NagaNewsJournal

Showing posts with label Canon. Show all posts

11 Nov 2011

Special Gadgets/Canon EOS C300 Digital Cinema Camera

Canon EOS C300 Digital Cinema Camera: $20,000

Slated for a January release, they hope the C300 will be met with the same enthusiasm by professional movie makers as the original Flip handheld was by consumers. The Flip Mino came to market with a blend of quality, portability, usability and price that went on to define the handheld HD camcorder category.

Canon U.S.A. executive Larry Thorpe told DP Review that with this first entry in Canon's 'C' system interchangeable lens video cameras, they are "going to enter the motion picture industry with a very sharp focus on movie making, on television production [and] on commercial production."

It features a single Super 35mm-equivalent CMOS sensor able to deliver full bandwidth individual red, green and blue video components without the need for any debayering algorithms. Canon will produce two different (but otherwise equivalently configured and priced) models, one with the industry-standard PL lens mount and the other utilizing an EF lens mount -- making the C300 compatible with Canon's dozens of existing lenses, along with some impressive-looking new ones. While it can take stills -- and record them to an SDHC card -- it's clearly made for video.
To accommodate different shooting styles, the viewfinder tilts up to 60 degrees, the 4-inch LCD monitor/control panel rotates 270 degrees, it's got Start/Stop buttons in four different locations and large dials are positioned in two places to allow operation from the side. It features a removable handgrip that's completely rotatable in 15-degree increments. And an onboard waveform monitor and vectorscope eliminates the need for external exposure and color analyzers.
For twenty grand -- considered a decent price for what it does -- the package includes the EOS C300 body (roughly 3 pounds and 5 inches by 7 inches by 7 inches), the monitor unit, viewfinder, eye cup, handle, thumb rest, XF Utilities, shoulder strap, WFT attachment, tripod base, battery pack, battery charger, AC cable, power adapter and DC cable. Canon is encouraging parties interested in purchasing or renting it to fill out an online form.

Via: Discovery News/Credit: Canon U.S.A.

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23 Sept 2011

Special Gadgets/Canon PowerShot S100 Camera

Canon's celebrated S-series is back for more enthusiast point-and-shoot action with the Canon PowerShot S100 Camera ($430). Keeping the terrific control ring and shooting modes from its S95 predecessor, the S100 offers a 12.1-megapixel HS CMOS sensor, a new 24-120 f/2.0 wide-angle, 5x optical zoom lens, built-in GPS for effortless geotagging, ISO sensitivity to 6400, and your choice between stealthy black or shiny silver bodies. Hitting your photostream this November.

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16 Sept 2011

Canon PowerShot S95 /Review

The good: Attractive and well-designed; capable of producing very nice photos; complete set of manual controls; solid 720p video.

The bad: On the slow side, with subpar battery life; no low-compression JPEG option.

The bottom line: Though we'd like it to perform better, dSLR shooters looking for a sidekick camera will find the Canon PowerShot S95's top-flight photos and a full manual feature set worth the tradeoff of its compact size.

When Canon shipped its PowerShot S90 about a year ago, it made a big impression on advanced photographers. Tiny with a wide-aperture lens and all the essential manual shooting features, it was practically irresistible for dSLR luggers. It did have a few flaws, however, some of which Canon has attempted to address with the successor, the S95. These include a 720p video-capture upgrade, improved image stabilization, and some minor tweaks to the design and feature set. Performance, though, remains on the slow end of acceptable.

The image quality is top-notch for a compact, although it's a shame that Canon doesn't offer a less-compressed JPEG option. One of my photos shot in best-quality JPEG was about 7:1, but most of them come in at about 12:1 compression. There's a visible difference between raw and JPEG shots.

That said, the S95's JPEG photos are exceptionally clean and relatively usable up to ISO 400; plus, you can probably squeeze out a stop more if you shoot raw. That's a lot better than your typical ultracompact. The lens is sharp and bright, but there's some asymmetrical distortion at its widest. Metering and exposure are both good and consistent. The defaults pushed the color saturation excessively, though our quantitative test results report that the S95 has relatively accurate color; the neutral color setting is not available in raw+JPEG shooting. The colors are similarly overwrought in videos, but overall the movie quality is pretty good, and despite being tiny, the stereo mics produce a surprisingly full-bodied sound for a compact.

The S95's performance improves over the S90's in some respects; unfortunately, it falls behind it in others. With a time of 2 seconds, it takes about 0.2 longer to power on and shoot. It's about 0.1 second faster at focusing and shooting in bright light, but the same duration slower in dim: 0.4 and 0.7 second, respectively.

