While the Canon PowerShot SD870 IS doesn’t have an opticalviewfinder or manual exposure controls, it captures beautiful imageswith its wide, 3.8x optical zoom lens and ranks among the top compactcameras we’ve seen.We were very impressed by the SD870 IS’s performance in our lab tests.It took the camera 0.9 second to start up and capture its first JPEG.Thereafter, the camera took 1.6 seconds between subsequent JPEGs withthe flash turned off, and 2.4 seconds between JPEGs with the flashturned on. Shutter lag measured a stunning 0.4 second in ourhigh-contrast test and 0.7 second in our low-contrast test, whichrespectively mimic bright and dim shooting conditions.
In ourcontinuous shooting test, the SD870 IS captured 1.3 frames per secondregardless of image size or compression. As usual with Canon’s Digital Elph cameras, you won’t find any manualexposure controls. Instead you have to rely on the camera’s exposurecompensation if you want to tweak the camera’s automatic exposure, orresort to one of the camera’s 10 scene modes to handleout-of-the-ordinary shooting scenarios. Flash exposure compensationlets you control the output of the flash, so the flash doesn’toverpower your subjects if you’re too close--a nice touch that’s notfound in all compact cameras