Digital Camera Technology, News, and Reviews

Canon SX110 PowerShot camera in depth review

2008-11-14T20:26:00.000-08:00

The Canon Powershot SX 110 IS camera($212) is a relatively compact super zoom, with a 10X range. In this full review I'll discuss both specs, real world usability, and image quality with pictures I took with my production SX110 that I purchased myself.

The Specs

The camera has a 9 megapixel sensor, with optical image stabilization. 9 megapixels is a lot and pretty much more than anybody really needs, given that most computer LCDs can't even show a full 2 megapixel image. There' s no reason to hold out for a larger MP camera.

The camera weighs 245 grams without batteries, and with 2AAs, the weight comes up to about 300g. It does not have an optical viewfinder, but makes up for it with a large 3 inch LCD with 230k pixels that is bright, clear, and pretty color accurate. The camera measures 4.35 x 2.77 x 1.76 in, which is a bit bulky for a pocket camera, but it will fit in baggy pants pockets in pinch. Otherwise, the camera ergonomics are quite good; it fits very comfortably in your hand, and the buttons are well placed.

The camera is powered by AAs; Canon ships it with two throw-aways, which according to CIPA standards should net you 220 shots. CIPA for rechargeable NIMH batteries is officially 450 shots. I bought Sanyo Eneloop pre-charged (aka slow-self discharge) NIMH batteries (2 kmAh), which out of the box allowed me to take 370 photos and a 1 minute movie. Supposedly the eneloop batteries get better after a couple uses, so 450 shots per charge isn't completely crazy, but I didn't use the flash almost at all, which I'm sure increased my battery life a bit. Note that you can get higher mAh batteries (up to 2.8k mAh), which in theory would allow more pictures per charge, but regular NIMH battery have a high self-discharge rate (20% in the first day, and ~1 percent each following day) so the low-self discharge batteries (which top out at 2k mAh) are probably going to get you the most shots on average unless you plan to take more than 200 shots a day (hey, why not!).

Images can be stored on a SD/SDHC Memory Card, MultiMediaCard, MMC Plus Card, or HC MMC Plus Card. Canon plays a little 'joke' on you and provides a 32MB card with the camera. Might as well find a needy landfill for that one, and get something in the multi-gig range (4GB is a nice size, and lets you record up to 32 minute 640x480 movies).

Usability

The flash flips out from the top of the SX110, which is done manually before you want to use the flash. This is nice in that it prevents you from firing the flash by mistake, but does mean more hassle when you do want to use the flash. Even worse, it takes a really long time to charge the flash - I'd estimate about 5 seconds. Apparently this is the downside to using NIMH batteries, rather than a proprietary LiON battery. Frankly, I don't like the unnatural colors that flashes generally give to photos (this is true of most cameras, not just this one), so I don't care that much.

The interface for the SX 110 is really well thought out. It uses the same standard Canon menu system that I've seen on Canon cameras since the start of this decade. When in auto mode, the menu system gives you very little control, but flip the mode dial to Program, and you can set white balance, metering mode (evaluative/center/spot), resolution, and compression ratio, all with a very minimal number of button presses. In addition there are buttons dedicated to EV (exposure compensation), focus (macro/distance/manual), ISO level, Face detection (sets the autofocus to any faces in the scene), flash, and timed shots / continuous shots.

The program mode is common to most, if not all Canon cameras. What's really cool about the SX110, however, is that there is also a Manual position on the mode dial. Here, you can set the aperture size, the focus, and the exposure time. You use one button to cycle between each option, and then then you a dial you can rotate to quickly set each option's level. When setting the focus, a zoomed in view is shown in the center of the LCD so you can accurately judge focus. While in manual mode you can also set the flash power to 1 of 3 levels.

An interesting compromise between Manual and Program is the aperture and exposure time modes, where you control the respective named setting, and the camera selects the most intelligent value for the other setting (eg if you want to make sure that the exposure time is just 1/5 of a second, the camera will then choose the best aperture so that the image is properly exposed).

Once you've taken the picture, the SX110 automatically switches into review mode, which shows the last photo taken for 2 seconds (this can be set to anything between 0-8 seconds, or infinity). One option in this mode is to have the center of focus blown up to actual pixel sizes, so that you can assess from the LCD how blurry or noisy the image is. This is really handy. While in review mode you can also zoom in on the image to check out other parts of the photo, in addition to the center of focus).

Unlike other Canon cameras, there is now a dedicated button for switching into playback mode (ie you don't have to rotate the mode dial to switch to playback mode). This is really nice if you want to quickly check the quality of the last few photos you took. I much prefer this to how the other more compact powershots work.

One other nice feature of the interface is that you can set one of the buttons for custom use. The list of things that you can do with the custom button is a quite limited - I assign it to turn off the LCD, but there are other options which might interest you, such as one-touch custom white balance, and turning on a grid overlay for aligning your shots. Note that the turn of LCD feature is a bit broken - if you so much as rotate the camera, the LCD comes back on. But you can use it to save battery life in the situation that you are just sitting, waiting for a good shot.

Performance (temporal)

The SX110IS turns on very quickly - the lens is extended in about a second, and you can go from power off to taking a picture in less than 3 seconds. If you want to rapidly take pictures, you can switch the camera into multi-shot mode, where you can hold down the snapshot button and every 1.2 seconds a new photo will be taken - or if you tell the camera to only focus on the first picture, a new photo will be taken every 0.7 seconds. This is a good feature to use when trying to capture rapidly occurring events, or when trying to take a low-light pictures where you have the time to take 10 pictures and then sort thru them to find the one that is the clearest.

Focusing seems to be quite quick - only rarely does it take more than half a second to focus, and usually it focuses almost instantaneously (which is to say, too quick to notice).

The review continues

So that's the basic specs, and how the camera handles. What about image quality, etc? Click here for the rest of the sx110 review, and, eventually the conclusion.

Canon SX110 Review: a compact superzoom?

2008-11-01T21:45:00.001-07:00

The Canon Powershot SX110 is a "compact" super-zoom (10x). By compact I mean a good bit smaller than an SLR; but it's still bigger than most compact digital cameras. If you have big pants pockets, it might fit, barely. But really, this camera is intended to be carried in one of those over the shoulder camera cases.

The two pictures at right show the SX110 in comparison to the Canon SD850, which is a true pocket sized camera (though slightly more bulky than the average 'compact' camera, these days). On the off chance that you don't have personal experience with the SD850, I've also included an Altoids can, which is about the same size.

The SX110 measures 4.35 x 2.77 x 1.76 in., which, BTW, is bigger than the SD850 in every dimension. It's also a little bit heavier than the SD850, but not as much as you might expect. The upside of the camera's size, however, is that it's a very comfortable camera to hold, unlike the SD850, where there is little to get a good grip on. In fact, the right side of the SX110 has a beveled edge, which serves as an excellent grip.

When turned on the lens extends, nearly doubling the length of the camera. When the lens extends, the camera gets quite front-heavy, and will tip forward unless balanced on a perfectly flat surface. This may make it more difficult to take action shots of yourself using the 10 second self timer, unless you use a tripod.

This post is part of a series that reviews the Canon SX110IS.

SX110IS Movie mode review

2008-10-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

Like most digital cameras the Canon SX110 IS can record movies. Unfortunately, Canon chose the MJPEG format for saving the movies, which means that a 32 minute, 640x480 movie takes a whopping 4GB. Most modern cameras record in a more efficient format, like MPEG 2, or even MPEG 4. MJEPG looks great, mind you, but it takes much more space than any of the MPEG formats. Canon probably did this to save on MPEG licensing fees, but I'd rather pay a little for more compact files (or course, you can recompress your movies after downloading them, if you want).

