Radiant heaters get a bad press

Here is my newest heater, a Goldair GIR350 which sells for about $120 or so. It is a radiant heater that is also designed to be a convector as it has a grill in the top to let air go around the elements and out the grill. So it does both.

Radiants are supposed to be unsuitable for anything except spot heating but as I found out in the cold snap when we had snow they are absolutely the best heater because it takes a lot more time to heat up a room and even when it is not super cold waiting for the room to warm up is hard. When the cold came the convector heater that I used in the small study, which I thought was a really good heater for that, was totally a waste of time because it couldn’t warm the room up fast enough. And convectors of any kind like my previous oil columns were completely useless in the living room where there is too much air escaping for them to keep up anyway.

This radiant tries to be like a typical convector and has the same type of tall narrow shape, some funny metal chines on the reflector to supposedly channel air upwards, and it has a tilt switch in it like lots of these Goldair heaters, in fact it was the convector that didn’t have one, the fan heater and all the radiants all have some kind of tilt switch even if it is a foot switch in the cheaper ones, the bigger radiants like this one and the fan assisted one have mercury or pendulum switches because they rattle if you shake the heater. There are also wheels to move it round which is quite useful. Three heat settings from four bars.

When I grew up we had Conray heaters that worked the same way, a bright orange radiant glow and they also warmed up the room with convection heat from air moving round the elements. So I am not sure why other types of heaters are supposed to be better or more suitable. Oil columns are better because they don’t get so hot, but not because they are better heating. Panel heaters are nice and flat to go on a wall, but not better heating. Box convectors work differently but aren’t actually better. Radiants are really good for both heating you up and also heating the room up, as mine have shown, even the smallest one I’ve got will get the room warm at the same time as drying me after a shower, just leave it on a bit and the air temperature soon comes up.

So now I have radiants for three rooms and a fan heater for the rest and that is all a much better set up than oil columns that take too long to heat themselves and heat the room and can’t cope with draughty rooms or cold snaps. I just sold two oil columns. I also sold the three month old De Longhi convector because it can’t do a good job in really cold conditions. I only got $30 for all three heaters about a tenth of what they would all have cost originally. No one wants to pay a reasonable price for a second hand heater these days.

Canon Powershot A2300

The Powershot A2300 is a conglomerate of a lot of good common sense and a paradox or two. Having just acquired one as my second camera with its current retail price around $150, this neat little camera at the bottom end of Canon’s official NZ range surprises and pleases in many ways. First impressions are generally favourable. Canon have exploited to considerable advantage the changeover of nearly all the Powershot range to proprietary lithium batteries in place of AAs to produce one of the best balances of smallness and price I have ever seen in a digital camera, and at that, one which has a front made out of metal. Although the rest of the A2300 is plastic, it still manages to feel surprisingly solid and well-made for such a low budget item. A 5x zoom lens is a welcome touch along with a simple and easy to use interface which has a very and welcome new beginner-focused feature, a dedicated Help button labelled with a question mark. With this you can almost excuse the lack of an “Easy” mode on this camera which has been a highly desirable idiot-proofing feature of many of the Powershots over the past three years or so. Although the camera has with it the same limitation of other cameras of having to reset the date and time for daylight saving, a particular improvement is to add a daylight saving on/off setting to make such adjustment very quick and easy to do. One thing a lot of people find difficult with smaller cameras these days is finding some way to hold them due to the tendency of manufacturers to omit raised handgrips due to the visual clash they produce. Canon has however cleverly catered for this with a raised edge on the right hand side of the LCD screen that is just made for your thumb. In practice this worked surprisingly well even if a little bit of the screen is blocked from view.

(A2300 vs A450)

The formfactor of the recent low-end Powershots, freed from the encumbrances of AA batteries, has in recent years tended towards smaller and lighter cameras, always a desirable development for occasional users who will make up the majority of purchasers. For people like myself who simply want a cheap camera as ubiquitous as a cellphone and with much greater photographic performance, the Powershot A2300 will serve to take hundreds or thousands of photos with considerable competence despite its inherent limitations. My first camera in this class was a Powershot A400, followed by the A450, A460 and then A2000 models. The latter was a bit dearer and more capable because it was desirable to have a more featured camera that could fit in a pocket and be used in even more situations. Now that I have the highly capable Powershot SX260 coming in at the top of that spec and formfactor with high grade features and functionality, I can afford to go back to the cheapest model at the bottom of the range to carry about with me everywhere and fill in every mundane day to day photographic need.

