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Canon Elph turns 10

Canon Elph turns 10

Phil Ryan
2 min read
It's always fun to watch your children grow up--even if your initial expectations for what they might become changes along the way. Canon took just such a trip down memory lane today in celebration of the 10th anniversary of its Elph brand of tiny, stylish cameras. What began as a simple concept (which designer Yasushi Shiotani refers to as a box and a circle) for a film camera that used Advanced Photo System (APS) film, later morphed into the pocket-size digital cameras we see in stores today.

In commemoration of the event, Canon has created a special PowerShot SD900 Digital Elph Coach Edition gift set which will include the camera, along with a leather and fabric custom camera case and neck strap, packaged in a gift box complete with red ribbon, which will start selling in October for about $550.

In collaboration with NYC Peach, Canon is offering bejeweled SD900 cameras as part of the prize packages for a sweepstakes in which 10 winners will win a trip to New York City to see Z100's Jingle Ball 2006 at Madison Square Garden on December 15, 2006. Information about the contest will be available at powershot.com later this month.

Five more of the bejeweled cameras, will also be auctioned on January 9, in Las Vegas, to benefit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), with which Canon has worked in the past as part of its Canon4Kids campaign. The program urges parents to have up-to-date photos of their children to aid police, should they ever need to search for their child.

For those of you trying to keep track, there have been more than 50 different Canon Elphs over the course of the past decade, during which over 33 million of the small snappers have been sold. Since the Elph went digital in May 2000 with the PowerShot S100, 22 million digital Elphs have been sold, and with Canon's plan to raise its research and development spending from its current 8 percent of the company's spending to 10 percent, by 2010, there seems to be no end in sight for the sprightly sales figures of the Canon Elph.