Movie resolutions include 640x480, 320x240, and 160x120, with smaller movies allowing much longer recording time. All movies are recorded at 30fps, a come-down from some earlier models, where you can choose 15,30, or even 60 fps.

Once you start recording a movie the optical zoom and focus stay fixed. Luckily, the exposure does automatically adjust, so if you start filming indoors and then rotate the camera toward a window the camera will adjust. Though the optical zoom does not function, you can use the digital zoom to smoothly increase the magnification up to 4x. This doesn't look blocky, since the camera's native resolution is much higher than 640x480.

This post is part of a series that reviews the Canon SX110IS.

Canon SX110IS review: 10x zoom lens performance in the real world

2008-10-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

The Powershot SX110 has a 10x zoom lens, which is quite a step up from the compact cameras which typically only have 3-5x zoom. In this section, I'll show some real-world pictures demonstrating how much difference 10x zoom makes compared to a 4x zoom, and also show how usable 10x zoom is in moderate indoor light (answer: not so much).

At right is a wide-angle picture ("0x zoom") taken on a nice sunny day, at ISO 80. You can click on the image for a full-sized version. Note that the bus was a bit over-exposed so I had to adjust the brightness down a bit by pre-focusing on the sky, (IE holding the shutter button down halfway), and then reorienting on the bus. This is why the rest of the picture is a bit dark, but it was necessary in able to preserve detail on the bus, which I will zoom in on next.

This shot is taken at 10x zoom. Much less light is hitting the sensor because we have zoomed in all the way, but as you can see the image is still very clear and low-noise, with no blur, even though the camera is still in ISO 80. You can click on the image for a full sized version.

What would 13x zoom look like? I took advantage of the fact that the camera can do interpolation-free zooming if you take your picture at a lower megapixel setting; in this case zooming in past the optical limits of the lens is identical to cropping the image down to a smaller size. If you shoot in 4 megapixel mode this allows the 10x zoom to become a 13x zoom. As you can see in the picture at left, 13x doesn't make much of an improvement on 10x, but it's a nice feature if you tend to shoot in less than 9MP mode, as I do (9MP files are much bigger, and most of the time I'll never have a need for all those extra pixels). Note: the image at left has been resized down to 25% of its original size to save server space.

So far we've seen that the zoom functions great outdoors. What of indoors, where the light level is typically much, much lower? I took the next series of shots in the kitchen, with all the lights on. The room is pleasantly lit with 2 conventional 60 watt bulbs, and is far from dark, but isn't as bright as an indoor room with a large sunny window would be. At left we have the 0-zoom shot. It's already dark enough that I had to use ISO 400 to get a sharp shot. Detail is OK, but but Hi-ISO noise is certainly visible. On the upside, there's no blur.

At ISO 400 and full 10x zoom the result is a blurry mess. I tried taking several photos in case my hand just happened to be shaky, and couldn't do much better.

It wasn't until ISO 1600 (!) that the blurriness went away. Unfortunately, as you can see, most of the detail is now lost in CCD noise.

For comparison, I also took the same shot with my more compact Powershot SD850IS, also zoomed in to its max(4x), at ISO 200. This shot is interesting for 2 reasons. First, it shows the difference in scaling between a 10x zoom and a 4x zoom. It's definitely clear that a 10x lens takes you a good bit further in. It's also interesting because it shows how much more appropriate a 4x zoom is for indoor shots than a 10x zoom is. Now, you don't have to use the full range of a 10x zoom lens, and if I took this shot with the SX110 at 4x zoom, I'm sure it would look much better than at 10x zoom (unfortunately, the SX110 doesn't report zoom level, so I couldn't easily create such a shot for this webpage). The point is that all of the extra range that the SX110 offers is of little advantage if you'll be taking medium-light indoor shots like this one. On the other hand, zoom isn't really needed indoors. All of your subjects are close enough that you can just walk the 2-5 feet closer needed to get the proper framing. It's only outdoors where the long zoom becomes truly useful.

So, in conclusion, the zoom lens works great on this camera, in bright daylight. The difference in zoom between 4x and 10x is quite noticeable, and will allow you to get much closer to your outdoor subjects that you can't just walk up to.

Later in the day, and for moderately lit indoor shots, however, it's not really much more useful than the 4x zoom lens you would get on a good compact camera.

This post is part of a series that reviews the Canon SX110IS.

Canon SX110IS Review: image stabilization and HI ISO noise in low-light photography

2008-10-20T19:25:00.000-07:00

In this section I consider how well the camera works in low-light situations. Given the SX110's image stabilization, the hope is to get relatively low-noise, low-blur shots without having to use a tripod. In general it does well on the low-blur criteria, but not so well on noise.

At right you can see a hand-held shot with image stabilization on, at ISO 80, with a 1/1.3 second exposure (~0.7s). I have a pretty steady hand, but even I was surprised to see how little blur there was in the photo. The SX110's image stabilization works amazingly well. Shift-click on the photo to view it full-sized, however, and you will see that there is definitely both blur (unsurprising for a ~0.7s exposure!) and CCD noise (a bit disappointing, but the light level is quite low).

This photo was taken at ISO 200, with a 1/3.3s exposure. Already, things are much better. The unzoomed photo at right actually looks quite sharp, but if you click on it for the full sized version you will see that there still is some blur. CCD noise is worse, but not much.

Next, I turned off image stabilization, and used the same ISO/exposure (200,1/3.3s). As you can see, the result is quite blurry, perhaps even without viewing the image full size. Note, just how much blur you would get in this situation would vary by user and chance, since it all depends on how firm and steady your hand is. Any way you cut it, however, you can see that image stabilization is buying you a lot.

With image stabilization back on, I raised the ISO to 400, with a 1/6s exposure. The result seems to be slightly more resolvable detail, if you view the image full screen. For instance, try to read the text on the pill bottle. The amount of noise, unfortunately, also goes up, though this is only really noticeable if you zoom all the way into 1:1 pixels, or if you have a really, really huge monitor (the image is 9 megapixels, which is 3456 x 2592).

Next up is ISO 800, with 1/13s exposure. Now the CCD nosie is significantly higher, and the level of detail doesn't seem to have improved at all. This ISO level might be useful if you have shakey hands, or a faster-moving subject than my desktop still-life pictured here. Otherwise, I would stick to ISO 400 or below.

In conclusion, the image stabilization works great. You can get good low-light shots even at ISO 200. Unfortunately, the CCD noise is pretty high - higher than I would have guessed given the size of the lens (which allows more light to enter the camera, which should, in theory, result in less noise). This is not as big a deal, however, if you don't need all 9MP of resolution. Viewing the photos on my 1280x1024 monitor, CCD noise only became objectionable at ISO 800. While monitors will continue to grow in resolution, it's going to be quite a while before even a few of us have 3456 x 2592 displays where you could actually display each pixel of a 9MP image. The other important point to keep in mind is that the actual ISO is pretty unimportant in the end: what you care about is whether you can get good low-blur, high-detail images without using the flash. If ISO 200 is good enough for that, who cares if some noise creeps into ISO 400.

This post is part of a series that reviews the Canon SX110IS.

Canon SX110 Review: lens distortion - lab tests and real world images

2008-10-20T15:51:00.001-07:00

The SX110 has a 10x zoom lens. With such a wide range you might be concerned that image quality might be compromised either at the wide or telephoto setting. On the whole, however, image quality is good throughout the whole zoom range.

At right is the camera at its widest zoom. Some barrel distortion is visible (IE, curved lines which should be straight), but it's not bad. Note, however, that most cameras have this to some extent. On the positive side, the corners of the image are just as sharp as the center. Many cameras, particular more compact models, have blurry corners. Many Canon SD cameras exhibit this problem fairly clearly, such as last year's SD850IS. It's nice to see that the SX110 does not.