(A2300 vs A2000. The well worn A2000 (three years old)  illustrates the intended ubiquity and heavy use its replacement will get)

Naturally not everything is perfectly as one could wish with such a budget model camera. The power button is easy to reach on top, but also very easy to accidentally press when turning the camera over to open the battery / card compartment. I hope it will not get too many inadvertent presses when getting the camera into or out of its pouch as the accompanying lens extension will make such a manoeuvre very tricky. So far the back panel controls have been a little tricky with it a bit too easy to press the wrong button on the four way controller. This camera uses the NB-11L type battery, one of at least 11 different compact camera battery formfactors produced by Canon, and which comes with its own unique charger which I presume only fits that battery type. Hence I already have two different battery chargers and two batteries which are not interchangeable. At least with AA batteries I could have only one battery type and one charger (even though I actually have three of the latter) and more importantly I could also substitute alkaline dry cells for rechargeables if the latter ran out. Which brings me to my next beef, the lack of in-camera charging in much of the Canon range. The EU as mentioned previously has championed Micro USB Charging for smartphones, and camera manufacturers need to get on board with this pretty quickly, because there is just no opportunity of mitigating the possibility of a flat battery by being able to charge it any of the myriad of ways that most smartphone users can utilise.

The last issue and a considerable paradox is noticed when you turn the camera over and look at the bottom. Here you find a metal tripod thread and a flimsy plastic battery door. Canon has wavered quite considerably on low end Powershot tripod threads of recent years, but also on some of their higher priced models as well. I seem to recall even the S2 IS was shipped with a plastic thread very quickly returned to metal in the S3. I’m quite used to seeing plastic threads in the low end models (like the A400, A450 and A460) so seeing one made of metal is quite a surprise on the A2300. Unfortunately this seems to have won the obvious and unequal tradeoff between a solid tripod thread, which hardly anyone will take advantage of, and a flimsy battery door that everyone must use. On this camera the door is noticeably lightweight and raises serious and valid concerns about just how well it will last under heavy use, even although it is far less stressed than AA-battery cameras as the battery is secured in place by its own clip and does not require pressure from the door to keep it in place. Having a metal plate incorporated like on the SX260 would have gone a long way to addressing my concerns. I confidently predict the successor to the A2300 will beef up this door and perhaps go back to a plastic tripod thread again, although I can understand Canon are trying to address the possibility users of this camera will make use of the screw-on accessory flash units the HF-DC1 and HF-DC2. The only good thing you can really say about the battery door is that if it does break it won’t stop the camera from working – unlike the AA-battery models which depend on it to connect the batteries together and stop them from falling out.

(A2300 first photo. Not as good as the SX260 but still a very respectable effort for such a budget model)

One thing I’ll say about this camera is that it takes me back to my first pocket digital, the Powershot A400. Here are shots side by side of the pair for comparison:
(Hopefully the proportions are about right)

The formfactors between the two cameras are a little bit different. As you can see, the A400 has a neat little lens that just pops out when you turn on the power. The A400 lens was simpler because it was only a 2.2x zoom. The A2300 has a similar sort of aesthetic; those three rings you can see all fold quite flat into the body when you turn it off. The A400 had to be a bit thicker due to its two AA batteries, which load in sideways at the end opposite the lens. Both cameras are small, light and easy to handle, and dare I say it, cute. Whilst I am sure I value the capabilities of my higher-end cameras like the Powershot SX260 or a (currently) borrowed EOS, these bottom-of-the-range point-and-shoot snappers do a great job of taking pictures under less-demanding everyday situations, and I’ve shot many thousands of photos on cheap little digitals like these over the last 7 years, so I expect that neat little A2300 will be just as ubiqitous for me as the A400 and the other models I’ve had in between.

Camera totals:
All time total for the A2000 (now I am giving it away) is 7733 pictures from 3 years and 1 day of usage. An average 215 pictures per month.

SX260: So far around 500 pictures in two weeks. We shall have to see how that will turn out over the coming months.

