5 posts tagged “canon”

This year, more than most, the Photokina trade show seemed to produce a lot of interesting news in photography. Most of it filtered down to people outside the industry through sites like Digital Photography Review, who covered the long stream of product announcements from the beginning of August through to the end of the show in late September.

Of course, the big names were there; Canon started with the 50D announcement - which was fairly dull, being an incremental upgrade on the 40D - and finished with the long-awaited 5D Mark II, which brought full HD video to SLRs (a month or so after the other big name, Nikon, launched its D90, also with a movie mode). In between there was the usual string of compact camera announcements, with the most interesting probably being the rather ugly G10.

Personally I've always been fascinated by the market segment the G10 sits in, being somewhere between the SLR and the compact camera. However, the Canon range doesn't really do anything for me any more. Sure, the G10 now goes out to 28mm equivalent, but it's been years since the competition did that. Panasonic, in particular, have always been good at it, and the Leica-badged version of their player there, the DMC-LX3, finally emerged at Photokina. The D-Lux 4 is, somewhat hyperbolically, labelled as the "Son of M8", but it's certainly tempting.

One thing both versions of the camera get right is a commitment to reduce noise. In the press release for the LX3, for example, there's this:

Panasonic also redesigned the peripheral circuits and other components to further minimize noise generation. These enhancements greatly improve imaging performance, boosting both sensitivity and saturation by around 40% compared with ordinary 10-mexapixel compact cameras.

Meanwhile, here's Fuji, whose F30 and F31 still command amazingly good resale prices on the back of their low-light performance:

Fujifilm says its new Super CCD EXR technology will allow its next generation of premium compacts to produce high-ISO images "superior to the F31fd," while also offering improved dynamic range in other shooting conditions. The technology is already fully developed and will be integrated into the first camera in time for a spring 2009 launch.

This is promising news. For a long time, camera manufacturers have been pushing megapixels over quality, with the rare exception - like the aforementioned F30 - still a rarity rather than a market leader. Of course, these are marketing quotes, not from real-world tests, but I'll be keeping a keen eye out for reviews of the cameras as they make it to market.

Panasonic are also involved in another very interesting idea - Micro Four Thirds. This is a new system for interchangable camera lenses, and is apparently "the most significant announcement in the camera market this year" and "an important moment in digital photography's short history". DPReview and Imaging Resource probably do a better job of explaining why than I do, but the summary is that they close the gap between compact and SLR digital cameras by shrinking the latter to the size of the former, whilst still allowing a choice of lenses.

The drawback? By losing the mirror box and pentaprism, these aren't true SLRs: you can't look down the same light path that the sensor will have. However, these days, most compact camera users couldn't care: you can look at a screen on the back and see. not what the sensor will see, but what it is seeing. The G1 - Panasonic's first body in this format - uses an screen that you look at through a SLR-style viewfinder.

However, the camera that seemed to get the most attention - at least if ffffound is anything to go by - is the Olympus prototype, which manages to mount a pancake lens on a so-retro-it-hurts body. Obviously, it's far too early to tell how good the image quality is, but these could well carve out a niche, although I worry they'll find it hard to beat the big players on price. (On the other hand, it won't hurt that as the laggards in the SLR space, behind not only the big two but also Pentax and Sony, Olympus and Panasonic have little to lose.) Certainly I look forward to seeing what the reviews say and how they perform.

It certainly seems to be an interesting time for digital photography, even if it's coming at the expense of film. Now, if only I could carve out the time to actually go out there and start shooting...

I'm a bit late to this (it's a whole week and a half old), but a recent Stephen Fry Dork Talk column covered the Canon/Nikon camera rivalry, and more specifically, the Canon EOS 1000D. I've not really talked about it, but unlike a lot of the earlier commentators, I wanted to wait until it had found a street price, which it has: about £375.

So, what's the 1000D? Well, it's a new category (four digits, as opposed to the three-digit 350/400/450D, or the two-digit 30/40/50, or the single-digit (and expensive) 5D and the various 1Ds) of entry-level SLR. It comes with the same improved 18-55IS kit lens as the 450D (usually) does, and loses a few features compared to the model up (spot metering, for example) while saving about £100 off the price.

I'm sure it'll do very well, since the things that make me happy I've got a 450D (a replacement for a stolen 350D, although I'd have been tempted to upgrade anyway) rather than a 1000D won't occur to many people. (For example, the viewfinder's a lot better on the 450D, but no new SLR purchaser will even notice.) I'd also recommend it over Nikon's entry-level cameras, because it's compatible with all of Canon's EF lenses.

(Technically Nikon's backwards compatibility is better, since they never had the same sharp break for electronic kit as Canon, but the D40, D40x and D60 don't support autofocus on some lenses, and unfortunately the cheap-but-useful 50mm f/1.8 is one of them. Since I recommend this as something you want to buy either with your SLR or within a couple of months, this is a big deal.)