Next is the lens at the other extreme of the zoom range, in full telephoto. Here, there is no indication of the barrel distortion seen at the wide angle setting. Again, there is also no corner blur. Thus, the lab tests show that the lens performs quite well. What of real-world shots, however? In particular, does the wide-angle barrel distortion show up in photos of the real world? See the next few pictures.

In this picture, which is designed to highlight the problem, it is possible to see distortion. Even so, it's not nearly as obvious as in the lab test. Given that you are unlikey to take a picture like this unless you are trying to show off the flaws in the optics, it's not too bad.

This picture is perhaps more representative of the real-world images which would show off this problem. The support columns clearly bend out toward the middle, whereas in real life they are as straight as your typical 2x4. Whether or not you find this objectionable is really a question of taste, but I personally don't notice it unless I'm looking pretty carefully.

This post is part of a series that reviews the Canon SX110IS.

Canon S110X review: real-world test photos

2008-10-19T18:46:00.000-07:00

In this series of pictures I show how well the Canon S110X Superzoom camera performs in real-world situations.

This picture shows a close-up of a Lego robot. The light level was moderate, and I kept the ISO low (200), and took several pictures, saving the least blurry. If you click on the picture for a full sized image, you'll see that there's still some CCD noise in the image, but very little.

This picture was taken in outside a dramatically lit storefront, at night. Even though the ISO was inly 200, it came out with very little blur, or noise.

This picture was taken on an somewhat overcast day. The color is pretty accurate.

The camera did a good job of capturing this shot, impressive given the wide dynamic range. I had to tweak the exposure a little, using the manual mode of the camera, to get it to come out looking this good.

This sunset shot looks nice enough on my computer screen, but it doesn't really capture the colors as they were in person. This is a problem for most cameras, to be fair. Note that this was taken from a moving car, but is relatively blur-free.

This portrait shot shows good color balance and a nice depth of field effect (The face is in focus while the background is not. To get this effect I stood relatively far from my subject and then used the 10x lens to zoom in on the face).

The colors came out really nicely in this foggy day photo.

Another sunny day shot, showing that in full automatic mode the camera does a reasonable job of exposure, but still somewhat clipped.

This photo was taken in full manual mode (the focus was set automatically, but the exposure and F stop were set by hand). This is great fun to play around with, but time consuming, and not without risk. This picture was taken on a sunny day, but manages to look overcast. To be fair, it was one of the first pictures I took using full manual mode. The moral here is that full manual mode is a nice feature, but it will take some time to get good with it.

I took this picture late in the evening at a local mall. What with people moving around, it was very hard to get a low-blur image, without cranking the ISO way up. Instead I used the burst mode on the camera and just took 10 pictures in quick succession. After downloading the photos from the camera I could quickly pick through the set and find the clearest, most pleasing photo, which is this one. Many of the others were also reasonably sharp, but some where quite blurry. Image stabilization can make your pictures sharper, but it can't make moving people stand still!

This post is part of a series that reviews the Canon SX110IS.

A1000IS : part of the new Canon powershot lineup

2008-09-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

Canon has 3 fairly compelling cameras out right now in the compact/ultracompact form factor. First up: the A1000IS ($200 at amazon).

The A1000IS is the most compact AA-using camera

Canon has ever made, at 3.8 x 2.5 x 1.2. For comparison, the proprietary battery using SD850 of last year is 3.6 x 2.2 x 1 in. The extra thickness is due to the bulge on the side of the camera where the batteries go. It's quite pocket friendly, and the bulge makes it much nicer to hold while taking pictures than the SD850 was. The specs of the A1000IS are also quite nice: 4x

optical zoom, optical image stabilization, 2.5in LCD (115k pixels), optical viewfinder, and more megapixels than you'll ever need (10!). With disposable AA batteries, Cannon claims you can take 220 pictures per charge, with the LCD on (no specs published with the LCD off, unfortunately). You can also get rechargeable NIMH batteries, which will net you 450 shots per charge. It's really nice to have the choice. I'd go for the NIMH batteries, with the piece of mind that if I ever need backup batteries I can always buy some standard AAs.

My hands-on experience with the camera is quite limited. As I said before, it's quite comfortable to hold, and rests in your hands easily without having to grip tightly. All the buttons are easy to push, and are reasonably tactile (though not as much as the supremely satisfying buttons on the SD1100) . The zoom is also easy to operate. Disappointingly, however, the mode dial is very, very tight. There's no way you could turn it with one finger, and even using two fingers it's some work. While I appreciate the fact that it won't get turned by mistake, I think they went overboard.

I haven't played with it enough to judge the optics quality, but I expect it's up to the high Canon standard.

At $200, it's quite a camera. There are, however, several other cameras from Canon at that price range worth considering. The SD1100IS is significantly smaller, but has a smaller zoom, and goes for $171. The older SD850IS is a bit smaller, but has the same zoom, for $220. And, if you are on a really tight budget, the A590IS is a bit larger, has the same zoom, and is only $125.

Inside the SD110 - part 3: underside of the mainboard

2008-08-26T17:59:00.000-07:00

(Jump to the previous post in series.)

In this shot you can see the other side of the mainboard. Again there are several ICs, the most interesting being the DIGIC IC (version II). This is the main chip that Canon produces, and gives the camera it's personality. This chip incudes several functional parts, according to wikipedia; a general purpose CPU (a 32 bit RISC cpu made by ARM), a video controller and a still picture controller. The code running on this chip provides all of the interface that you see when you use the camera, as well as all the video and image processing when you take a photo or record a movie. Interestily, the DIGIC II was used by a huge range of cannon cameras from the high-end EOS20 to the lowly SD110, and even fairly recent models such as the SD700. All modern Canon cameras in production, however, use the newer DIGIC III.

Canon PowerShot SD890 IS and SD850IS compared

2008-05-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

Canon has released a lot of new cameras since my last post. Today I'll discuss the SD890, which appears to be an update to the SD850. Like it's predecessor, it has a 2.5" LCD, an optical viewfinder, and image stabilization. The Sd890's major improvement over the older camera is that it features a 5x optical zoom. That's the highest zoom I've heard of in a compact camera. Unfortunately, Canon did have to make the camera slightly larger in every dimension, at 3.8 x 2.3 x 1.1 in (vs 3.6 x 2.2 x 1 in. for the sd850). The SD850 is already about as big as I'm willing to carry around in a pocket, so for my money I'd go for the SD850 instead (which is only $240, vs $350 for the SD890). An interesting side note is that the SD850's price hasn't dropped much from when I bought it, 5 months ago, at $250.

The only other advantage to the SD890 is the shots (CPIA) per charge is better: 320 (vs 240). With the LCD off it goes up to 800!

So far I've only found one review. They found the ergonomics surprisingly poor: not easy to hold, and difficult to navigate between pictures. I hope to put my hands on on one soon, and post my own review. They also found that at the widest setting, the lens was rather distorted, and produced photos with blurry corners (see ttp://www.digitalcamerareview.com/assets/17135.jpg). Given the higher zoom of this lens, it's not surprising, and likely it's worse than for the SD850, though there are not enough sample pics out there to be able to judge this yet. The only real positive I found in this review is that the noise level at ISO 800 is notably better than on the SD850. That's at least something.

Oh, and did I mention that it's a 10 megapixel camera (up from 8MP on the SD850)? But who cares, these days, about the mega pixel rating?

Innovating at the color filter level

2008-05-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

As I've discussed before, the way your camera produces color images is by placing a color filter over what is essentially a monochrome sensor. The redness of a particular pixel, for instance, depends on how much light passed through the red filter above the nearest CCD element to that pixel. The big disadvantage is that the filter must discard a lot of the light entering the lens. I never thought about it before, but apparently there exist many different possible color filter layouts, with different advantages and disadvantages.

http://www.quadibloc.com/other/cfaint.htm has some really nice examples of the possible trade-offs.