Out & About with the Powershot SX260HS [2]

Today I had the second instance of use of my new toy. I went into town and took some red zone pictures. The camera’s battery couldn’t last the distance, although I haven’t charged it after the last time I used it, so in theory it should have been about half used. I did manage to squeeze 200 shots out of it which makes for 300 all up on the first charge, a pretty good effort considering its rating. The point of that was that I wanted to see how it would last, and how good the battery meter is. In fact the battery meter is pretty disappointing: it shows three bars when full, then it dropped down to two bars, then at one bar it basically starts to flash red and warn you. At that point I started to turn the camera off after every shot instead of leaving it on until the next shot. Not sure how long this got me but it could have been worth as much as another hundred photos from the time the meter first started to flash. Right at the end though the camera was turning itself off and telling me to change the battery, I would leave it a few minutes then turn it on again for a very quick shot and then off again just as quick. So I really did push that battery to the limit because I had no other battery with me (and won’t for a few weeks yet). But next time I go out I will have it charged up beforehand.

Of course the charge would not be an issue if the power issues with these cameras were not such a limitation. As far as Canon goes you can only fit the camera with their proprietary battery and the only charger available for it runs off the mains. There is an AC adapter available as well, and that’s it for power choices. And this story would be repeated all across the Canon range. So with Micro USB being adopted as a standard for power and charging for smartphones, we want to see camera manufacturers following suit and allowing batteries to be charged in-camera so how about it Canon. There are third party chargers available for the battery type but so far I only found ones that can charge off a car.  USB charging is a big thing in the EU because they want to eliminate the need for manufacturers to produce proprietary chargers. This would eliminate the separate battery charger that many Canon models now ship with, in favour of in-camera charging via a USB socket. Ideally an external charger also USB powered would be an option for charging without the camera. This is all very relevant because Canon has made a strategic decision to change nearly all their P&S camera range away from AA batteries to lithium. The latter locks you into proprietary batteries with limited charging choices unlike AAs. If I buy an A2200 as I currently am considering, there is another battery type with its own charger.  I would not buy any additional batteries for this camera to save on costs. I could then eliminate the need for AAs and chargers but would be locked out of the versatility from them. We have come a long way since the time when nearly all Canon’s P&S range used AAs, even four at a time in the S1 and S5 for example.

Almost all of today’s photos were taken on Manual. Among other things you have complete control over the ISO setting. On the Powershot A2000 there are two different auto ISO settings. There is the standard one which keeps the range of auto ISO low, and there is the ISO HIGH setting which can bump it up a lot higher if it’s too dark. On this camera there is only one Auto setting and it can push as high as it wants, this is how it works on Auto or PAS modes. But on Manual it stays at whatever you set it to, in this case 100. So I put the camera on Manual and dialled in a shutter speed each time, leaving the aperture fixed at whatever it was. Sure, you have to make the adjustment before each shot, but that’s pretty easy with the turn ring on this camera. So that is how the 200 photos went today.

Now, if the price of this camera is a bit steep, I just checked out the specs for the Powershot SX150 today, and it’s basically the budget version of this camera, and well worth looking at if you want something cheaper (it costs about 60% of the price of the SX260). For that you get a shorter lens (12x), lower end processor and probably the sensor too, uses AAs instead of the lithium battery, made of plastic, bulkier, lower res display, no GPS… on the creative side you get full PASM modes and manual focus just like the SX260. It’s quite a few year since Canon made such a cheap camera with the PASM and manual focus capabilities (I can still remember how disappointed the market was when the budget A-series PASM cameras got dropped from the line. Canon had nothing anything like $300 that could do manual exposure and focus).

Have a look at my photo blog for pictures. I’ve started migrating my albums to my new Google profile as well. We will have to see how that goes because of the 1 GB per month upload limit which I might have almost used up already. It will take the rest of the year to get all the albums uploaded, for sure, but there could also be a problem with getting photos I take this month uploaded if I already used up my cap.

Powershot SX260 vs Powershot S5 / SX40

Having both of these model cameras invites a comparison, although the S5 should be substituted by the current equivalent the SX40. The S5/SX series cameras are much more bulky, mainly it is a bigger lens that justifies that bulk. The substantial handgrip on the S5 conceals the four AA batteries that power it. Some extra features of the S5/SX series apart from the lens are the flash hotshoe, articulating LCD screen and a viewfinder, while the SX40 steps up from the S5 notably in the use of proprietary lithium battery power. The 35x lens on the SX40 gets you to an equivalent of 840 mm (compared to 35 mm film format lenses), although the SX260 is reasonably well ahead of the S5 going out to 500 mm equivalent. It looks like the same 12 MP sensor is present in both the SX260 and the SX40, whereas the S5 gave us 8 MP.

