I received this camera as a gift from my boyfriend - I love my boyfriend! about two months ago. It is my second digital camera. My first was Olympus C-4000 Zoom.
The SD600 is very small, yet it feels solid and sturdy in the hand, not like some other cameras with frames that feel plastic. I love the way I can put the camera in my purse. I recently bought a camera case, but I used to store the camera in a soft cotton drawstring case meant for my sunglasses. Either way, I am not too concerned about scratches on the camera because it seems well-built.
The menus are mostly well-organized. It took me about a few days to master the basics in menus, enough to fiddle around with. Canon provides a photo editing software with the camera (which I have not used, but may be good to have if you need it).
I like to print my photos, so the quality of the camera is very important to me. I find that the SD600 delivers amazing results, with good color balance and saturation. It outperforms my older camera in low-light situations, especially in those requiring very long exposure times with the flash off. The SD600 seems to have a weak flash in low-light situations. But you can't ask for too much more, considering this is such a pocket sized camera.
I like to take close shots of flowers, and Canon SD600 takes nice macro photos. Not as wonderful as my Olympus C-4000Z, but then again, my Olympus is a huge monster of a camera compared to the SD600.
One possible drawback would be the retractable lens with its protective cover. The cover seems somewhat flimsy, as in you could pry open the lens cover easily. When I inspected the Canon models at retail stores, it seems that most of their cameras are built this way. I prefer the way newer Olympus cameras have a protective cover that completely slides over the lens and locks into place, rather than the interlocking pieces that cover the Canon lenses. Also, the cover for the USB cable connection seems delicate. I cringe every time I need to connect my camera to my computer to transfer files. I think you just need to be tender with it, but if anything needs to be changed with this camera, that would be it.
For those contemplating Canon SD630 versus this SD600 model, I think that the main difference is that the LCD screen on the SD600 is slightly smaller than the SD630. I thought it would be nice to have the viewfinder on the SD600 in case for some awful reason I needed to conserve battery life. The viewfinder is not good in terms of actually lining up what true image you capture in the photo, but it's good to have, in my opinion.
All in all, this is an excellent camera. I took this on a summer trip and had no problem with it whatsoever. It has quick start-up time and shutter speeds. Battery life is long. I was even able to capture some movies with sound. Only advice would be to get a larger memory card. I have a 2GB SD card and it will store approximately 700 photos at the highest resolution for this camera.
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