The Canon Powershot SD1200 comes at a time when the market is flooded with digital cameras of all makes and features. This is basically a compact point – and – shoot camera with minimum shooting options but very good performance. The only downside is, perhaps, its unnecessary high price.

The SD1200 is very easy to use and comes in great colors like silver, dark grey, orange, green, pink and blue. There is a switch at the back of the camera which helps you to toggle between three shooting modes: Smart Auto, Program/Scene and Movie. To the left is the Play button and below it is the four way directional pad which has a Function Set button at the center. Below this is the Display button which helps to change the information shown on the LCD or shut it down completely. The Menu button is also present at the back. On the top of the camera you will get the zoom and the power button. The buttons are flat in nature so you might find it hard to press these buttons accurately in the initial stages. The button arrangement is more or less similar to any other Canon Powershot camera.

The Function Set button opens up a shooting panel while the Menu button shows you the shooting controls and the settings. The most common scene selections will be on display at first but if you navigate to the right of the list and press the Display button then you get a list of the secondary scenes. You need to very careful in navigating otherwise there is a high chance that you might miss some of the options. However, if you are not too tech savvy then you ca switch to the Smart Auto mode and continue shooting pictures of your loved ones leaving the camera to decide the scene mode from the 18 available options. The camera is also capable of shooting in movie mode and it records videos at 640×480 resolutions at 30fps. The optical zoom, however, will not function while recording.

The Canon SD1200 is a really good choice for people who do not want a bevy of features to make things complicated. The burst mode is missing in this camera but it comes packed with endless continuous shooting capacity. The camera has a 2.5 inch LCD with 10 mega pixels and 3x optical zoom. The qualities of the photos are really better than competition but you can get Nikon Coolpix S230     at a better rate. But as they say, the consumer has to make the final choice.