For two sequential JPEG and flash shots, it's slower by at least 0.5 second, running 2.3 seconds for JPEG and 3.3 seconds for flash, compared with 1.8 and 2.5 seconds for the S90. That's flipped for raw shooting, however, with the S95 clocking at 2.6 seconds shot-to-shot vs. 3.4 seconds for the S90. Burst shooting rises to 1.9 frames per second, but at low speeds like that it's immaterial. Aside from the one exception of daylight shooting, the S95 feels like it operates at a leisurely but not overly frustrating pace. The image stabilization works well, but the fact remains that the battery life is pretty short.

The S95 just has a body that feels nice. It's well built, with a slightly more textured finish than the S90. It's the smallest and lightest among its class, but as a tradeoff it's also the only model that lacks a hot shoe and the option for a viewfinder. Though it was nice to review a camera that fit comfortably in my front pocket for a change, it might feel a bit too small for some photographers. You should definitely try before you buy to ensure you don't need to move up to a slightly larger model like the G12, LX5, or TL500. Small can be great on ultracompacts where you're not trying to change the settings too often, but there's no point buying the S95 to run in complete auto.

The front ring can be set to control shutter speed, ISO sensitivity, exposure compensation, manual focus, white balance, stepped zoom, i-Contrast, or aspect ratio. The functions can be set independently of shooting mode, so that, for example, it can control focus in Manual mode or shutter speed while in aperture-priority mode.

On top of the camera is a mode dial for access to the typical manual controls and scene modes. Plus there's the ability to save a group of custom settings for quick mode-dial access

The back controls remain basically unchanged from the S90, although the dial, which you use for adjusting contextual settings, operates better and isn't quite as free-spinning as the previous model. The Func/Set button pulls up adjustable shooting parameters, including ISO, white balance, color, bracketing (exposure or focus), drive mode (single, continuous, continuous with autofocus), metering, aspect ratio, quality, and dynamic range correction.

One not-so-pleasant holdover from the S90 is the inconvenient flash placement. Although it makes sense from a red-eye prevention perspective, most people hold their fingers right where the flash pops up.

Though the camera isn't big on whizzy features, it does incorporate a now-common HDR mode, which automatically brackets and combines three exposures. For more details on the scene modes and special effects, read the review of the S90 or download the PDF of the S95's manual.

You'll still have to schlep your dSLR to photograph kids, pets, wildlife, and anything else that moves quickly or randomly, but the Canon PowerShot S95 is probably the best--if expensive--alternative that an advanced shooter will find in such a small package.

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13 Sept 2011

The Canon Vixia HF G10 /Review

The Vixia HF S21 was built like a brick house, all mighty mighty, letting it all hang out, but the Panny’s manual controls and overall image quality bopped the Vixia HF S21 down to second place.

The year 2011 is an entirely different game of hockey, however. Canon’s game-winning slapshot is called the Vixia HF G10, and it will go on to win the camcorder Stanley Cup this year, hands down. Even Panasonic’s new HDC-HS900 could not put up the defense necessary to prevent the Vixia HF G10 from busting into the crease and dekeing its way past the goalie. A new bar has been raised within the consumer camcorder market, and it’s called the Canon Vixia HF G10. Perhaps it was the beast’s giant focus ring, 8-bladed iris, ample manual controls, or improved built-in microphone.

Those high-end features were certainly welcomed, but in the end, it was the Canon Vixia HF G10’s supersonic image quality and exceptional low light sensitivity (courtesy of its brand new HD CMOS Pro sensor) that made it the optimal choice for the budget filmmaker or high-end enthusiast.

Design

Dual SDXC card slot

Like last year’s Canon Vixia HF S21, the HF G10 flaunts a top-notch build. The Panasonic HDC-HS900 is more like a pimped out Geo Metro compared to the Rolls Royce Canon Vixia HF G10.

Although the Focus ring’s only task was to alter the focal length of the beautiful Canon HD video lens, Canon gave us a custom dial along the backside of the camcorder that controlled shutter/aperture, manual exposure, gain or exposure compensation. Canon also spruced up the zoom rocker, widening it and refining its smoothness.

The dual SD/SDHC/SDXC card slots were carried over from last year, enabling us to throw in cards with up to 64GB capacities and continuously record via Canon’s relay technology. Inside, the HF G10 has 32GB of Flash memory, which is on the light side compared to the Panasonic HDC-HS900’s 220GB HDD. The Vixia HF G10’s battery resided on the small side and did not provide an adequate life, so backup packs are a must buy.