Hack your PowerShot camera's firmware

2008-05-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

I just found this amazing website where several camera enthusiasts have figured out how to hack the firmware for the Canon PowerShot cameras (most cameras from the last few years are supported, and many recent models are supported). The hacks range from the mildly useful, such as live histograms, to the amazing, such as enabling 1/10,000th of a second exposures. Also particularly notable is the added ability to save pictures in RAW mode.

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

In particular, check out the high-speed photography pictures.

I'm going to try this out my SD850 soon. In the mean time, I encourage PowerShot owners to give it try, as the firmware hacks are non-destructive; you have to enable them each time you turn on the camera, so there's no risk to giving them a try.

Inside the SD110 - 2nd step: the mainboard

2008-04-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

(Jump to previous post in series.)

Just like in your computer, the SD110 has a mainboard where most of the logic chips and main CPU are placed. It's quite easy to get to; just pop the outside case off and there it is, under a layer of copper shielding, shown folded back to the left side of the picture. At this stage you can see several interesting features of the camera. First, many of the components are made by other companies, such as the two ICs in view, one from NEC and one from SAMSUNG.
Second, note how many ribbon cables there are on this card. While this may be the mainboard, there are a huge number of axillary boards, which you will see in later pictures. These boards are all attached with ribbon cables, which turn out to be relatively easy to remove and re-insert. Finally, note the ribbon cable on the lower-right, with the many silver dots. While it's not terribly clear, I suspect this is actually a testing port. The idea is that you could slip the whole thing into a connector and interface directly with the camera while it is apart. While this might be for repairmen to diagnose a problem with a camera that has been sent back for repair, another possible use is to test camera components while the whole thing is being assembled.

(jump to the next post in this series)

Download photos from your Canon Powershot under Win2k3

2008-03-24T08:21:00.001-07:00

Out of the box, the Canon Powershot software is not not compatible with Windows 2003 Server. But with some tweaking, you can make it work.

First, you need to install SSDP and UPnP services for Win2k3.

Next, make sure that the old Canon software is uninstalled.

Then, set the startup.exe install program on your Canon driver CD to load in WindowsXP compatibility mode. Run setup, and install ZoomBrowser ex, and photo stitch. I've found that version 5.8 does not run well under Win2k3, but that 6.x works fine, so at this point you may need to download and install an updater from Canon's website.

After rebooting, plug your camera in. The Canon software may load automatically. I found that I had to first open the Windows Control Panel for Cameras and Scanners and set Camera Window as the default action when my camera was plugged in.

After doing this the Canon software would load when I connected the camera, but clicking on the download images button did not work. A final step that I had to complete was to open the E:\Program Files\Canon\CameraWindow\CameraWindowDVC6 folder, and set all the EXE files to WindowsXP compatibility mode. I'm not sure this is necessary, since I discovered that some of the files had been set into Win2k compatibility mode from when I had been trying other methods to get the CameraWindow software to work. Win2k mode definitely doesn't work.

After those steps the Canon software works flawlessly. I can download pictures just fine, and all the Canon photo tools work just fine. In the MS event viewer tool, I do see the following, rather ugly message a lot, but I've never seen any actual malfunction:

Generate Activation Context failed for c:\Program Files\Canon\ZoomBrowser EX\Program\MFC80U.DLL. Reference error message: The referenced assembly is not installed on your system.

Canon SD850IS and Win2k3 do not work together

2008-03-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

I have recently started using Windows 2003 Server, to avoid having to upgrade to Vista. After installing the drivers and applications for my Canon camera, I get the following error on each bootup:

The Canon Camera Access Library 8 service depends on the following nonexistent service: SSDPSRV

Using regedit I searched for SSDPSRV, and removed this dependency (see thread that suggested this) so that the Camera Access Library would load, but apparently it really does depend on SSDPSRV, or there is another incompatibility with Win2k3. Turning on the camera does load the Windows Image acquisition manager (after I enabled that service), but does not load the Canon tool for downloading images.

UPDATE: there is a workaround.

IrfanView 4.1 released

2008-03-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

IrfanView is my favorite image viewer. Here's some of the highlights of this version:

* Lossless JPG Crop added (Menu: Options or Thumbnails (batch mode))
* Support for FLV format (flash video/image).

Get it here: http://www.irfanview.com/

Don't forget to download the plugins as well.

Inside the SD110 - first steps

2008-02-17T18:02:00.000-08:00

(2nd post in this series: jump to previous post)

After my SD110 died I decided to take it apart. Here's the first two views. Canon was nice enough to use regular screws (Philips) so it wasn't too hard to get inside. Getting the metal shell off did involve some prying, even after the screws were gone, but nothing heroic.

Once inside I was quite impressed by how tightly everything is packed in. There's no wasted space, not that you would really expect otherwise from an ultra compact camera.

What was unexpected was just how dusty it was on the inside. Even so, all the mechanical parts continued to work.

Canon uses lots of ribbon cables to attach all the PC boards together. I think that's part of how they manage to have such a high density layout. After seeing how many ribbons were plugged in, I had some hope that maybe there was just a dirty connector, and that if I were to plug and unplug everything the CCD might work again, but this hope was unfounded. I managed to reset almost all the connectors, without making any improvement in the CCD image.

(See next post in this series.)

SD850 - customizable button

2008-02-06T19:48:00.000-08:00

The SD850IS does have one nice customization option. There's a button for making your photos print when the camera is connected to a printer, but it is (or was) useless while taking photos.

Canon now lets you assign a function of your choice to the button. The function I was most excited about was turning on or off the LCD, but it turns out to work very poorly for that. You see, whenever you do something that would change one of the status lights on the LCD, the camera helpfully turns the LCD on again. One of the status lights on the LCD tells you which way the camera is oriented. So, if you turn of the LCD with this button, all you need to do is rotate the camera a little, and back on it comes. Also, the button doesn't work in all situations - such as during the 2-N second review of each snapshot you take.

There are other options you can assign the button - such as, start taking a movie, turn on a grid for composing your shot, open up a menu to let you set the EV, or change the white balance. None of which turn out to be that helpful, however.

In a related note, however, turning off the LCD is rather quick on this camera. There is a "DISP" button, which cycles between showing the current settings on top of the current image / just a bare image / LCD off. Which is to say like every other camera's "DISP" button. Except that a quick double click of the button will turn off the LCD (you don't have to wait at all between clicks), which makes it almost as good as having a dedicated button to turn off the LCD.

customization - when and how?

2008-02-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

I wish consumer electronics were designed to let you customize how they worked a little bit better. A great example is the "High ISO" option that most cameras have these days. It's nice to have a mode where the camera automatically boosts the ISO so that your photos are not too blurry. But that boost comes at cost, which is grainy and desaturated photos. I wish that my camera had the option where I could set what the maximum ISO boost would be. For instance, ISO 800 looks like crap on my SD850IS, while ISO 400 isn't too bad. But the high ISO mode is happy to go all the way to 800, even when I personally think 400 would do. Let me decide how much noise I'm willing to have in my pictures! Yes, I could set the ISO manually, but it's a pain to do this for each and every shot.

Some photo sites

2008-02-06T19:18:00.000-08:00

http://www.640pixels.com/ - posts tips and tricks for digital photography, about once a week.

Two generations of PowerShot camers: the SD110 and the SD850IS

2008-01-21T17:59:00.000-08:00

I recently purchased a Canon SD85oIS. It's almost exactly the same size as my much older SD110 (purchased in March of 2005). The SD110 was the second Powershot in the SD line, but it wasn't that new a design - Several of the S series of cameras had almost identical form factors, except for using a Compact Flash card instead of an SD card.

Side by side with the SD850IS you can see they share some common linage, but a lot has changed.

