very little about photography, and in the places that I am able to get to (which are usually not very photogenic). But those are the conditions of a lot of consumer photographers, so you can expect your photos to turn out similarly.
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David Norton wishes he could spend more time working on MacMilitia.com.
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