Canon has today announced what it is calling a brother-sister pairing, in the shape of the PowerShot SD200 and PowerShot SD300. They are the first cameras to incorporate two UA (Ultra-high Refractive Index Glass Moulded (GMo) Aspherical lens) elements which has alllowed Canon to produced its smallest cameras to feature a 3x zoom. Both are SD compatible with the only main difference being the resolution; four million pixels (SD300) and 3.2 million pixels (SD200), priced €399 and €299 respectively.

• European name: Canon Digital IXUS 40 / Canon Digital IXUS 30
• US name: Canon PowerShot SD300 / Canon PowerShot SD200
• Japanese name: Canon IXY Digital 50 / Canon IXY Digital 40

Press Release:

New brother-sister models join IXUS family

Amstelveen , The Netherlands, 21 September, 2004. Canon, a leader in photographic and imaging technology, today unveils the super stylish brother-sister cameras – the Digital IXUS 40 and the Digital IXUS 30. A breakthrough in lens material science has paved the way for the smallest ever cameras from Canon to feature a 3x optical zoom.

With beautifully rounded curves and polished, all-metal bodies, Canon takes the IXUS design philosophy to new levels. These petite and desirable digital accessories feature ‘over-size’ 2.0” LCD displays and blistering DIGIC II performance processing power for super responsive shooting, superb image quality, instant playback and the ability to shoot footage limited in length only by the capacity of the SD card.

“Icons of design are created where art and technological breakthroughs collide,” said Mogens Jensen, Head of Canon Consumer Imaging Europe. “The new UA lens material developed by Canon’s research scientists led the way for our designers to take Yasushi Shiotani’s original IXUS design to a new, higher plane. We are thrilled with the result.”

Image capture

Images taken with the 4.0 Megapixel Digital IXUS 40 and 3.2 Megapixel Digital IXUS 30 can be used for detailed prints all the way to A3 and A4 size respectively. The first ever cameras to incorporate 2 UA (Ultra-high Refractive Index Glass Moulded (GMo) Aspherical lens) elements developed by Canon’s lens material scientists. These achieve high-resolution and good contrast characteristics for the 3x optical zoom, which has a focal length of 35-105mm (35mm film equivalent). The cameras also incorporate 9-point Artificial Intelligence Auto Focus (AiAF) for fast, sharp and accurate focus, even with off-centre subjects.

Image Processing

For superb image quality at break-neck speed, all primary camera functions are handled by Canon’s dedicated second generation DIGIC II processor. DIGIC II is the same technology driving Canon’s EOS-1D Mark II pro-series SLR 69 Megapixel per sec. performance. This is the first time it has been incorporated into a Digital IXUS. DIGIC II handles all the complex algorithms required for accurate colour rendering and enhanced image quality, precision white balance and metering. In addition it ensures quick camera control, fast auto-focus, extended high quality movies, rapid start-up times and approx. 2.4 fps continuous, uninterrupted shooting. Playback is as fast as flipping through an album; users will never again experience the frustration of staring at the camera LCD screen waiting for images to appear.

Great results - any conditions

Both cameras feature iSAPS technology – an in-built photographer’s assistant that uses camera settings and environmental data to predict the most likely scene in order to optimise white balance, focus and exposure settings accordingly. In addition to the Auto, Manual, Stitch Assist and Movie modes, 6 scene modes are provided to assist with selecting the best focus, exposure, ISO, white balance, shutter speed and photo effect settings to match the shooting environment. Users can shoot with confidence after selecting from scene modes such as, Portrait, Night Snapshot, Kids & Pets and Indoor. An Underwater scene mode is included for use with the optional 3m depth All Weather Case AW-DC30.

Keeping things compact

The cameras are an extremely thin 20.7 mm (Digital IXUS 40) and 21.1mm (Digital IXUS 30), weighing in at just 115 and 130g respectively. The diminutive sizes are made possible by a string of technology advances, including the new UA lens, slimmer LCD, improved circuit assembly techniques and a smaller, more efficient battery.

Moving pictures

The new-look cameras are capable of taking extended movies (with sound, full playback and in-camera editing), of up to 1GB in size, when using high speed SD cards movie length is limited only by the card's capacity. They are the first digital still cameras in the world to feature up to one minute of 60 fps QVGA quality, which allows for in-camera slow motion replay at various user-selectable speeds. Different frame rates and resolutions can be selected to best suit end applications such as TV playback or email attachment.

Nothing like a photo print

A Print/Share button simplifies direct printing via USB cable to any PictBridge compatible photo printer. The cameras are perfectly matched to Canon’s new SELPHY range of personal photo printers, for instant, durable lab-quality photos. As well as a postcard date imprint mode, the cameras feature ID photo mode to create photo-booth style ID prints for passport and other ID purposes, and Movie print mode, which prints an entire action sequence of up to 63 evenly spaced frames from any chosen movie clip. The Print/Share button also facilitates automatic and simple uploads to any Windows PC.

Easy playback

Viewing images is now a joy and searching through thumbnail images is considerably easier with the huge 2.0” hi-resolution 118,000 pixel LCD screen that covers most of the camera back. An Intelligent Orientation Sensor takes into account the likely position of the sky and foreground before setting focus, exposure and white balance settings. It then rotates images to the correct orientation for easy, enjoyable playback. An advanced magnified image playback function maintains the area and ratio of magnification when moving from image to image during playback – particularly useful when viewing a continuous sequence of the same scene.

No fuss online sharing

The new IXUS cameras come complete with full membership to CANON iMAGE GATEWAY (CiG), a personal online photo gallery with 100MB of free online space for storing and sharing favourite albums. CiG can also be used to personalise the cameras with start-up images and sound-effect downloads. A movie upload facility is also available via a special download from the CiG site.

Software

Software supplied includes intuitive, user-friendly browsing and printing software ZoomBrowser EX 5.0 (Windows) and ImageBrowser 5.0 (Mac), which include new features to make managing images and editing movies easy. Other software includes PhotoStitch for merging a Stitch Assist series into a single wide panorama on the PC, and ArcSoft image editing software PhotoImpression and VideoImpression. Support for all popular European languages is extended to 21 languages and now includes Russian, Portuguese, Greek, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Chinese and Korean.

Canon SD200 / SD300 specifications

Additional images

Canon PowerShot SD200	Canon PowerShot SD300