Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Simply Terrific
If you are looking for an inexpensive camera that takes excellent, versatile photos and is very easy to use, I have not seen a better one. I have been a semi-professional photographer since the late-60's but refuse to carry expensive gear on vacations or weekend trips. The Canon slips into my front pocket; is unobtrusive; and, is sufficiently rugged to endure most environments. The photo quality is very good and the zoom is quick and efficient. Since most of my travel is in Asia where expensive items tend to vanish on occasion, my only concern using this camera is safeguarding the exposed film. The camera, at this price, can easily be replaced. This is a good product. It should serve you well.
Rating: - very good optics for this price; average electronics
I had experience with several cameras ranging from small point-and-shoot to SLRs, and I observed that zoom lenses have to be fairly expensive to provide decent image quality. Indeed, a zoom lens is usually more complicated than a lens with single focal length since it contains more elements, and it also requires accurate mechnics. This Canon seems to break this rule. The quality of pictures taken with this camera in daylight conditions is suprisingly good for the price. It is certainly on par with more expensive pocket cameras, and rivals low-end SLRs (i.e., priced below $500). The other advantages of this camera is that it is fairly light and small and the controls are extremely simple (off, auto-flash mode, red-eye reduction, fill-in flash, and no flash + two buttons to control zoom). The negative side of this camera is poor flash performance. It seems that the electronics built into it cannot properly determine how much energy should be send to the flash (or maybe it does not have variable flash power at all). The result is that a portrait taken in twighlights will be overexposed if the person is to close to the camera, and underexposed if he/she is too far. My daugher took quite a few pictures in the dark lately, and hardly any came out right. Further drawbacks are somewhat cheap look, sluggish zoom motor, and poor quality of paint on the program wheel (it started peeling off way too quickly). There is also no pre-programmed modes which more sophisticated cameras offer (such as portrait mode, night shooting, landscape, sports (quickly moving objects), etc.) The bottomline is that in terms of the feel of the camera and its electronics you get pretty much what you would expect to get for this kind of money; in terms of optics, you get a very good deal. If you are looking for a small camera with wide-range zoom that can take sharp pictures, and do not want to spend several hundred dollars for high-end models, this Canon is likely to be the best deal on the market. I rated it five stars for its price/value ratio. There is another version of the same camera available ..., with quartz date. My opinion that the price difference between the two is much more than that feature is worth.
Rating: - Canon Is The Best!
I am a 13 year old girl who knows minimal information about cameras. I spent hours on the internet researching to find an excellent camera for my purposes. I found about 3 cameras that are similar to this one, but the Canon Sure Shot 85 Zoom was the only camera that was in my price range, and had all of the desired features. I decided to purchase this camera, and to try it out. I took the camera to one of my friends houses, and I did a test roll. I took all types of pictures; light w/flash, light w/out flash, outdoor, real time (a feature that lets you take crisp action shots), self-timer (my favorite feature), and normal auto and auto with red-eye reduction. Then, I took the photos to be developed.I couldn't have been more pleased with the results! All of my pictures turned out wonderfully! The pictures were perfectly lit, they were crisp, and the indoor shots were great too. My real time shots would have turned out much better if I would have used a 400 speed film (like the manual suggested), rather then an 800. I only found one negative thing about this camera. For the red-eye to work properly, you need to look DIRECTLY at the camera, and this feature doesn't work well in self-timer mode. Also, I noticed that when the red-eye does work, it only works on those subjects with dark eyes. I would recomend this camera to anyone who wants wonderful pictures. It is a great deal for the money, and it takes excellent photos.
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