On the monitor end of the spectrum, the Canon Vixia HF G10 has a 3.5-inch touchscreen display with a 922,000-pixel resolution. The camcorder also rocks an extendable 0.24-inch 260,000-pixel color viewfinder for those blazing days, and the LCD panel features two customizable button controls that default to AF/MF and Powered IS.

For connectivity, the Canon Vixia HF G10 offered a component, AV Out/headphone, remote, HDMI Out, USB and a mic jack, which is what we got on the Vixia HF S21. On top was Canon’s proprietary hot shoe, along with a set of stereo microphones. The Canon Vixia HF G10 bridges the prosumer gap with its advanced design.

Shooting Features

This section is always an endless playground for me, and the Canon Vixia HF G10 cranked out plenty of monkey bars when it came to manual controls. We’ll start with manual exposure, which not only gave us 70% or 100% Zebra patterns for blown highlights, but the HF G10 featured a waveform monitor that was more advanced than anything I’ve seen on a consumer camcorder, rivaling Navy SEAL technology. We could also adjust the gain up to 24dB, which surpassed the old 18dB standard offered by Panasonic. The focus assist magnification was also actually useful, thanks to an improved resolution while magnified, and we even got color peaking as a focus assist alternative.

But the waveform monitor also showed up in the Manual Focus arena, allowing us to use peaking and Focus Assist in conjunction with it.

There was also a digital Level Meter for leveling shots, SMPTE standard color bars and test tones, 2,000K to 15000K range White Balance adjustment, and a slew of in-camera filters like Vivid, Dream, Nostalgia, and Old Movies. Although I could add filters in Premiere Pro, it was nice to have the option for those who are devoid of a quality NLE program.

Like the Canon Vixia HF S21, the Canon Vixia HF G10 was equipped with four different frame rates. There’s native 24p, meaning the camcorder captures every single frame without the process of interlacing.

Of course the Vixia HF G10 had 60i and a simulated 24p and 30p recorded at 60i, but I found that the best results resided within native 24p shooting. Simulated progressive frame rates are only useful for down-converting to standard definition or working with other simulated framerates on a 60i timeline.

Regardless, if you want your work to have an unmistakably film-like look, then the Canon Vixia HF G10 is the answer. Image stabilization on the HF G10 was great, especially when pressing and holding the Powered IS button to minimize shake even more.

Image Quality

This is where the Canon Vixia HF G10 brought home the bacon. The camcorder has Canon’s new single 1/3-inch HD CMOS Pro chip with 2.07 effective megapixels. Video can be captured at an impressive 24Mbps in the highest quality (MXP) via the AVCHD format.

For glass, the Vixia HF G10 has a 10x optical zoom Canon HD video lens with an 8-bladed iris that allowed us to capture smooth bokeh effects. The lens had an f/1.8 aperture for 20mm macro shooting, and its overall quality trumped many camcorders in its class. Canon is always known for its quality glass.

So, those are a bunch of fancy-sounding specs and all, but how did the Canon Vixia HF G10 perform? In our tests, color, detail and resolution were off the charts for a consumer camcorder. Noise levels were also lower than I had ever seen, especially in low light.

The HF G10 flaunts a minimum illumination of 1.5 lux with auto slow shutter on at 1/30 shutter speed, and 0.1 lux in the low light scene mode. I kept searching for rabid blue noise, but came up empty in most of my tests with the lights down.

Shooting in 24p mode yielded the most optimal results, thanks to the lower shutter speed, which inevitably lured more light through the lens and whittled noise down significantly. 60i looked fantastic for motion, thanks to the heightened framerate, though low light sensitivity took a minor dive for that same reason. Keep in mind that in extremely low lighting conditions, the Vixia HF G10 exhibited a moderate amount of noise, but it was the camcorder’s overall sensitivity that trumped its competitors.

The bottom line with the Canon Vixia HF G10 is that if you’re looking for a camcorder to shoot short films or commercials with, you can finally do it in the consumer market and feel confident about it. The Vixia HF G10 is an imaging powerhouse that rivals prosumer models when it comes to image quality.

The Canon Vixia HF G10 is currently the greatest consumer HD camcorder ever produced. Its topnotch build, prosumer-esque manual controls, and stellar image quality put it numerous car lengths ahead of the competition. Last year, Panasonic had won me over with the HDC-HS700, but this is Canon’s year, and it’s going to require one hell of a machine to take the HF G10 down to Chinatown.