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.