My personal thoughts are there would be few times when more than 500 mm equivalent would be useful (how often do you hear of people having a lens that long for their SLR) so I would be unlikely to buy this camera for that functionality. It is about $150 dearer than the SX260. For me the SX260 wins hands down due to being such a compact camera. While the SX40 is still half the price of an entry level DSLR I am prepared to go up to the extra dosh for the massive improvement in low light performance on the EOS. At the moment the S5 is going to get used less because it only has small advantages over the SX260 and I’d rather go for a low end EOS than another superzoom.

Out & About with the Powershot SX260HS

Well today was my first day out with the Powershot SX260HS. May as well have a quick look at the evolution of this camera series. Canon’s big zooms prior to this range were the Powershot S1 to S3 and S5 series of cameras. Powershot S series are a bit confusing because there have been three S-ranges. Apart from the S1-S2-S3-S5 series superzooms from 2004 through to 2007, there has also been the high-end compact S series starting with the S10 in 1997 and continuing through to the S100 today, and another S-series of IXUS models starting with (confusingly) S100 in 2002.  I have owned a Powershot S1 which was my first digital camera back in 2005, and currently own a Powershot S5 which was gifted to me in 2008. After the S5 Canon faced the inevitability of running out of model numbers and the range was forked into two series: The SX1/SX10 continuing in the same “mini SLR-style” form factor as the S5, and the SX100 compact superzoom format. The former jumped from 12x zoom on the S5 to 20x zoom lens.

The SX100 was Canon’s first effort to produce a compact superzoom and the series is inspired by Panasonic’s TZ or “travel zoom” series. I remember when the first Panasonic model the TZ1 came out in 2006 and how groundbreaking it was to have a 10x zoom lens in such a compact package. Canon’s first effort to challenge this was the vertical-formfactor TX, a bit like a conventional camera turned on its side with the lens on the side, this let them get the 10x lens without too much of the TZ1’s wizardry but it failed on ergonomics and never really took off. So then I decided I would wait until Canon could produce something as good as the TZ series. The SX100 actually came out not that much later, in 2007, and has been followed by the SX110, SX120 and SX130, while another range, the SX200, 210, 220 / 230 and now  240 / 260 series started in 2009. The SX100 series cameras were bulkier, cheaper built and used AA batteries, compared to the SX200 series which are more compact, higher finish metal cameras using proprietary batteries. I have looked at the SX100 / SX200 series for a few years now and was considering buying an SX230 last year, until the earthquake disrupted things. The SX240 / SX260 is the cheapest Canon model that has full manual controls, which is a key purchasing point for me with my strong interest in creative photography particularly in low light conditions. Like the SX230 before it, the SX260 is a GPS equipped camera, the non GPS equivalents (slightly cheaper) being the SX220 and SX240 respectively. There are still only two or three GPS cameras in the Powershot range.

So out and let’s see how easy it is to use and how well it works. The first thing I really noticed was waiting for the GPS to get itself set up. Obviously it will have to get a fix from the nearest satellites, and that can take a few minutes to happen, meanwhile all you know is that the symbol on the display shows the GPS is not operating. Once the GPS had set itself up the first time it pretty well stayed on with all of the subsequent on/off cycles of the camera as I moved around the area where I was photographing, so there wasn’t any additional delay. Picture taking is very snappy and smooth, I was pleased at how quickly it responded to the press of the shutter. The Power button is nicely recessed and hard to push accidentally which is good. I remember one of my earlier cameras I used to push Power accidentally all the time, even when it was in the pouch. Well no more of that. Could be even a little hard to press at times. The LCD is very bright and clear and produces a nice sharp picture, you can even see the blur in it at review time when camera shake occurred at low shutter speeds. The four way controller works a bit differently from my previous camera; for example, when adjusting exposure compensation you would first press the button for this function, and then use the left and right buttons on the controller to decrease or increase compensation, now you press the +/- button to select the adjustment and turn the wheel to increase or decrease. This takes a little bit of getting used to. It makes multiple adjustments a lot easier when you are in, for example, manual mode. You press the +/- button to select either Shutter or Aperture adjustment and then turn the wheel to make the adjustment. This was a lot quicker and easier than repeatedly pressing the controller buttons.