However, beyond the low end I'm increasingly minded to recommend Nikon. They have a much smoother progression in their range, whereas Canon have a vast chasm between the roughly £1000 50D and the well-over-£2000 5DmkII. (I'm assuming the 5D will vanish quickly; possibly not.) On the other side, the D90, D700, D300 and D3 are each much closer to each other in price (although it starts to get a bit rarefied towards the end). I have no idea what Canon's thinking is here, and of course there's more to an SLR system than bodies (there's lenses too), but even so, it's a bit strange.

Still, SLRs are more affordable than ever (especially if you look outside the big-two duopoly: Sony's entry-level Alphas are under £300 now, I believe), and so it's as good a time as ever to consider one.

For two and a bit years, I had a Canon 350D, the digital SLR that, at times, it seemed every geek owned. I even
wrote a couple of posts here about SLRs in general. Unfortunately, with 35,000 exposures on the clock, it was stolen in November, and I've only just got around to replacing it.

The good thing about the wait is that I was able to skip a generation, getting the new Canon 450D (known as the Digital Rebel XSi in the US), which was announced in January and started shipping late in April. It's been out long enough for DP Review, and presumably others, to review it, and I'm not in the same league, so this is more of an impressionistic review of the first week or so with one.

A large part of the reason I bought the 450D rather than saving quite a lot of money and sticking with the 400D was that it comes with a new kit lens, the 18-55IS (not to be confused with the much faster, much more expensive, 17-55IS). So far I've not noticed much change, but it does seem a little sharper, and the IS is helping a bit with low-light exposures. Certainly it's good enough, for now, that I've barely used the 28-135IS lens that became something of a mainstay on the 350D. We'll see how that pans out in the future, but for now, count me satisified.

Another one of the best features of the camera is one that won't appear on most people's spec lists, namely the viewfinder, and it's gorgeous. My memories of using the 350D were of a dim, cramped window through which to compose, with little in the way of guidance. In contrast, the 450D is much more open, much brighter, and (although this isn't strictly the viewfinder) has more information available to boot - ISO is now shown in the status bar, as well as on the back screen. Along with the lens, this was a key reason for me to choose the 450D, and it hasn't disappointed. Speaking of ISO, there's now an "auto ISO" option even in the "Creative Zone" exposure modes, which means that you can stop worrying about underexposing things so much. Nikon have had this since at least the D70, and I'm glad it's finally percolated through Canon's range.

One more minor change that I'm surprisingly fond of is the option not to rotate images on LCD playback. Both cameras had rotation sensors - a feature I really miss on my Fuji F30 - but the new camera has an option to ignore that on playback, which is fine for me. It's easier to rotate the camera, but see the picture full size, than it is to fiddle with zooming in to try and maximise the viewed area.

What else has changed from the 350D to the 450D? Well, there's sensor cleaning - which was also in the 400D - which I'm really not in a position to judge yet. Mind you, the 350D got quite grubby quite quickly, and anything to help prevent that is welcome. There's also 9 point autofocus, up from 7 on my older camera. Unfortunately, I never got on with Canon's "focus where you're looking" magic autofocus technology, so I rapidly set the 350D to focus on the centre point, and used AF lock to recentre the camera if I needed to. The 450D hasn't really changed anything here, and I was somewhat relieved to see DPReview mention the problem in their conclusions. It's not just me, then.

I suppose the big new headline features are the 12MP sensor and Live View. The former is of little concern to me - most of my images end up on Flickr, and the 350D's 8MP was fine for what prints I bothered with. I was tempted by the latter feature, though, which promises to let you use the LCD rather than the viewfinder for compositions. Well, it works, but the focus is pretty slow. It's probably going to be most useful for astrophotography, where the camera doesn't focus anyway (you have to fiddle with the telescope instead), and that's fine with me. If you were hoping to use the SLR like a point and shoot, though, don't bother. Get a Powershot G9, Ricoh GX100 or Sigma DP1 instead.

Other quibbles? Well, The 450D has a new type of battery, but the charger still just reports "charging" and "charged" - there's no time estimates, unlike the high-end SLRs. It also takes a different type of memory card (SD not CF, since you ask) but since all of those got stolen with my old camera, that wasn't a big deal for me, and since 2GB cards are cheap, you'd have to have a lot of an investment to care. (This is probably a bigger problem for people using the 450D as a second body with a high-end camera than it is to most consumers, who'll only have one or two 1GB CF cards anyway.) I've also found the metering to be a bit problematic, but that might be just me getting used to the camera, and also possibly me misunderstanding the new spot metering feature. I probably need to come back to that.

