Review of Canon S400 Digital Camera

By James Dunn 
September 7, 2003

My first impression of the Canon S400 was "gee this is a really small camera." It is a 4-megapixel digital camera that fits entirely in the palm of my hand, or my shirt pocket. The camera physically measures about 3.43 inches by 2.24 inches by 1.09 inches. Now you might think this makes it a lightweight, but you'd be wrong.

This is not a plastic toy camera. It has a durable metal case and with the battery installed, it is a reassuringly solid weight. But it's not so heavy that you'll feel you're working at hauling it around.  This is a serious 4-megapixel  (2,272 by 1,704 pixels) camera.

Canon obviously intended this as "a carry-anywhere type of camera." Just slip it into your pocket or purse and go. My next thought was that this could be kind of rough on the camera, especially the lens. I've seen lots of lenses scratched up from careless handling.  But Canon thought of that and included an automatic lens capping mechanism.  When you turn this camera on, and into record mode, the lens uncaps itself and extends outward ready for use. Turn it off or out of record mode and it retracts and caps the lens. Just what you need for rough-and-ready, carry in pocket or purse.

In my humble opinion, the lens is the most important part of a camera.  Canon, as you may or may not know, is one of the world's best optics manufacturers. Many professionals prefer Canon cameras over any other brand. So it comes as no surprise that this jewel has a 7.4 to 22.2 mm zoom lens fitted. That is equivalent to 36-108mm on a 35mm camera - a most useful range. 

Personally, I'd like even more range, but this is reasonable on a camera this size. The lens has two methods of autofocus. A nine-point focus or a single center point focus. I had no trouble with either type of focus, but I think that I prefer the single center. In the non-macro mode it focuses down to 1.5 feet. The macro mode allows it to focus to 4 inches if you stay down on the wide end. 

So how does it perform?  I shoot a lot of pictures out on the local lakes from boats, which is a difficult situation for any camera, because of the bright sun, white hulls and lots of colorful sails. The day I took it out was rough. The wind was 18 knots and we were pounding into the waves.  The boat was in constant motion. I was worried about the lag time between when you press the shutter button and when the shutter actually fires, which is typically longish with autofocus digital cameras like this one.  Nevertheless, with a little anticipation on my part I was able to keep the subject in frame. See some of the resulting images in this article.

My wife handed my next assignment to me. Shoot some pictures of the cracks in the house to show the Dallas County Appraisal Review Board. (We're protesting our tax increase). This is another difficult situation. Bare white sheet rock -White on white   Will the cracks show up?

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There are two unusual features on this camera worth talking about.

The first is continuous mode and the second is autostitching mode for panoramics.  To test the continuous mode, I shot cars as they came down the street at about 40 mph.  In continuous mode, it is supposed to take pictures as long as I hold the shutter button down.  At full resolution of 2,272 by 1,704 pixels I would get only about 2 or 3 quick shots before the camera paused to flush the memory to the Compact Flash card. That's not great.

So I lowered the resolution to 1024 by 768 pixel normal mode. In this mode I shot about 2 frames per second for about 20 seconds. A good long sequence.  There is, however, an unfortunate problem with this mode. In shooting a moving subject the autofocus is just not fast enough to keep up with the motion of the subject. The 20 frames were out of focus.  That makes it unusable for use on any moving subjects. If the subject is stationary and you can establish the focus on the first frame and the distance stays the same, then it should work.

All in all, Canon has done an amazing job of fitting features into this small package.  But no camera is perfect. There are some things that I didn't like. First, the only file format I was able to find in the manual was JPEG.  You cannot save your pictures in TIFF or RAW file formats.  That's unfortunate since I usually edit my photos and prefer lossless formats. But if you primarily use this as a family snapshot camera or you don't edit your photographs, then this will not be an issue for you.

Second, the battery charges only out of the camera. You must remove it and put it into a small wall charger (included). Constantly removing and replacing the battery is bound to wear something out. And then there is the possibility of misplacing the battery/charger).  Of course it does allow you to have an extra battery and switch batteries, keeping one on charge and one working. If you can't, or don't want to carry around a larger camera, then this little jewel may just be for you. Check it out.

Many thanks to Cooter's Village Cameras in Highland Park Village, Dallas, Texas, and Canon USA for the loan of this camera.

James Dunn

James Dunn is leader of NTPCUG's Digital Photography SIG.
He may be contacted by e-mail: Click to e-mail James Dunn
His Web site is: ImagesByJamesDunn.com