Canon SD950, 870, and 850

Canon has some new cameras that might make the SD850 less appealing. Let's take a quick look (more details to come later).

The SD870, at least by name, seems like a straightforward upgrade to the SD850. Not true! It uses a wide-angle lens (presumably with the same distortion problems of the SD800), removes the optical view finder, and bumps the LCD up to 3in from 2.5in. Here's an early review from CNET that is lacking in detail. The lack of viewfinder really makes me lose interest.

More exciting is the SD950, which appears to be a more directly related upgrade to the SD850. Again, the lens is different, but with almost the same effective specs: 3.7x zoom, 36mm equivalent (ie not wide angle). Without any reviews it's unknown if this new lens has less corner blur, but we can hope.

Thankfully the 950 maintains the viewfinder. It's also slightly bigger: 3.8 x 2.4 x 1.1 in. Cipa is 240 images (LCD on, 580 if off) , a very slight bump. It also adds a battery level meter, something Canon should have come up with a long time ago. Amazon has it for preorder at 450; I'm not sure the specs bump warrant it over the 850. Hopefully this will push the 850 price down a bit, making it a really good buy.