The 850 is much more curved. In theory this should make it rest more comfortably in your pocket, and indeed I feel this is true, though it's subtle. A really big change is the size of the LCD, which covers almost the entire backside of the 850. It's a very nice screen to frame and review photos, but it does mean that the camera doesn't have a good surface to hold onto any more. The SD110 had lots of open space for you to rest your thumb and other fingers, making it easy to hold securely. I'm still working on finding an effortless-but-secure grip on the SD850. I fear I may never find it.

The mode dial is recessed on the SD850, which again probably makes it easier on your pocket. But the SD110's mode dial was easier to flick into position. The zoom level on the SD110 was also a bit bigger than on the SD850. In this one case, it seems that the reduction in protrusions has no downside - both the SD850 and the SD110 are equally easy to zoom.

Interestingly, the UI for the camera is almost unchanged from the SD110 to the SD850. There are a few new options, and most notably, it's much easier to change the ISO setting, but on the whole the same menu structures and button names are used accross the whole SD line. I think this reflects the high quality of the SD110's menus - Canon figured out a good system way back then (or likely, earlier) and has stuck to it.

Death of a CCD: RIP SD110

2008-01-13T05:54:00.001-08:00

About a month ago I turned on my Canon SD110 and could see that something was very wrong. This took me by surprise, as I hadn't dropped it, or even taken it anywhere since the last time I took pictures with it, in my living room. I guess it just died of old age after 3 years (and 7000 pictures). The interesting part is that it was clearly the CCD that was failing. In some ways it actually looked pretty neat.

One way you can tell it's the CCD is the streaks in the images. The way data is read from a CCD is by copying off all the pixels along one edge of the CCD, and then shifting all the pixels in the image one pixel toward that edge. The line read off "falls off" the edge, and now the next line of the image can be read in. Part of the trick with CCDs is reading off each line in this way, without causing artifacts by the repeated pixel shifting. Clearly, something is going wrong with that process in my camera.

Click on the pictures to get full sized images.

Windows 2k support for Canon SD850IS Powershot

2008-01-03T13:43:00.000-08:00

With my new SD850IS camera I had a bit of difficulty getting my Windows 2000 computer to recognize the camera. It does work however - the problem was that the installation routine was unclear. One of the options was to install TWAIN drivers for the camera. TWAIN is a protocol most known for allowing programs, such as PhotoShop, to acquire images from a scanner. By default I assumed that Canon was giving you the option of doing the same, except that the source would be the camera. But since I have no desire to directly download images into PhotoShop I skipped installing it. Well, as it turns out you need the TWAIN drivers to download pictures from the camera at all, even if you are using ImageBrowserEX.

Come on Canon! It would be so easy to make this clearer in the installation program. Why should I have to read the manual just to install the right driver?

As it turns out, the new image downloading software that came with ImageBrowserEx 5.8 has a nice feature that the older versions did not have. First, you get a preview of your photos as they are downloaded from the camera. Second, you can tell the program to delete photos from your camera after downloading, automatically. This is a great idea - after downloading pictures there's no reason to leave them on the camera. With this change, it's finally the case that Canon's photo download routine is as useable as the default USB mass storage method of accessing your photos that most other cameras use. This is especialy true if you like the feature that Canon offers of splitting your photos into sepeate folders, one for each day you took pictures.

I still wish they also offered USB mass storage support, however, so that I could grab my photos off the camera without having to install drivers on machines that don't support the DPIC protocal that Canon uses (altho to be fair WinXP and OSX both support DPIC, so this is a dimishing problem).

Canon SD850 battery life

2007-12-27T14:40:00.001-08:00

The SD850 has pretty good battery life - I took 327 shots on my first fully charged battery. The LCD was turned off for maybe a 3rd of those pictures, and the flash was almost never used, but I did review my pictures after taking them quite a bit.

Unfortunately, the camera doesn't have a battery charge meter, so the end of battery comes with little warning. Once the low-battery warning came on I got about 20 pictures before the camera turned off. It takes about 2 hours to charge the battery, which is done by taking the battery out and putting it into a relatively compact (slightly smaller than the camera) wall charger.

view your photos at full resolution

2007-12-27T08:38:00.000-08:00

If you have a >2 megapixel camera, it's likely that you never view your photos at full resolution, since even a 2mp image is larger than what most monitors can show. While full resolution may be out of reach, it's still possible that you can see more pixels than you do currently. If you have a CRT, it's very likely that you don't push it to the very highest resolution, as Windows just isn't usable (fonts are too small, as are toolbars, etc). And even some LCD users run in less than full resolution mode, for the same reason.

What you'd like to do is temporarily switch to a higher resolution mode while viewing your photos. You can do this by changing your desktop settings, but it's a pain to switch back and forth all the time. Luckily, there's an app that will do the work for you. Reso will change the screen resolution (and/or refresh rate) and then launch an application of your choosing. Once you quit that application it will return your screen to normal.

Use it to start Infranview and you have a high resolution image viewer. You can even place a shortcut on your desktop that does this, and then you can just drag any photo onto it to view the image in full resolution. You'll be amazed how much more your photo's "pop" when viewed at 1600x1200 or higher. This is one of the reasons to hang on to a good 19 or 21in CRT.

See also: this writeup.

further comparisons between canon sd850is and sony w80

2007-12-19T09:47:00.001-08:00

Nightshots: both Ok, but sd850 is better.

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/sony/dsc_w80-review/nightshot.jpg
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_sd850-review/nightshot.jpg

Lens:

(lab shot) S850 has more corner blur. W80 has more barrel distortion. Both are OK.
(real world) both suffer corner blur, but in different corners. SD850 is only slightly worse.
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/sony/dsc_w80-review/DSC00016.JPG
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_sd850-review/IMG_0014.JPG

High ISO mode:
(iso 400): w80 is blurrier, but not so that you'd notice at 1280x1024. At 100% zoom it's definitely noticeable, and at 50% zoom it also is, but not badly. Conclusion: it's a toss-up if you don't use the full camera resolution.

Real world resolution:

not much difference in full light, esp. if you don't use full resolution.
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/sony/dsc_w80-review/DSC00018.JPG
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_sd850-review/IMG_0019.JPG

in moderate light, there still doesn't seem to be much difference.

Non-photographic issues:

CIPA: W80 340 shots, SD850 230 shots
Dimensions: W80 3.6 x 2.3 x 0.9 in., SD850 3.6 x 2.2 x 1.0 in. (W80 slightly smaller)
Rotation sensor: Yes, both have it.

SD850is price drops

2007-12-14T09:32:00.000-08:00

Amazon is still dropping the price on the SD850is ($250), though the price fluctuates up and down a bit. They remain the cheapest price on the net from a reputable seller. Meanwhile the Sony W80 is going for $180.

Casio EX-V7

2007-12-04T14:44:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a break from Canon to consider other cameras. The Casio Casio EX-V7 is a nice compact camera if you don't care about an optical viewfinder ($200)

Specs: 7x zoom, 7mp, 2.5in LCD, optical NR, CIPA 240. Dimensions: 3.8 x 2.4 x 1.0 in (0.2 longer and taller than the Canon SD 850).

The 7x zoom is pretty exciting. That kind of range implies some optical trade offs, and indeed there are some: corner blurriness and barrel distortion at wide angles. The corner blurriness isn't so bad, actually, but the barrel distortion is pretty noticeable in lab tests.

It also has a really good movie mode: it allows optical zooming while recording movies, and it records to h264, which is a really efficient codec with small file size and good playback compatibility.

Some reviews:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/casio/ex-v7.htm
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/CasioEXV7/

Near bottom for SD850is prices

2007-11-29T18:08:00.001-08:00

Amazon's price on the SD850is is starting to climb instead of drop. it is now $260. I'd guess this means stock is drying up, so it's probably time to buy this camera if you are interested. The next bump up (The SD950is) is going for $350. Given that shipping is free, these prices are actually about as low as they get online from reputable sellers. It's been a little while since Canon has announced a new SD camera, so if you wait another 3 months I expect some new choices will be out.

