Digital Camera Review

Sports, action and wildlife photographers need fast cameras. Indeed, it’s why models such as the 9 fps Nikon D3 and 10 fps Canon EOS-1D Mark III are in such demand even at a premium in terms of price — $5,000 and $8,000 body only, respectively. Until now, such high frame rates have been one of the main selling points of professional and semi-professional cameras from the likes of Nikon and Canon, but all that looks to change with a new camera from consumer electronics company, Casio.

And boy has it changed. Casio’s new F1 doesn’t just beat high-end professional models by a few frames, but rather by a factor of six. The Casio F1 can shoot images at a staggering 60 fps which brings the model into the realms of high-speed photography. Therefore, it is somewhat fitting to discover that the New York Times had none other than the great-nephew of stroboscopic photo pioneer Harold Edgerton review the camera. According to David Pogue, the camera isn’t perfect in low light and is rather large, but can’t be beat for action photography for $1,000 rrp.

A typical shirt-pocket camera, if you’re lucky, can snap one photo a second in “burst mode.” A $1,000 semipro model will get you 3 shots a second. But this Casio can snap — are you ready for this? — 60 photos a second. These are not movies; these are full six-megapixel photographs, each with enough resolution for a poster-size print.

After such a burst, you’re offered three options: delete all 60 shots, keep all 60, or review them and pluck out the individual frames worth keeping. The whole batch begins to play like a flip-book movie; you control playback with a back-panel control dial. As you watch, you press the shutter button once to identify each frame you want to keep; the rest will be discarded.

[…]

(As I experimented with the F1, I couldn’t help feeling that my great-uncle Harold Edgerton would have approved. He was the M.I.T. professor who, in the late 1930s, pioneered the art of high-speed photography: the bullet piercing an apple, the splash of a milk drop, and so on.)

[…]

But make no mistake: no camera has ever offered anything like the F1’s high-speed stills, high-speed videos or high-speed flash for anywhere near its price. Everybody who sees this camera in action winds up slack-jawed with disbelief.

Casio deserves congratulations for innovating in so many big, bold, industry-defying ways. Instead of pushing misleading metrics like megapixels, the company went its own defiant way and came up with a camera with an extremely clearly defined identity.

The NYT review is here.

Most professional or serious photographers shoot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or some other file type that does not allow later lossless correction to what their camera’s digital sensor originally recorded when the shutter fired. However, the software for manipulating RAW files which comes with cameras — including top of the line models — is never polished enough and what is usually comes at a premium.

There is competition in the marketplace — something that is more than illustrated by two recent announcements from Apple and Adobe, the manufacturers of two such professional digital manipulation and workflow software. First off, let’s deal with Apple who’s Aperture software has been updated to 2.1. Rob Galbraith takes a look at the changes, and in particular, its support for third-party plug-ins.

Without much fanfare, Apple introduced in Aperture 2.0 an architecture with which third-party developers could create image adjustment plug-ins. Now that v2.1 is out, the company is bringing this feature to the forefront, revealing both how image editing plug-ins work and who has already signed up to make them. Let’s look at who first.

Apple Apple itself is one of the first plug-in developers. Included with Aperture 2.1 is Dodge & Burn, a tool for brushing in tone, colour and detail changes to a photo. Dodge & Burn can of course be used to lighten and darken areas of a photo, as well as adjust contrast, saturation, sharpness and blur.

[…]

Apple is describing Dodge & Burn as an “example” plug-in, but this understates its usefulness, since you can perform a fairly broad range of selective adjustments with it, and do so with relative ease. We expect that for some Aperture users, Dodge & Burn will quickly become an indispensable tool.

[…]

Image editing plug-ins are a powerful new Aperture feature.

Read the rest of this entry »

At just 104mm long and 56mm wide while also weighing in at just 214g, the Canon PowerShot A470 is ideal as a camera you can keep in your pocket. Moreover, its small size and low price does not mean that it is lacking in terms of features. Sporting a 3.4 x zoom equivalent to 38-132mm on 35mm, it can shoot at ISO settings of 80-1600. True, noise is an issue at higher sensitivities, but according to a review published by Imaging Resource, not as bad as you might think.

Image quality, color, and exposure are all good with the Canon PowerShot A470. Overall color is bright and vibrant, yet still natural. […]

[…]

The PowerShot A470 captures a lot of fine detail, with minimal noise suppression to blur detail at ISO 80. In the crop at right, the mosaic shows great detail, with only a little smudging in the background and clothing.

[…]

The Canon PowerShot A470 handles image noise very well at its lower ISO settings, and even at ISO 400, noise is higher but still not too distracting overall. You can see it best in the gray squares of the color chart, demonstrated above. At ISOs 800 and 1,600, noise is much higher, with a more pronounced grain pattern and greatly decreased detail definition. Still, even at these higher settings, noise isn’t as bad as we’ve seen in other point-and-shoot digital cameras.

Indeed, Imaging Resource liked the Canon PowerShot A470 so much that they made it a “Dave’s Pick,” setting the camera apart from many others in its price range.

Overall, the Canon A470 is a good performer. It captures good exposures with sharp details and accurate color under most average shooting conditions. Given its selection of preset shooting modes and built-in features like Face Detection and Motion Detection, the PowerShot A470 is equipped for quick handling of common, yet tricky situations. The Canon A470’s automatic features will keep novices comfortable, while available options such as Long Shutter mode, an adjustable metering mode, and a manual white balance setting cater to more savvy users. The Canon A470 is a very capable camera that’s a snap to use, and an easy Dave’s Pick.

The Canon PowerShot A470 can be purchased in a variety of colors from Amazon. Specifications can be found in the official press release from Canon posted on the Digital Photography Review web site.

It used to be that digital SLRs cost thousands of dollars, but in recent years prices have plummeted. For the price of a serious digital compact camera five years ago, you can now pick up an advanced DSLR from brand leaders Canon and Nikon. Two such models are the Canon 450D (Rebel XSi) and the Nikon D60.

Both cameras are sold in a kit version that includes a good 18-55mm zoom lens with an anti-shake system. Canon calls its system IS (Image Stabilization), whereas Nikon calls it VR (Vibration Reduction), but it’s just the same thing. This feature alone, combined with high ISO sensitivity, makes it possible to shoot hand-held in situations that would have required the use of a tripod previously.

Although admitting bias towards Nikon, Agylen compares the two and weighs up the pros and cons of both. On paper at least, the Canon has the advantage over the Nikon with a resolution of 12 over 10 mp (although in reality this makes little difference), Live View and a larger LCD screen for reviewing images.

There are many other elements that could be compared between the two, but these are the most relevant ones, in my opinion. Both are probably very good cameras and you won’t be disappointed with either one. Personally, I would go with the Nikon because of the higher auto-ISO range and the Active D-Lighting, but that’s just me. You might be a big fan of composing and reviewing using the LCD, so the larger screen and the Live View feature of the Canon will certainly appeal to you.

In reality, though, you can’t go wrong with either.