One final thing that I hadn't realised is that Apple's OS level support for RAW formats doesn't cover the 450D, even with today's release of Mac OS X 10.5.3. There's Canon's own tools, and Camera Raw 1.4.1 knows how to deal with them, but if you're using either Aperture or iPhoto, you're stuck with JPEG for now. No doubt this will be fixed, but it's hard to tell when - it could be in a standalone RAW update soon, or in the next OS revision, which might be three months away. (Edit: turns out that within a couple of hours of posting this, Apple posted RAW Compatibility Update 2.1, so that's that sorted.)

So, would I recommend the 450D? Well, it's tricky. Don't own an SLR, but want one? Now's a great time to buy, and I can't recommend the low-end Nikons because of the lack of a focus motor, so the 450D has to be worth a look. For people with a Canon SLR, it's trickier. There's probably not enough for 400D owners, but for those with 300Ds who haven't yet moved up to the 40D/5D, it's got to be worth considering. If you have a 350D, it's very finely balanced. Personally I'd probably have either waited, or gone with the 40D, taking my old lens with me. However, I can see Canon making just as much money from this camera as they did with its predecessors, and so far, I'm very happy with it.

Lots of people will offer you - fairly poor - reasons to buy a digital SLR in preference to what Flickr have rather annoyingly called "point and shoot" cameras. (I'd label them "compacts", personally.) Instead, I'm going to offer you five reasons not to buy one- or at least, to consider not buying a cheap one.

They're expensive, or compromised

The Nikon D40 - and the recently announced minor revamp, the D40x - have major compromises, in order to keep the price low. There are far fewer autofocus points than on professional DSLRs that cost more, but also fewer than on compacts that cost less. The EOS 400D has no LCD display on the top of the body. One could argue that's something you don't realise you need until you've seen a better model, but it does make things more finicky. There are also very few SLRs with live displays on the back, and for people who've got used to using digital cameras at arm's length rather than through a viewfinder, that's pretty jarring.

To avoid these problems, you need to be looking at the level of SLRs above the entry level- the D80s and D30s, in other words. These will cost you nearer £800 than £500; for that you could get any compact you wanted, or even both an ultracompact and a more able model.

Compacts perform nearly as well

There are surprisingly few photographs that an SLR is capable of taking that a compact isn't, and, perhaps surprisingly, the converse is true; there are things compacts can do that SLRs can't (especially not the body+kit lens combination that many people end up with).

In the first category, there are some low light shots, long exposures, and the use of narrow depth of field. However, the first of these is increasingly the focus of improvements in compacts; ISO 800 and 1600 are becoming common on them, as is image stablisation. Neither Nikon nor Canon offer in-body IS yet; both make it a feature of the lens instead, and you'll need to spend around £300 on a lens that supports it.

Narrow depth of field remains a differentiator for SLRs, but it's also easy to overdo it when you first get a lens that's capable of it (I certainly did), and as I've noted before, kit lenses aren't significantly better at it than compacts. Wide angle is also becoming common on compact cameras now.

A field where compacts typically outperform SLRs is zoom range. Even ignoring the "superzoom" class - cameras like Canon's PowerShot S3IS and Panasonic's DMC-FZ7 - the average compact has a 4x zoom, whereas the Canon 350D comes with a kit lens that only does 3x zoom (a range of 18-55mm). Obviously, the point of SLRs is that you can swap out lenses, but then you're, once again, looking at a few hundred pounds to replicate a camera that you could have bought for not much more.

The one point where SLRs can claim a true advantage is sensor size: they're much closer to 35mm film than the 1/1.8" sensors commonly found in compacts. On the other hand, people are evidently happy with cameras in phones, even though they're even tinier; if you post to the web, do you care that pixel-peeping will reveal a bit of fuzziness?

Size

SLRs are pretty big and heavy, and that's just with the kit lens. When you start packing a second (or third) lens and a couple of filters, you're suddenly moving around a lot of stuff. Most owners of SLRs pack them for special occasions, but don't carry them around every day. (I'm a bit odd in that I do carry mine, but I got used to carrying a laptop around, and that's even heavier.) Compared to that, a compact that can fit into a pocket - or at least a shoulder bag - is a lot more likely to be on you when you need it.

Extensibility - blessing or curse?

Obviously, one of the biggest selling points of SLRs is that you can replace the lens, and therefore get the ideal camera for every occasion. This is true, but it carries with it drawbacks. As noted above, there's both the expense of multiple lenses, and the annoyance of carrying them around.

Even the camera manufacturers have (finally) acknowleged another drawback of changable lenses: sensor dust. Every time you swap your kit lens and the 50mm prime, you let in dust to the body, and some of this will settle on the sensor. There are cameras with shake mechanisms to remove the dust, and also with software that detects and repairs it on taken photos, but it's still a problem that needs to be worked around. Unlike on compacts.