In the mean time, the Sony W80 remains a good alternative at $190 (again, free shipping).

Canon SD 870IS

2007-11-14T07:56:00.000-08:00

The Canon Powershot SD870IS (3.8x zoom, 8 MP, IS,Wide angle, CIPA 270) sounds like an upgrade to the SD850. Not true! It uses a wide-angle lens, removes the optical view finder, and bumps the LCD up to 3in from 2.5in. It's also slightly taller and longer (by .1in, in each direction). Because of the new control layout there isn't any good place to rest your thumb on the back of the camera - the entire backside is made up of LCD or buttons. The shots per charge of 270 isn't bad, but since you have to use the LCD all the time, there's no way to extend that value should you be on vacation, etc. Shot to shot cycle time was 2.2s.

I've noted this camera before, but now there are two good reviews of it online.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/SD850IS/SD850ISA.HTM

A good, spec oriented review. As you might expect, the wide angle lens, at the widest angle, produces a bit of blurriness at the corners, and visible barrel distortion. The 870 is definitely worse than the SD850 in this regard, but about the same as it's wide-angle predecessor, the SD800. In real world images (1) (2), this may or may not be visible, depending on how hard you look.

Aside from the lens, the reviewer liked the camera quite well.

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_sd870-review/index.shtml

A really informative review, with excellent real world tests. This reviewer also liked the camera a lot, but was less satisfied with the quality of the optics.

Personally, it looks like a fine camera, but not a great one - I want better optics and a viewfinder (or much better battery life, to make up for the missing viewfinder).

Vectorize images

2007-11-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

A neat new web app allows you to take your photos and create vector art out of them automatically. Vector based images are composed of lines and polygons, rather than pixels, which potentially means that you can print or resize the images with less error. In practice, I've not found that to be true with the output of this app. But - it's fun to play with.

http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

New version of the GIMP (2.40)

2007-10-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

The GIMP is a powerful photo editing program - equal to PhotoShop, more or less, but with a different interface. There is a new version out, which adds some nice features (see link below), and a new visual theme. If you don't have PhotoShop, get the GIMP!

http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.4.html

Canon PowerShot SD870 review

2007-10-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

The newest PowerShot in Canon's super-compact line is the SD870is. Unlike most of the SD line, it doesn't have a optical viewfinder. It's sized about the same as the SD850is, and has a 3.8x zoom lens. It's rated at 270 shots (CIPA), which is not so great given that there's no optical viewfinder, so you can't use the camera without the LCD on. The price is $309 from amazon.

Picture quality looks pretty good - if anything the corner blurriness is less on this camera than previous Powershots, though I have yet to do a detailed comparison.

DP Review - positive review, some spec oriented tests and real-world pictures.

Further price drop on SD 850IS

2007-10-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

Amazon now has it for $264, or $234 if you sign up for a credit card.

Canon Powershot A570 IS

2007-10-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

The A570IS is a slightly larger camera that uses AAs, and has a very low price ($165 at amazon). It's bigger than the Powershot 850IS, at 3.52 x 2.53 x 1.69 in (most notably 0.7in thicker).

The specs:

CIPA: 400 shots using 2 AA NiMH batteries (900 with LCD off).

4x zoom lens, noticeable barrel distortion at wide angle, but only very minimal corner blurring.

2.5" LCD, 115k pixels, and a optical viewfinder as well.

The light sensitively looks pretty good, with relatively low-noise images up to iso 400, and very little noise reduction applied, which means that decent detail is seen even at iso 400.

Optical image stabilization, which DP review says works quite well.

Conclusion:

Not compact enough for me, but if that's not so important to you this sounds like an excellent bargain.

Positive review at dp review, with lots of good spec oriented tests.

New review for Sony W80

2007-10-18T09:18:00.000-07:00

The W80 has been around a while, but DP review (one of the best spec-oriented sites) just posted their review. They note several problems:

Battery life didn't hold up to the CIPA rating of 340 shots per charge - they found it was closer to 200 shots. They were unimpressed with image stabilization (in general, not just with this camera. I think this is rather unfair, and I'm not sure where they are coming from). They also complain about the over-noise reduction that the camera applies above ISO 100 (but as I've said, this is less of an issue if you shoot at 5 MP). They also note the corner blur issue. Most damming to them, however, is that indoor performance is quite poor - the ISO goes too high, and focus is very slow.

Interestingly, they have a side by side comparison page with the Canon SD800, much like I've been doing with the SD850. To my eyes, the W80 won.

Amazon price drop again

2007-10-16T18:48:00.001-07:00

Canon SD850 $282
Sony W80 $199

At this rate the price is dropping every couple days.

Best price on the SD 850IS

2007-10-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

Amazon has dropped the price to $286, and seems to be dropping the price at roughly $10/week. Likely they will sell out and quit carrying the camera. Note: amazon is also running a $30 off bonus if you sign up for a "small business" credit card - not sure what the requirements are to qualify, but if you do the price is only $256!

Best deal on the Sony w80

2007-10-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

Currently the best deal on the Sony w80 is $200, direct from sony, if you are willing to sign up for a credit card in the processes. Just put the $220 camera in the shopping cart, and another $80 in accessories (such as a big memory card) and go thru the checkout process. At the point they want to you enter your name and address they will offer you a credit card signup that will give you $100 off. If you don't like credit card shenanigans, then amazon has it for $210. But then you won't get $80 worth of accessories...

canon sd850 vs sony w80: revisted

2007-10-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

People have complained about the soft looking images that the Sony w80 puts out, likely due to high noise reduction in the camera. Nobody has really made the same complaint about the SD850. So just out of curiosity, I decided to do a little A/B testing on test photos taken in good lighting from Digital Imaging's website. Though test shots did look different, the difference was pretty minimal.

Furthermore, these test shots were taken at 7+ megapixels, whereas I have previously argued that 4 mega pixels all that's really needed. If you resize the images down to 4 megapixels, I found they looked even sharper (unsurprising), and that there was even less evidence that the Sony camera was soft compared to the Canon.

I also looked at images taken with higher ISO (simulating a low-light situation) from DC resources. Here I just looked at the images resized down to 1280x1024. The Sony W80 clearly looked better. At that size, there was an equal amount of detail in the images, but the Sony had much more pleasant color. At full zoom, however, it was true that the SD850 did better in fine detail (such as allowing you to read fine print that was obscured by the W80). But you'll never see those fine details unless you crop your photos or zoom in on detail when viewing them on your monitor.

Conclusion: the Sony W80 may be a better buy than the online reviews suggest.

Lighten your photos without blowing out the highlights

2007-10-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

If you have a picture with really dramatic lighting differences (say half the image is in sunlight, and the other in shadow), then with normal tools it's very hard to make the dark part visible without ruining the bright part. What you need is a way to selectively brighten the darkest part of the image. The newer versions of PhotoShop have a tool for this, but if you don't have that, there is a free alternative that you can use online which may work even better:

shadowilluminator

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX100

2007-10-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

This $400 camera, like almost ever camera sold by Panasonic has image stabilization, but no optical view finder. Other important specs:

3.6X zoom lens, wide angle (28mm equiv), with quite blurry corners at wide angle

CIPA: 320 shots per charge.

size: 3.8 x 2.1 x 1.0 in. (0.2in longer than the SD850).

It looks like a reasonably nice camera, with a reasonable CIPA given it doesn't have a optical viewfinder. But like all the other wide angle cameras I've looked at, it has relatively poor optics at wide angle. Image stabilization is nice, but there are lots of other cameras which have this feature. Odly the camera doesn't support USB 2.0, so downloading all those 12 megapixel images is going to take forever.

