Canon
SD 940
The Canon
PowerShot SD940 IS is another very small, very lightweight
12-megapixel camera. It drops the
SD780's optical viewfinder, and in its place gets a larger
2.7-inch LCD in back, and a wide-angle 28mm-equivalent lens with a 4x
zoom in front. Aside from a couple minor interface tweaks, everything
else basically stays the same; this includes the earlier model's mixed
performance and tendency to produce purple fringing. However, neither
is extreme for this class of camera, and all things considered, the
SD940 IS is one of the best ultracompacts available.
The SD940 has a revamped menu and help system with hints and tips for
choosing the appropriate settings or simply telling you what the
shooting mode you're in is going to do. For example, if you don't know
what the camera's Servo AF does, just select it in the settings menu
and at the bottom of the screen it'll tell you that it continues to
adjust focus while pressing the shutter button halfway down. Help
systems certainly aren't uncommon, but Canon executed this
well considering the limited screen space.
But the SD940 is limited to three shooting modes. A small switch on
back moves you between Canon's improved automatic scene recognition
called Smart Auto, Program/Scene, and Movie. The Smart Auto mode is very
reliable and since it's now picking from 22 different scenes (up from
18 on the SD780), the bases are well covered. In Program you can
control things such as ISO, white balance, light metering, and
autofocus type or you can switch to one of 17 scene shooting options
including common ones like Portrait and Indoors or specialty choices
such as Long Shutter and Color Accent. The Movie mode is capable of
recording at an HD-quality resolution of 720p. (For quickly connecting
to an HDTV, there's a mini HDMI output
behind a small door where your thumb naturally rests while shooting.)
But sadly, the 4x optical zoom doesn't function while recording.
