Canon PowerShot ELPH 310 HS 12.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with 8x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Lens and Full 1080p HD Video (Silver)

I have to say that I was happy to be one of the first people to buy this camera. I actually received it before it was being officially marketed at BestBuy stores. I saw a lady online post that the camera was in storage at many of the stores but that you could request for them to retrieve a box from storage, and they couldn't refuse you to buy one for a sale. I didn't believe this tactic, but I went to a BestBuy, and tried it. The guy told me that they had it in the back, and came back with three boxes. I was so surprised, and he then asked me, "Which color would you like." Apparently, it wasn't being officially marketed, but you could still unofficially request one, and be allowed to purchase it. I felt lucky. I used it on my birthday (Sep 30). I freelance with photography as a serious side hobby, and I own a Canon 60D. I have been waiting impatiently for this Elph 310 HS to come out, due to it's new HS system, larger and 450,000 dot per square inch Hi Def (improved) 3" screen, and the improved 8x optical zoom (which btw worked wonders). When I started using this at Disneyland, my friends and I was amazed at the clarity of the pictures. Being a serious freelance photographer, it have a lot of high standards when it comes to picture quality, shutter speed, and overall satisfaction. I was blown away by this camera. Not only that, but I was also blown away by the 1080p quality of the video (wow). I didn't buy this for video, but geese-it's great! I will, however, advise anyone buying a camera with any megapixel count over 3mp, to buy a high speed memory card. Do not be fooled into buying a cheap memory card. The standard is this. Buy one with at least 20MBPS speeds or more (nothing less This will cost at least 39 bucks for a 16Gigabite card, and you will thank me later, trust me. Try buying that cheap, crappy, slow card, you will notice shutter lag, video will stop all of a sudden while you are recording video 10 seconds into recording, and you will notice that your camera is super slow when trying to take pictures. Remember that your memory card is like a computer processor. The slower it is, the slower your computer will perform calculations. Keep this in mind. Suggested brand and memory capacity? Sandisk 16GB (Class 6) SDHC card (it's labeled SANDISK ULTRA). Well worth your buy. I hope this helps you all. You will not be sorry with this camera. One thing I will say is that the menus took some getting used to, and the buttons are way too flat for my larger sized fingers, but most of you will probably not have the same trouble I do with that issue, lol. I'm 6.5'with large hands. Any questions, please feel free to reply. You won't believe the results of your new Canon Elph 310 HS. Trust me. I know what I am talking about. Ask away.....

I purchased this camera as a replacement to my Canon SD870IS which I was very happy with. The features that really caught my eye in the 310 HS were the 1080p video, 12MP images (I print LARGE poster size images at time), the large LCD screen and the new flash technology. I didn't want a touch screen as my interface so I went with the 310 instead of the 510.

So far I've taken about 500 pictures and 20 videos (some 1080p others 720p) with the camera both inside and outside. Overall I'm impressed with the quality of the pictures and VERY impressed with the video quality.

Pictures:

When you set the camera to Auto is does a decent job at detecting the environment. It adjusts the focus/lighting accordingly and takes a decent pictures. However, there are times where I have been taking a wide angle scenic view and it decides to focus on the nearby post and adjust to macro. When it does that, the picture comes out a little grainy and some areas are out of focus. You can't see it on the LCD screen, but when you get it out of the camera and on a larger screen it really shows.

The Image Stabilization (IS) feature is really nice to have. You can watch the camera adjusting for your minor movements that you may have when holding the camera up.

The camera offers the ability to take pictures in numerous formats. The default is 4:3, but it also offers, 16:9, 3:2 and 1:1. The manual mode allows you the ability to changing lighting, ISO, scene, white balance and compression. There are way too many modes to go into each one (26 in total).

If you want to take excellent quality pictures you need to be aware that Auto isn't always what you want and if you move that switch to manual and adjust the settings the pictures will come out looking sharp and cleaner.

Videos:

This is really where the camera shines. The videos are fantastic. You can shoot at 1080p and 720p or your standard 480i. The IS for the videos works flawlessly. My first "test" video was of my kids playing soccer and me purposely moving the camera to see how the IS works. After downloading it and viewing on a 60" TV there were times where we though the camera was placed on a tri-pod. The IS works that good. The video quality is top notch and most of the time I shoot at 720p.

The format of the videos are MOV. Previous Canon camera shot videos using AVI. This camera will not play back any AVI files (as I found out because I swapped memory sticks from my old to new).

Shooting a 1080p results in a video total bitrate of roughly 36K kbps at 23fps and audio bit rate of 1600kbps. Shooting at a 720p resulted in a video total bitrate of 25K kbps at 29fps and an audio of 1600kbps. Audio is 2 channel stereo at 48kHz for both.

However, there are two things that I wish this camera did different when it comes to video. The first is the size of the videos and it's compression. At 1080p a 1 minutes and 45 seconds the video is 460MB in size. Given this is a HD video, but other cameras and even some phones offer the same quality and time with less space. The second is the removal the "Time Lapse" feature of videos. With my SD870IS it had the ability to record a video as a time lapse that would allow it to take a pictures every 1 or 2 seconds and stitch it into a video. I utilized that feature on numerous occasions and it has been removed.

Battery:

The battery claims to take 250 pictures on a single charge. However, I was only able to get about 180 (no flash) on the first charge before I had to insert a different fully charged battery. Perhaps it will increase overtime and as the battery becomes more used. I would recommend that you invest in an additional battery and carry that with you as well. From the time that the "low battery indicator" came on I was able to get about 15 more pictures before it shutdown.

Design:

I was hoping that they would offer the Red of the 510HS on the 310HS but I can't fault them for that. The case is nice and well put together. It's very functional and the buttons are intuitive and properly placed. I have not had an incident where I pushed the wrong button.

Overall I'm really impressed with the camera and it's feature set. It will take some adjusting to make sure that Auto is taking the pictures that I want it to take, but overall it's a great camera.

This camera is FANTASTIC. After losing my Canon SD 630 (which I've had since 2006), I was nervous I wouldn't find a camera that I would love again. I had originally ordered the 300 HS, and had it for about two weeks and then I found out that the 310 HS was coming out so I decided to return the 300 HS. I also wasn't really impressed with the 300 HS to begin with. There are tons of great reviews about it out there but I really was not satisfied (shutter lag was horrible -- even though I had an 8 GB memory card, pics came out blurry a lot, the exterior felt and looked cheap, and the quality of the pics were not that great considering that it was rated so highly). This is ridiculous considering that this camera was made 5 years after my old one, and I still thought my SD 630 was better quality! I took my chances on the 310 HS after reading all the specs and improvements and I am beyond glad that I made the switch to the 310 HS.

The color in the pictures looks beautiful, pictures look vivid, the video is superb (literally, the quality looks like a legitimate video camera), the exterior is sleek and glossy (unlike the scratchy cheap look of the 300 HS), the zoom is unreal (i went to a concert and was standing very far from the stage and was able to get a 32x zoom on the singer's face and the picture looks completely in focus and clear). Pictures so far on this camera often make it look even nicer than what the actual setting looked like. In addition, the 3 inch screen is a huge improvement over the smaller 300 HS screen. It's super vivid! I'm in love!

Quick note: You should totally buy the purple version of this camera! I got it after debating between the plain black or the metallic purple. It looks very modern and makes you stand out in the crowd. I like the glossy/shiny look of it and it doesn't make it look cheap (which was my biggest concern when I chose a color instead of silver or black).

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 148 reviews  4.0 out of 5 stars