DCRP review- mildly positive; they complain of high ISO noise, and the fact that it's kind of expense. Instead they suggest looking at a lower megapixel camera from Panasonic, such as the DMC-FX33 or DMC-FX55 instead.

Canon SD950 reviews

2007-10-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

There are two new reviews of the SD850 from Canon.

PhotoBlog - positive review, with some good sample pix. They note that the biggest problem they saw was relatively high noise at ISO 400. The review has no discussion of edge blurriness or other lens distortion.

Steve's Digicams - positive review, but very short on details that can't be found in the press release. Steve claims minimal lens distortion and edge blurriness, but has no test pictures to back up his statement. Indeed, this real world shot from his review does show corner blurriness, though it's not an ideal shot to test for this.

Eliminate dead space in your photos

2007-10-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a really cool online tool that lets you resize you photos by removing the repetitive or empty portions of the image - automatically! It's a lot of fun to play with and the resulting images look remarkably natural. You can also tell it to remove specific parts of the image as it resizes, which often doesn't look as natural, but still works remarkably well.

It's a flash program @ http://rsizr.com/

Fujifilm FinePix Z5fd

2007-10-04T08:03:00.000-07:00

Lest you think I only follow Canon products, here is some info on a Fujifilm camera. Fujifilm has an interesting feature - they call it a "supperCCD", where super means super sensitive. The idea is that high ISO shots still look pretty good, in terms of noise level, reducing the need for image stabilization. How well does it work? Well, the camera does better than a typical compact at the same ISO, but from the test shots I have seen it does not appear to be as good as image stabilization in low light.

The Fujifilm FinePix Z5fd is much cheaper than the Canon cameras with IS, however - $165 at amazon. It's also 0.2in thiner than the SD850, at 3.6x2.2x0.8in. Compared to the SD850 the corner blur is much less at wide angle(compare 1 & 2), and the lens distortion is virtually nonexistent. But the deal breaker, for me, is that it has no optical viewfinder and the shots per charge (CIPA) is only 200. Canon's CIPA usually isn't much higher with LCD on, but will go up to 500 range with LCD off.

Here is Imaging Resource's review. Given the downsides to this camera I don't expect to collect more reviews.

A book for the Gimp

2007-10-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

I've previously recommended the Gimp; a free alternative to PhotoShop that runs under most OSes. The only downside to the Gimp is it doesn't try to clone the PhotoShop interface, which means the learning curve is steeper than it could be. But there's a good book that can help with the learning curve, for much less than a copy of PhotoShop itself will set you back.

GIMP 2 for Photographers: $20 at amazon.

Book review here

Canon SD850 IS powershot - lowest safe price

2007-10-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

It looks like the cheapest price for the SD850 is $280 (free shipping) from buy.com (you have to sign up for a credit card, for a $30 discount).

There are other sources, but all at suspiciously low prices which will likely evaporate if you don't purchase several high-prices accessories when they call you back to "confirm your order". You can always check epinions before you buy from a place with a too good to be true price - likely you'll find there is a reason why the price is $50 less than everybody else charges.

Sony W80 review

2007-09-27T21:12:00.000-07:00

Imaging resources just finished a complete review of the Sony W80 camera. They feel the image quality stinks - lots of distortion in the lens, lots of blurring, and way too much noise reduction, resulting in soft images.

Disappointing, given what a bargain the W80 is going for right now ($150, if you sign up for a sony credit card).

Megapixels compared

2007-09-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

So how much of a difference is there between a 2 megapixel image and a 5 megapixel image? A lot less than you might guess. This is because the number of pixels grows as the square of the dimensions of the image. For instance, a 2 megapixel image is 1600x1200; if you double each dimension to 3200x2400 you would then have a 8 megapixel image. But do you really need an 8 megapixel image?

Keep in mind that your home LCD is unlikely to display even a 2 megapixel image at full resolution - a common LCD size is 1280x1024. A common widescreen form factor is 1680x1050, which is still too small to show a 2 megapixel image unless you crop or squash the image. If the image is any larger than your LCD's maximum resolution, the image will have to be re-sampled down to the LCD's native resolution before display.

That said, display technology is getting better. Today's high end LCD will likely be the common size in a few years. So to future proof your pictures in terms of monitor display, might you want to shoot higher than 2 megapixels? For instance, a $1500 LCD monitor usually can display 1920 x 1200. Again, unless you crop, that's still just big enough for a 2 megapixel image.

The only real argument for shooting higher than 2 mega pixels, then, is if you engage in one of two practices: cropping your photos after you take them, or printing your photos.

For printing, you could argue that the more pixels the better, but here again current technology doesn't take advantage of all those pixels. For instance, 4 megapixels is enough to print a 8.5 inch by 11 inch photo a 200 DPI. That's a pretty high resolution photo at a pretty large size. Only if you want a huge, wall mounted photo will you really benefit from more megapixels. For cropping, of course, it is true that the larger the resolution the tighter you can crop final image. Of course, many of us never even get around to sorting our images, let alone cropping them.

Meanwhile the benefits from using fewer megapixels are quite measurable. You'll be able to fit more picture's in your camera's memory, your camera will likely require less delay between taking pictures, and you'll be able to fit a lot more photos onto a DVD when you make backups of your photo albums.

That's why I only rarely shoot at higher than 4 megapixels.

Here's a visual diagram that shows the relationship between the different megapixel sizes.

Powershot SD950 first review

2007-09-25T09:48:00.001-07:00

ZDNet just posted a review of this camera. Like most ZDNet reviews it lacks the details that a camera centric site would have. In general they like the camera and recommend it, but they do highlight one notable issue: relatively high shutter lag (0.5s to 1.2s) and recycle time (2s). ZDNet's same tests ran on the SD850Is found a shutter lag of 05.s to 0.7s, and a recycle time of 1.7s.

Note that all of these times are at full resolution. Personally, I prefer to shoot at less than full size to get higher speed and less disk consumption.

Canon SD950, 870, and 850

2007-09-21T11:26:00.001-07:00

Canon has some new cameras that might make the SD850 less appealing. Let's take a quick look (more details to come later).

The SD870, at least by name, seems like a straightforward upgrade to the SD850. Not true! It uses a wide-angle lens (presumably with the same distortion problems of the SD800), removes the optical view finder, and bumps the LCD up to 3in from 2.5in. Here's an early review from CNET that is lacking in detail. The lack of viewfinder really makes me lose interest.

More exciting is the SD950, which appears to be a more directly related upgrade to the SD850. Again, the lens is different, but with almost the same effective specs: 3.7x zoom, 36mm equivalent (ie not wide angle). Without any reviews it's unknown if this new lens has less corner blur, but we can hope.

Thankfully the 950 maintains the viewfinder. It's also slightly bigger: 3.8 x 2.4 x 1.1 in. Cipa is 240 images (LCD on, 580 if off) , a very slight bump. It also adds a battery level meter, something Canon should have come up with a long time ago. Amazon has it for preorder at 450; I'm not sure the specs bump warrant it over the 850. Hopefully this will push the 850 price down a bit, making it a really good buy.

More Canon SD850 IS

2007-09-21T11:10:00.001-07:00

Here is another review of the SD850:

Good example pics of ISO noisiness and edge blurriness. (note, IXUS 950 IS is the SD850 in Europe).

Amazon still wants $309 for it & NewEgg wants sightly more. Sadly, its not clear that the price comparison places can really be believed when they quote lower prices - such as digital nerds, which says they will charge $230 for the camera. According to those same comparison sites, they are similar to many bait and switch vendors who call you up after the order is placed and up sell you accessories. If you refuse they then cancel your order. Note: I've never dealt with digital nerds, so I don't really know if this is their modus operandi; just that other customers have had that sort of experience.

