Not too happy with my new SD 780IS

I have been using a rebel XSI as my only camera for a while. But Amazon had a sale on the 780 at 179. It has HD video and I hated lugging around my real video camera for short clips of my kids. So I bought the 780. I like most of the camera, it's good at guessing what scene you're in. The video is alright, it's HD, but really grainy, even in bright situations...like sledding in the snow...massive light source.

Here is what I don't like...put it to auto and it throws the ISO and shutter speed into really weird combos in indoor low-light situations. If it recognizes a face it hits the flash and bumps the shutter to 1/50 or 1/60. But in a pure 'auto' mode where no scene mode is selected, the default setting is ISO 640, Shutter 1/15, f 3.2. WTH? who on earth would choose to hand hold a tiny camera at 1/15 with a high ISO?

I guess the point of this post is, why would canon opt to pick a super slow shutter & high ISO instead of lower shutter, lower ISO and use the flash? In the exact situation I switched to program mode, forced the flash and got ISO 200 with 1/60 shutter. IMO, the average person that doesn't know about shutter speed and ISO will be dissapointed when their shots turn out blurry and grainy rather than slightly washed out due to a flash.

In full Auto without a face to go on, it doesn't know how much of the scene you want to be well-exposed, so it chooses a setting that will give you the "optimum" relatively low-noise and decent exposure for the entire scene, which means a fairly noisy image if you pixel-peep. But bear in mind that the "average person" you're concerned about won't typically be printing much over 4x6", and at that size the noise won't be apparent in their prints. Also remember that each pixel in the XSi is 11x the size of the corresponding pixel in the SD780; that has a major impact on the noise in an image.

The flash in the SD780's not very powerful. With Auto ISO mode, it's only capable of reaching between 7 and 11 ft (and that'll be at the highest ISO setting), OK for lighting up a portrait, but light falloff from the flash will either give you a blown-out foreground (if it exposes for the maximum range) or a cave-like background (if the subject it selects is noticeably closer than the maximum range. So the decision to not use flash is also in the interests of getting a decent photo for the average user.

Love my SD 780IS

Well said, Jon. I recieved an SD780 for Christmas (I drooled over it so much I didn't even have to ask for it) and wanted to see what people were saying about them. I wondered a bit about some of the different settings the camera automatically selected, but since I manually change most of them anyway I never though on it too much. Rarely do I let the camera decide if I want flash or not.

You're right on though, it makes sense when trying to get the best pictures for the average person. Personally, I've gotten into the habit of switching to Auto mode when I hand the cam off to someone else. Most people just don't know what all the options do, and I end up with better pictures than if I tried to select settings for them without seeing how it would actually affect the shot.

In all, I think this camera is amazing though. The only thing I can really complain about is that the video mode doesn't continually adjust white balance. When I go from outside to inside in the middle of a video, things tend to be saturated in yellow due to the artificial lighting.

I also wanted optical zoom during video, but after enabling it with a beta CHDK, I immediately realized why Canon disabled it... The motor is right next to the microphone, and it is NOISY!