Posts filed under 'camera'
My mom has been talking about wanting a camera and it was her birthday so I figured why not kill two birds with one stone. She gets a camera and I get to try out one of the new Canon models. I could easily have gone with a cheaper model, but I found a pretty good deal on the Canon A540 (six megapixels), $36 below average street price and free shipping. Most reviews say it is worth the extra cost over the very similar A530 (five megapixels).
It seems to me that the A540 shares at least some of the new hardware being used in the Canon SI S3 that I want. Reviews of the S3 have not been so great because it is basically the same as the S2. You get one more megapixel but they say ISO 400 is less sensitive than it used to be on the S2 (because now it is a more correct measure) and ISO 800 is basically unusable. After trying out the A540 I agree, 800 is basically unusable unless you really must have the picture and don’t care about the quality. And even then it doesn’t seem much better than the old S2’s 400 in the dark though that is with image stabilization so hard to compare directly.
Full reviews of the S3 are now up at dpreview.com and dcresource.com. Both have some pretty good comparisons photos from the S3 and the S2. While I still think it is a great camera, I have decided (for now) it is not worth upgrading from my S2. But if my S2 died, the S3 certainly would be on the top of my list.
Back to the A540, other than ISO 800 being so noisy most people will never use it and the long flash refresh time, it is a nice little camera. I would prefer a bit more zoom, but you know I am addicted to my 12x. For most people 4x would be good enough. I really like the size, I was a bit shocked when I saw how small it was. It would be a bit of a bulge in your pocket, but it would certainly fit. It makes my S2 look giant. I miss the image stabilization of the S2. Without it, the camera is not very useful indoors without the flash. But few cameras in its class have any kind of image stabilization.
One of the reasons I went with the A540 was it had an optical view finder. My mom can hardly use my camera because she has trouble moving focusing between the fold out LCD and the subject for aiming. The viewfinder of the S2 is also an LCD, so she thought a viewfinder like a real camera would be better. Turns out the optical viewfinder isn’t much better. Part of it has to do with her bifocals, but I am not sure all of it can be blamed on that. I don’t really like the viewfinder since I am used to the LCD live preview, but I don’t have a problem using it.
You can read more on the A540 at dcresource.com and CNet.
May 29th, 2006
I just read an interesting digital camera story on Wired. It is not the first on this topic I have seen lately. According to this and the other article, camera manufacturers are having to come up with more innovation than just increasing megapixels now that most consumer cameras have reached high enough for most people. And that innovation is a really good thing for consumers.
From this article I discovered this really nice looking camera, the Panasonic DMC-TZ1K. It is a super zoom in a compact body. It uses folded optics, whatever that is.
I have also tried out Riya recently. It uses face recognition technology to automatically tag people in your photos so you can better search your collection. It of course requires training, but in the little testing I did, it did a pretty good job.
May 11th, 2006
Yesterday I posted of my rabbit photo hunt, just in case anyone actually reads my blog, here is the explanation. For the last few years one of my usual April Fool’s pranks is to find a photo on my victim’s desk, scan it, edit it, and replace the original. This year involved a couple bald heads, tattoos and a spiky dog collar, and bunny ears and buck teeth.
Don’t remember how I ran across this, but Filmwise specializes in removing actors from photos. They leave the clothes and you have to guess what movie it is from. Very interesting. And very good photo manipulation skills. Since I am into photo manipulation a bit I was really impressed, what I do is not simple but compared to these mine are nothing.
I also found this when searching for a screen saver that flips the screen upside down (which I was unable to find). I was working on late April fools for work. No one at work to fool on Saturday, but it also gave me more time to prepare. How about a start menu that keeps avoiding you when you try to click it? Or a program to flip the screen (not screen saver as I wanted), but still pretty good. How about one that you can email prank people that open executables in email.
It acts like it is sending an email to everyone in your address book and you can’t close it. I just did it to someone I was otherwise unable to get today. She fell for it. I walked by and heard a lot of mouse clicking, must have been frantically trying to close it. 
It makes a pretty good case for why you should not open EXEs even from people you know. AOL’s spyware blocker did catch it, but not before it ran long enough to give her a good scare.
The Museum of Hoaxes has the Top 100 April Fools hoaxes of all time. Also interesting there is the list of real discoveries that were believed to be a hoax.
Since this post is partially about digital photos, this isn’t too far off topic. I found something to look into if you need photo organization and searching on Linux. It is imgSeek. It has lots of organizational stuff, lets you search by picture similarity, it even lets you draw what you are searching for and apparently finds things. My Linux box is slow and the hard drive is still nearly full so it will probably be a while before I try this out. In the mean time, Picasa is pretty good at managing my digital photos for Windows, but doesn’t offer nearly the image searching capability of imgSeek.