Sony W80 vs Canon SD850IS: corner blur

2007-09-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

Corner blur is a common problem in compact digital cameras. I decided to look at the W80 and the SD850 and compare the two.

The W80 has a smaller zoom lens (3x) and while it does have blurry corners, its not as bad as the SD850IS. Note that both cameras have the most problem with blurry corners at wide angle, with the SD850IS being particularly bad on the lower right, and the W80 having the hardest time at the lower left. Neither camera has much blurriness if you zoom in, but I take >50% of my photos at wide angle so this is a significant issue.

Check out these lab shots: W80 vs SD850IS. The W80 clearly wins.

But what about the real world? Check out this pair: W80 vs SD850IS

I would say that in the real-world shot the SD850, while worse, doesn't produce blurring that is that noticeable.

Canon SD850 IS powershot

2007-09-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

The SD850IS ($308 at amazon) is an update of the SD700 IS. It's similar in many ways: optical image stabilization, 4x zoom lens, optical view finder, 2.5" LCD, and it even uses the same battery. It's also the same weight (165g) and size (3.6 x 2.2 x 1 in). The CIPA is slightly worse: 230 shots per charge, with the LCD on.

Pros relative to SD700:

* smart digital zoom if shooting at less than full 8 megapixel resolution (it uses cropping to simulate zoom, so there's no added blurring).

* one button ISO boost to reduce blur in low-light situations.

* Post-shot review mode where the center of the image is zoomed in full to show focus/blur/noise level of photograph.

Cons:

* blurry corners, just like the SD700 (but not as bad as in the SD800).

I'm a big fan of image stabilization, so I'm petty excited about this camera. It has been around for a while, but now that Canon has released couple of newer Cameras in the PowerShot line the price should start dropping.

very positive review with good real-world tests. Says the image quality is really good except for the blury corner issue (common to many compact cameras).

Another positive review Not as much detail, but still has some good test photos

How your camera detects color

2007-09-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

The CCD (charged coupled device) is the light sensitive part of your digital camera. Like black and white film, the response of each element in the CCD depends only on how much light energy strikes that element. Thus, a bare CCD would only produce black and white images. To detect color, a patterned filter is placed in front of the CCD, which only allows red, green, or blue light to pass. Thus, each element in the CCD becomes sensitive to one of three colors. The final color for each pixel is determined by blending the response of each of the nearest CCD elements for each color, though exactly how this is done depends on your camera. There are two unavoidable downsides to all this: your images are made more blurry because each pixel is based on the response of multiple CCD elements, and because of the filter in front of the CCD, you don't detect all the light that hits the CCD (that is, your image is made more noisy in low-light situations).

For more info on this process, take a look at this page.

Kodak has designed a new color filter which tries to address the low-light problem, by sacrificing color resolution.

Picasa photo editing and viewing software

2007-09-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

Picasa is a free photo organization program, currently developed by Google. Think of it as iPhoto for the PC.

It makes all of its edits non-destructively, which is great if you want to keep your original photos around and always view the modified versions in Picasa, but not so good if you want use multiple programs to work with your photo collection. The main reason I use it is that it makes generating web albums very easy, whether you are hosting the files on your own server, or on Google's server (Google gives you 1GB of space for free).

Photo Viewing software

2007-09-04T07:45:00.001-07:00

I view my photos with IrfanView, a free but full featured program that offers the following features:

Very quick to load,
Delete photos with 'delete' key
Browse between photos with left/right keys
Rotate photos (using JPG EXIF flags) using hotkey
Full screen view with smoothed resampling.
Plus lots of other features I almost never need.
Thumbnail mode (but I prefer ZoomBrowserEX for that)
Hotkey to rename file.
No ads/malware.

There are lots of photo viewing programs, but IrfanView is my favorite because it's full featured without being bloated.

Sony W80 reviews

2007-09-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

In light of the low price on this camera I've started collecting reviews.

Pros: image stabilization, view finder, orientation sensor
Cons: new menu structure is a bit confusing and slow, if you turn off the LCD then there is no post-shot review option, unlike in canon cameras.

Limited review with lots of spec oriented test shots.

Full review with lots of real-world tests - concludes that camera's image quality isn't up to par.

Brief review - Cnet does not manage to say much, but they do like the camera.

More to come.

Sony W80 + 2gb memory stick + case for $154

2007-09-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

Sony has a credit card sign-up incentive - spend $300 and get $150 back if you qualify for a Sony visa. Using this deal you can get a Sony W80 + a 2gb memory stick + case (or whatever accessories you wish that cost about $70) for just $154. For comparison, J&R is selling the camera for $230, without any memory stick. So if you can stand to sign up for a new credit card, it's a pretty good deal on a W80. I expect you could do the same deal with other cameras that Sony sells as well.

Canon ZoomBrowser

2007-09-01T16:32:00.000-07:00

If you have a Canon camera, it's worth getting the newest version of ZoomBrowser EX (5.8b); the 5.8 series adds a very good "zoom" view which is a bit like the Windows Explorer thumbnail view except that you can scale the thumbnails up as big as you want. This makes it really easy to pick between duplicate shots taken at different exposures, etc. ZoomBrowser is a nice piece of software, for being free (for Canon users).

Digital photo manipulation software - not Photoshop!

2007-09-01T16:28:00.000-07:00

If you don't have PhotoShop, an equally powerful program in most ways is The Gimp. The interface is rather different from PhotoShop, but if you don't use PhotoShop that's fine, right? The Gimp is free, and doesn't have any adware/malware. I have a copy on most of my computers.

Digital noise reduction

2007-09-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

If you regularly shoot pictures in low-light you either have to use a flash, which distorts color badly in my experience, or shoot at a high ISO level. For a digital camera, high ISO really just means keeping the shutter open for a shorter period of time. This results in a noisy image because the CCD is a noisy image capture device (particularly when warm) and when you capture less light the camera has to turn the gain up more on the final image. The gain turns up the image, and also the noise. All cameras have algorithms to reduce noise, but since the camera has limited processing power, there is only so much improvement these algorithms can make. Post processing software on your PC can do a better job. One free/mostly functional demo program is Neat Image. It takes a bit of work to use it, but for important pictures it can really reduce the apparent noise without making your images look that much more blurry.

Canon PowerShot SD 800

2007-09-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

Canon's 2nd compact powershot with image stabilization, an update of the SD700. Slightly lighter but same size. Features a wide-angle zoom with a 3.8x range.

Pros: Wide angle lens. Slightly improved battery life. Portrait mode which focuses on faces. After tacking picture camera shows full picture with zoomed inset to let you check focus.

Cons: Noticeable edge blurriness at wide zoom angle ( a bit worse than the SD700).

Reviews:

http://www.dcresource.com/ - Excellent review with lots of real world tests, including ISO and nightshot tests.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/sd800.htm - nice review that focuses on usability and real world photos

http://www.imaging-resource.com/ - Spec oriented review but with lots of good detail

http://www.steves-digicams.com/- Some sample pics and good details about the menus

As of 9-2007 it looks like it goes for about $300 from reputable vendors.

Canon PowerShot 700

2007-09-01T14:25:00.001-07:00

Canon's first compact powershot with image stabilization. About the same size as the SD110.

Pros: image stabilization, 4x zoom.

Cons: slightly blurry corners at wide zoom (example). Somewhat short battery life (CIPA 240).

Reviews:

TrustedReviews - interesting sample pictures but otherwise poorly written.

Good Camera review websites

2007-09-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

DP Review.com - spec oriented, with lots of somewhat artificial test, but lots of good details

DC Resource.com - fewer specs, but good real-world tests. Conclusions and suggestions seem well grounded.

Steves-Digicams.com - few specs, some good real-world tests, but not as good as DC Resources. Conclusions sometimes seem a bit more positive then is warranted.