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• The Good: Ultra-compact body with sleek finish. Three-inch screen makes sharing photos easy. Photo quality is excellent. Colour features are interesting.

• The Bad: Size of the screen leads to low battery life and overly small button controls. Flash's range is not that great. Lower megapixel count should've been met with higher optical zoom.

• The Verdict: A big screen helps share photos, but also dwarfs over everything else.

REVIEW:

Canon's PowerShot series is arguably its strongest when it comes to ultra-compact point-and-shoot digital cameras, which would largely explain why there seem to be new ones popping up all the time.

The model SD630 is just a slightly better version of the SD600, and at a slightly higher price: $479.99 (Cdn. street). The only major difference to note is that the SD630 has a 3-inch LCD screen, with all the other key factors being the same: 6 megapixels, 3x optical zoom and the same shooting modes.

So while this is a review of the SD630 specifically, pretty much all the features mentioned here can be found in the SD600 as well.

The 3-inch LCD screen has a very imposing presence because of the small size of the camera body. To compensate for the screen, the buttons and controls to the right have also been reduced in size. Viewing photos on such a large screen can easily huddle people together to have a look, but there's a price to pay for all that.

Having smaller buttons means you have a better chance of pushing two at the same time, or even pushing the wrong one altogether. By marginalizing the control setup in the back, Canon has left the door open for mistakes, especially considering the screen's image quality isn't as good as it should be. It's not that it's bad, just not good enough to warrant the 3-inch design.

It was nice to see, however, that should you be frustrated with the small controls, you have the option of using a touchscreen interface via the LCD screen. It works pretty well, but takes some getting used to, particularly the scroll wheel setup used for video playback.

But as good as it gets, it comes with some limitations because Canon didn't go further with this approach. In order to change shooting modes, you have to go through the menu and adjust it from there because the lack of overall space made it impossible to have a dial for that.

This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that you need the LCD screen in order to adjust shooting modes. The more the LCD screen is on, the more the battery is drained. Canon says the SD630 can take 160 shots on one battery charge, which is below-average at best, but understandable given the size of the screen. The only problem is when you factor in the live view (there is no viewfinder, naturally), along with all the menu dabbling you'll need to go through, and the battery's lifespan begins to dwindle more and more.

During sunlight, it can be tough to get a good view of what you're shooting because the size of the screen is a real magnet for the sun's rays. And because there's no viewfinder (the SD600 has room for one because of the 2.5-inch LCD screen), you may have to squint and improvise to make sure you know what you're shooting.

The real shame in all that is that the SD630 really does take excellent photos. By knocking the megapixel count down to 6.0 (the SD550 has 7.1), Canon maintained a great standard of quality, while retaining room to enhance other features. Colours are rich and there are options for you to play around a little with them in a mode called Custom Colour, which lets you adjust colour balance, sharpness and saturation. There is also Colour Swap and Colour Accent. The latter has been a staple of Canon's line, while the former is a simple swap of two colours with each other within a photo. It's neat, but nothing to go too crazy over.

It's also best not to rely on the flash too much. Its range is limited at 3.5m and is usually unnecessary in conditions where the SD630's sensor can pull in a lot of the available natural light to capture a good photo. Just remember that you need to hold the camera very steady to avoid any blurriness. It can be frustrating to get it right, but it'll be worth it when you see more natural-looking photos.

A nice little feature to note here is the Focus Point Review. If you take a photo and then press the display button as the preview shows up on your screen, you can then see all the focus points in the photo to gauge whether your subject was in focus or not.

As you should expect, only a 16MB SD memory card comes with the SD630, so expect to dish out another $60 to $70 for a 1GB card. And if you're an amateur who likes shooting in TIFF or RAW, you're out of luck because the SD630 doesn't support those modes.

Ultimately, the SD630 is a good camera, but it sometimes comes across as a prototype for something else. The 3-inch screen is very eye-catching and great for sharing photos, but it also acts as a hindrance to the unit's functions and lifespan. But it does take excellent photos and features some neat features. If you can handle the sometimes uneasy balance, then you'll have a good ultra-compact digicam in your hands.