The Canon D10 PowerShot is a term some people use when searching for the Canon PowerShot D10 which is Canon’s first compact underwater digital camera. Canon has been a market leader for many years in compact digital but this is the first time they have ventured into a waterproof camera.
The PowerShot D10 is a really rugged camera for outdoor use. It is suitable for snorkeling and scuba diving as it is watertight down to thirty three feet, is drop proof from 4 feet and has a wide range of operating temperatures 14-104 degrees F so that you can take it mountaineering. It will cope with most outdoor activities and yet still produce excellent pictures with all the built in Canon technology.
The D10 features a very good 3x (35mm-105mm equivalent) zoom with optical image stabilization and Canon’s fourth generation DIGIC processor coupled to a 1/2.3-inch 12.1 megapixel CCD image sensor. There’s also a 30 fps VGA (640×480) movie mode and a new Smart Auto (exposure) mode.
In the hand the PowerShot D10 is a little bit awkward because of its unconventional shape, but the control layout is standard Canon, meaning everything is familiar to Canon digital users, easily accessed, and logical. The D10’s user interface is uncomplicated and straight forward with large clearly marked buttons and a simple intuitive control array.
Operation is really easy as you would expect from Canon. All exposure options are minor variations on the auto mode theme. Along the top edge of the D10’s back are three buttons, the Print button which is used to select images to be printed (when the camera is connected to a PictBridge compatible printer), the Mode button permits users to select Auto, Program, one of the D10’s 18 Scene modes, or movie mode, and finally the Playback button, to access review mode. Canon have designed the D10 to be useful in a broad range of shooting environments and to be usable by just about anyone. Most purchasers will have no difficulty using the camera right out of the box.
The D10 comes with a heavy duty lanyard style wrist strap with a sliding loop lock. The wrist strap terminates in a locking male bayonet lug which mates with one of the four corner sockets, allowing users to place the wrist strap exactly where they want it. Great news for left handers as well. An additional accessory pack can be purchased which contains a flotation strap and a carabiner strap as well.
Like many current point and shoots, the PowerShot D10 doesn’t come with an optical viewfinder, relying instead on the 2.5 inch (230,000 pixel) LCD screen. Optical viewfinders are expensive and many shooters don’t use them so it makes sense, more so with an underwater camera, to use the LCD screen for all framing/composition, review, and menu navigation chores. The D10’s 2.5 inch wide viewing angle TFT LCD screen with glare coating is bright and automatically boosts gain in dim/low light. The LCD screen is more than sharp enough for most compositional tasks and captured image review. The user enabled LCD grid line display is a nice, and very useful, touch as well.
There really isn’t much wrong with the PowerShot D10. It’s cheaper than the closest waterproof competitor from Olympus, it goes a little deeper than many of the other underwater cameras in its class. It has very few negative points mentioned on other pages. Canon seems to know what consumers want and they deliver cameras that are affordable, easy to use, feature rich, fairly compact and capable of consistently producing excellent images.
