Great quality, poor customer service.

I have always loved the durability of Canon products. Most of their cameras, at first glance, look sturdy and trustworthy, mostly because of the fact that they are not made with shoddy plastic casing. Most Canon cameras can withstand elements of the earth, you'd assume. However, nothing could prepare me for what has happened with the past three Canon cameras I've had. They have all given me the dreaded "E18 Lens Error" - a message a camera owner never, ever wants to see. Especially after gentle care of it, a fancy leather camera case, and after less than ONE YEAR of use.

Canon has infamously had this "lens error" problem for as long as I can remember. The SD1000 is no different. Canon always delivers high quality photos, as well as other great products - heck, I love my Canon PIXMA printer! But for some reason, they have never worked hard on getting rid of the wretched lens error problem. Unfortunately, many faithful Canon buyers have turned their backs on the Canon company for this unfortunate reason. I've done the same. The lens error is one which prevents the mechanics of the actual lens from coming out of the camera while powering the camera on. This prevents the camera from working entirely. The screen will show a message: Lens Error, Restart Camera. With the older PowerShot cameras, the lens error was called the "E18" error, because that is what showed up on the screen when the lens refused to cooperate.

I deem Canon a poor customer service company because of the fact that there is a very LIMITED warranty with the camera, and because they charge you about half of the price of the actual camera just to fix an error that was not your fault. They asked me for $107.00 to fix this! I'll save my money and buy a camera that won't give me these difficulties after less than one year.

I urge you to do much more research before buying a camera. I bought this camera because it was compatible with my Canon PIXMA printer. Bad decision. I suggest you do more research than I did.