One final point - shared by a few, but not many, compacts - is that the file sizes of photos taken with SLRs, especially raw files, might be bigger than you're used to. It's not uncommon to produce a gigabyte of photos on a good day out, and when laptop hard drives are still mired around the 150GB mark, that's a big chunk of your space gone, just in one day.

Video

SLRs don't do video, which is increasingly becoming a flaw that people don't want to tolerate. There are good technical reasons for this, but it's still going to be a bit of a shock for people who've come to expect that option on their digital cameras. It's something I've missed, too; there are some things where motion is a part of what you're trying to capture, and while it's possible to do that if you're a great photographer, it's harder than shooting a quick movie.

In Conclusion

Before spending your £500 on an SLR - and remember my previous advice that you should probably be budgeting that amount again to get the most out of it - have a look around at some of the digital compacts. You could save money and be happier, with only a little less.

Despite the fact I don't really know what the hell I'm talking about, I seem to get asked for advice about buying digital SLR cameras sometimes.

My main three pieces of advice are as follows:

• Think about whether you need a DSLR
• Budget 50% more than the cost of the camera alone
• Choose on lens range, not just a camera body

Do you need a DSLR?

Most people seem to be graduating from Ixus-class digital ultracompacts, which have no manual controls (or very little in the way of controls). However, between the tiny cameras and DSLRs there's a whole range of decent, configurable cameras, such as the PowerShot S80 and Fuji F30, which give you as much rope to hang yourself as an SLR does. They also have none of the disadvantages of the larger cameras (which I may refer to in the future).

Many compacts have image stabilisation; while that's beginning to show up in SLR bodies, it's an expensive add-on for lenses, and you'll spend far more than you would otherwise. The aforementioned Fuji F30 goes to ISO 3200, which previously was the sort of low-light domain that only the big cameras lived in. If you want a camera to zoom in a long way, the likes of the Lumix DMC-FZ30 and PowerShot S3 IS have a reach that will outcompete your kit lens, while costing about as much a single decent lens for your putative SLR. Which brings us to:

Budget for lenses

If you thought you were going to spend £600 and be done, I've a rude shock for you. The kit lens that you've just got  along with the camera? It's not very good. You can't get that nifty narrow depth of field that all the cool kids on Flickr seem to manage. It's a bit rubbish at taking photos at night. When you examine your photos on the computer you noticed that everything's a bit blurry. It doesn't zoom very far and you've realised you can't take a photo of the top of that skyscraper you like so much.

Of course, you know that you can go out and buy different lenses. So you have a look and find that the 50mm is under £100, which is great, but then there's another 50mm with a wider aperture and that's over £300, but all the reviews say it's even better. Or maybe you want a 30mm instead, because it's more like an film camera? Another £300. Decent telephoto lens with IS? £300 again. Remote control? Lens hood? OK, those are cheap, but they build up. And let's hope you're used to the size of files your new camera will generate, especially in RAW mode. So there's a couple of 2GB memory cards. Hence my bullet point: within a few months of buying your SLR, you may well want to spend about half the price of it again on lenses and other goodies. Be aware of that before you even spend the first penny.

Of course, you can choose to do without all of this, but then, why did you buy a camera with interchangeable lenses? Speaking of which:

Choose a system, not just a body

All the reviews, and most of the discussions you see, concentrate on what people call "bodies"; the camera, like the Canon 400D or the Nikon D80. Not many people suggest you look at the entire range of lenses, but it makes sense, because if you don't like going to third parties, they differentiate the makes as much - if not more so - than the bodies.

For example, Canon have a very wide angle lens (the EF-S 10-22mm) for their digital cameras*; Nikon's equivalent is 12-22mm, so it's not quite as wide, which may bother you. On the other hand, Nikon have better general-purpose zoom lenses (they offer 18-55, 18-70, 18-135 and 18-200; Canon only have 18-55, albeit in two wildly varying aperture ranges, and 17-85). Another major point is that Nikon and Pentax cameras can use decades-old manual focus lenses (which are cheap second hand); Canon and the Four-Thirds cameras can't.

I realise, having come through this process, that it's hard to work out before you have an SLR what all those numbers mean (notice that I don't even mention maximum apertures, which are really pretty important), but nonetheless it's worth thinking about all this before you choose your camera.

* Yes, I should really say "crop-sensor digital SLRs" here, but I didn't want to confuse people too much. I should also note that not all digital camera lenses will work with full-sensor cameras, but that's not really relevant to the point I'm making.

In conclusion

Apparently a large percentage of people who buy a digital SLR never buy another lens for their camera. I wonder if they know what they're missing (and I'd say they're missing a lot).

So, don't waste your money on something you don't need. If you're sure, then choose carefully, looking at both cameras and lenses, and be prepared to spend more to the most out of it.