The Canon PowerShot E1 may look like a toy but is hardly a "Barbie" camera. With its 10 Megapixel sensor, 4x zoom and wide angle it icertainly qualifies as the "real thing" in digital camera world.

Handling

The design here is really a matter of taste. Canon's PowerShot E1 curvaceous shell comes in sweet baby colours (girlie pink, boyish blue and a more neutral white). Some might think it looks more like toy, others will find it "simply adorable". But don't be fooled by the looks, this camera is not a joke.
Contrary to all appearances, the build is rather sturdy and has a good finish. The navigation controls are very easy to grasp with a scroll wheel to switch modes, a menu for settings, and shortcuts to activate the flash or change sensitivities. Manipulation is plain sailing.

The Canon PowerShot E1 has a 2.5'' LCD screen and a real-image optical viewfinder.However this OVF is not vary accurate as the picture end ups actually being wider than what you see.


This camera is rather snappy. Focus is quick, almost immediate in auto focus in bright daylight and within 0,50 second in zoom x3. Shutter lag is minimal. Burst mode -1,4 frames per second- is a bit of a letdown.

Image Quality

Overall quality is good. Pictures are neat both at the centre of the frame and around the edges, but lack in sharpness. There is some purple fringing in high contrast zones. Prints on A4 -in the lightest sensitivities- come out fine and the purple fringing becomes less noticeable. At 1600 ISO, despite the noise you can still make out the details. If you want to do close-ups, the macro mode is just ideal with its focus at 3 cm. The flash is not too bright.



Video

Video resolution is the standard fair of 640x480 pixels and 30 frames per second, the quality is decent. It is nice to be able to use the zoom and autofocus while shooting clips. Other cameras may offer this feature too, but in this case the auto focus very fast and effective.

White balancing performs well outside, but inside with artificial lightning, goes slightly purplish. The optical stabilization is also pretty powerful, and we managed to take a snap of Barbie in just 1/8 second. (400 ISO settings). It took 1/3 second with Nikon's Coolpix S610c. Optical stabilization is better on the Nikon, but the Canon deals better with noise up to 400 ISO. Blurriness appears at 1600 ISO.