April 3rd, 2006
Several months ago I decided it was finally time to buy a good digital camera. I have been wanting a good one for years but was never really happy with the ones anywhere near my price range. Previously the best I had was a 1.2 megapixel “keychain” camera. Anything would be a huge improvement, but I wanted a huge zoom and lots of megapixels. After lots of shopping and reading reviews, I finally chose the Canon Powershot S2 IS. I am really glad I did.
There wasn’t (and still isn’t) a lot of choice in the super zoom category and I knew I didn’t want to go all the way up to a D-SLR (too big and expensive plus no live LCD preview). The main part of my shopping involved testing out display models to see which ones I could actually get good pictures out of. Since no store has all brands and models, this took several days and a lot of driving. Best Buy turned out to have the best selection to look at. Circuit City would be second best. Both had cameras the other didn’t. Get a feel for them this way was also important, some that looked good online were just awkward to hold.
I had borrowed a friend’s Kodak a few times and much of the time I had blurry images. I just wasn’t keeping the camera still enough when I clicked the shutter. Being used to film cameras and higher ISOs, that was never a problem before. The last part of the name of my S2 is IS, which stands for Image Stabilization and it works really well. Except in low light, I almost never have that problem. That was the biggest selling point for me, I wanted a camera that I could actually use.
Thousands of shots later I still love this camera. There are some limitations like a max 400 ISO (which gets pretty grainy/noisy), its size, and it uses AA batteries. The AA battery limitation turns out out be a big plus for many users, me included now. You can buy your own rechargeable batteries (I bought two sets) and if you run out you can always buy some AAs almost anywhere to keep you going till you can recharge. That convenience is pretty good since there is little warning before the batteries run out. You get only a few more shots once the battery indicator comes on. But two sets of good rechargeable batteries and a charger adds a bit to the price which I didn’t really take into account originally.
I wish it was a little smaller. It has a nice size for fitting in you hand when you are shooting and it isn’t really heavy, but it stands no chance of fitting in your pocket. The lens of course takes up a good bit, you just can’t squeeze a 12x optical zoom into nothing. Having to choose between super zoom and pocket size I choose zoom and still would today. I am not sure how much I would like a tiny thin camera anyway. Hitting the buttons and just holding it would be awkward I think. But being able to put it in my pocket might make up for that.
Most reviews will complain that the lens cap comes off too easy. I agree. But it seems to be on purpose. When you turn it on with the cap on, the strap would put pressure on the lens motor which can’t be good. Of course a simple solution to that would be make the strap a tiny bit longer. It doesn’t come off just from gravity or shaking, it actually has to brush against something. I have gotten used to it and it stays on most of the time.
The other common review complaint is the plastic threads for a tripod. It holds just fine, but I guess the fear is they could be stripped easily if you use a tripod often. Mine has only been on one a few times so for me it is not a problem I worry about.
The price was a bit more than I wanted to pay, but it was worth it and it has come down since I bought it. Canon recently announced the S3 IS which I am already a big fan of. There aren’t a lot of changes, but more megapixels and double the ISO are big selling points for me. I am a little worried about the 100 gram weight increase, currently I don’t think it is heavy, but it would be nice if the new one weighed less, not more.
And to prove banner ads actually do make a difference sometimes, I clicked on a Sony camera ad and found this really nice camera. The Sony Cybershot DSC-R1 makes the S3 look pathetic, but it also costs a whole lot more. It is a bit less than a D-SLR and you don’t need to add more for a good lens since it is built in. Interchangeable lenses are of course a must for some people, but even on my Dad’s old film SLR I usually used only one lens (with amazing zoom). It was big and heavy, but I love zoom. The one downside of the Sony camera is the zoom is only 5x optical zoom compared to the 12x of the Canon S2 and S3.
I also looked at some of the competition for the Sony DSC-R1. Canon has a camera up in that price range too with a body similar to my current S2. The zoom is better than the Sony, but only 7x so still not as good as the S2/S3. I just wonder if the higher megapixels make up for that in ability to crop photos later. I like some of its features, but it is more of a pro camera than I want.
While I am looking forward to the S3, if you want to save some money on a super zoom camera, the S2 is a still a good camera and the S3 so far doesn’t seem to be a great deal better. Once the S3 is out the S2’s price should drop even more though not necessarily in stores. When I was shopping for the S2 the S1 was still pretty high priced. Try online but be careful where you buy from.
March 21st, 2006
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