PowerShot D10 – Digital Camera

The Canon PowerShot D10 represents Canon’s first foray into the all-action world of adventure cameras. The Canon D10 is waterproof up to 10 meters / 33-feet deep, freeze proof from -10°C / 14 degrees Fahrenheit, shockproof up to 1.22 meters / 4 feet, and is fully protected from dust. More regular features include a 12 megapixel sensor, 3x zoom lens with Optical Image Stabilization, 2.5 inch LCD screen, and new Smart AUTO, Blink Detection and FaceSelf-Timer modes. The uniquely styled Canon PowerShot D10 has a recommended price of $329.99 / £379.00 / €449.00 – we find out if this is the perfect action camera.

Design

As a overall camera, the D10 will definitely suffice as your primary point and shoot if you’re kosher with toting around a rather large (comparatively speaking) device. We always thought our SD850 IS was pudgy, but the protruding lens on the D10 makes this one even less convenient to tote around. Still, as an adventure camera, it’s plenty small. If you’re trekking through Nairobi or surfing on the North Shore of O’ahu, you can definitely make room in your backpack or cargo pocket for this. Weight wise, it’s perfectly acceptable, and the brilliant decision by Canon to build in four accessory posts around the edges was one we learned to adore. Our D10 shipped with a small accessory kit, which included a trio of colorful face plates and a number of cables that can be affixed to any corner of the camera. The thick, braided cable with twin carabiners on the end proved invaluable in keeping the camera attached to our person while in rafts and getting tossed around like a rag doll in the mighty Pacific. If you’re planning on using this in any kind of precarious situation, we’d highly recommend forking out the extra for it. Granted, we would’ve loved for at least one serious cable to come bundled in (a short wrist strap is all that ships with the unit itself), but hey, you can’t have it all.

Ease Of Use

The Canon PowerShot D10 is certainly very distinctive, with toy-camera-like looks that you’ll either love or hate. Our review model had a turquoise blue and silver colour scheme, which can be customised by purchasing an optional coloured Front Cover Set. This is a well-made digital camera with a sturdy metal body and excellent overall finish. It’s just about small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, featuring a 3x optical zoom lens that’s equivalent to a focal length of 35-135mm. The maximum aperture is a fast f/2.8 at the wide end and a respectable f/4.9 at the other extreme of the zoom range. The PowerShot D10 is quite bulky, measuring 4.9cms thick when turned off, making it more suited to a small camera bag than a trouser pocket, but it only weighs 190g without the battery or memory card fitted.

The Canon PowerShot D10 has relatively few external controls, 14 in total, which reflects the fact that this is quite a simple camera in functionality terms, with only limited photographic control on offer. All the controls are clearly labeled using industry-standard symbols and terminology. As this camera will spend quite a lot of its life underwater, it thankfully has large On/Off and Shutter buttons, and the optical zoom is operated by buttons on the rear, rather than a more fiddly push/pull lever. We would have liked the zoom buttons to have been a little bigger though for quicker access in more unfamiliar shooting environments.

Located on top of the PowerShot D10 are the Print Transfer, Camera/Movie and Play buttons, plus the On/Off and Shutter buttons, and on the bottom are the metal tripod mount and sealed battery compartment, which also houses the SD memory card slot. On the rear of the PowerShot D10 is the 2.5 inch LCD screen, with all the rear controls located to the right. You can directly access the various focus and flash options by clicking left and right on the navigation pad, whilst up and down are respectively used to set the exposure compensation and timer options. There is sadly no dedicated button for ISO speed, which is a commonly used feature, although you can work around this by optionally setting the Print Transfer button to one of 7 available options (which include ISO speed).

The Canon PowerShot D10 features an anti-shake system, called IS Mode – turn it on in the menu system and the PowerShot D10 automatically compensates for camera shake, which is a slight blurring of the image that typically occurs at slow shutter speeds. There are three different modes. Continuous is on all the time including image composition, Shooting is only on when you press the shutter button, and Panning as the name suggests is best when using the camera to track a moving subject. In practice I found that it does make a noticeable difference, as shown in the examples on the Image Quality page. You don’t notice that the camera is actually doing anything different when anti-shake is turned on, just that you can use slower shutter speeds than normal and still take sharp photos.

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