Probably the best ease of use I found with the camera was in more difficult lighting conditions. Due to it being late in the day when I was taking my photos, a lot of what I was shooting was in the shadow. With cheaper auto-only digicams, you will be able to adjust for at most two stops of exposure in either direction with the exposure compensation setting. With full manual control that limitation doesn’t exist; you can set both of the aperture and shutter to anything you like and get a lot more stops “over” or “under” as you see fit. So I used this to great effect to get the picture looking much brighter to the point where you would hardly know there was any shadow. The great strength of the digicam is being able to see exactly what result the adjustments will produce instantly, and you are very reliant on the screen to help you gauge this, so having a screen that gives you a good picture is essential; the SX260 excels here. The second aspect of difficult lighting that I found worked very well was hand-holding the camera at relatively long zoom ranges and slow shutter speeds. Somehow I managed to get the shot shown below with the camera handheld at 1/8th of a second with the zoom at 10x or 45 mm. That is no mean feat for any camera, digital or not. Somehow the ergonomics, balance and weight of the camera come together really well with two hands in such conditions and it is relatively easy to hold the camera still without blurring the shot. Whilst this is not the sharpest picture I have ever taken it is actually very difficult to tell whether the issue is blur or poor lighting.

The old Christchurch railway station which is soon to be demolished.
Here is another low light shot taken at the same time which again has worked out surprisingly well. This photo at 1/6 second exposure and 53 mm zoom pushed the camera envelope even more. Again a very creditable performance for a handheld shot with no bracing.

Clarendon Towers in the central city, under demolition. Again a very good performance in quite low lighting.
So overall, I’m very pleased with the camera so far. The only pity is you can’t get it in the colour range that is available overseas, we can only get the black model.

Powershot SX260HS

Well now at last I have my hands on one so I can start enjoying photography at a different level with a camera that is small enough to fit into a pocket.

Here is the front view alongside the Powershot A2000. As you can see they are a very similar size and shape. The SX260 fits easily into the pouch I use for the A2000. The main differences you can see in this shot are the top panel, where the SX260 is missing the top mode dial. Like the Powershot A400 / A450 / A460 cameras I used to own, this dial has been moved onto the rear panel of the camera. The SX260 also has a popup flash instead of the fixed in place flash on the A2000. One of the biggest differences is that the SX260’s outer casing is nearly all metal, with the top panel and battery door being plastic.

This is a comparison of rear views of the cameras. The major difference on the back panel is that the SX260’s mode dial occupies the upper rear control panel. The layout of the four way controller with its FUNC button in the centre, and the DISP and MENU buttons is similar but the upper two buttons are different. The four way controller is different because it has a turn ring around the outside of it which can be used as an alternative to pressing the controller buttons to scroll. The screen is slightly larger because it has adopted the widescreen format. The camera can take photos in a variety of aspect ratios including the regular 4:3 format and the SLR 3:2 format. On the bottom of the camera is a battery and memory card shared compartment. Due to the use of a proprietary battery held in place by its own clip, gone are the days of battery doors having to be compressed closed against the battery springs – the door is lightweight plastic that easily opens and closes. Replacement batteries are $85 and I intend to purchase a second and perhaps third battery in a month’s time. The battery has to be taken out of the camera to be charged.

My first impressions are of the camera being able fit so much into a small package like a 20x zoom lens. It is a bit dearer than the A2000 was at the time – about 40% more. Still uses a Mini USB port even though officially that design has been deprecated in favour of the Micro USB. One reason for this being that Canon has modified the Mini USB port on its cameras of recent years to double also as a video playback port with a special cable. The camera does not come with this cable nor with a detailed manual or any kind of memory card but you do get the battery and charger and a standard USB cable. Creatively some of the best functions which have been added are the aperture and shutter priority and manual exposure modes. Flash performance will be nothing to write home about, but at night you can’t rely on flash for the kinds of photos I try to take anyway. The camera like the A2000 and S5 has very good features for taking photos creatively at night anyway. Here are a few photos I took on my way home with it (as it was dark when I left the shop).

I would say these are pretty good photos for ones taken under ambient lighting at night, with no flash being possible. The second shot is the Busfinder as I waited to catch the bus home, and the third shot is an interference pattern visible through two side panels of a bus shelter at the Central Station, where the last photo was also taken.