Canon S1 IS Digital Camera (1 Viewer)

[Andrew Pratt]

Yikes that's strange. I've never seen that happen before with any digital camera I've used. As Steve mentions there are app's that can try to recover data from various micro drives that could do what you need. If you have a card reader (highly recomended) you could try to do a checkdisk on it like you would to a regular hard drive.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Hooray, PC Inspector-smart Recovery did the job! I went with the freeware options first. I have recovered over 300 of my photos from Boston yesterday. Whew!

Thanks for all the links, folks!

 

[Patrick Sun]

Hey folks, I managed to scrape off my concert photos off my wayward CF card, and put together my photo album for "The Corrs in Boston" concert I went this past Saturday night.

I think I've included the details for getting the results I did in both Auto and Manual mode for low lit concert photo-taking.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Patrick,

I'd be interested to hear your results on recovering pics w/ whatever software. I'm sorta in the same boat w/ a handful of shots from my recent vacation to San Diego, except I was at fault in my case. I "accidentally" formatted my CF card while replacing a dying battery. Had to go buy another CF card just so I could keep that one unused for best chances of recovery. I didn't lose nearly as many pics as you though -- and was able to reshoot some of them.

EDIT:

Oops! Didn't realize there was more to the thread before posting. Sounds great, Patrick. Was the recovery app easy to use? I took a look at a different one -- forget the name -- and found it not very intuitive and still haven't figured out how it works yet.

_Man_

 

[Patrick Sun]

The app I used was pretty easy, just point to the drive letter of the card reader, set up a directory for the recovered files to be copied to, and the name for recovered files (it defaults to "convar" and has numbers that increment as the files recovered goes up), and hit the "start" button and let it do its thing.

Here's another article on recovering files from wayward CF cards (though it's not a free solution):

http://www.naturescapes.net/092004/ej0904.htm

 

[Patrick Sun]

Here are 230+ photos I took in Boston over the weekend while testing out the S1's 10X optical zoom, and AUTO mode in plenty of sunshine outside.

It's just a page with a lot of thumbnails, so don't feel obligated to look at each photo (yawn), but it should be sort of evident as to which 2-3 photos are of the 1x to 10x optical zoomed photos, which is a fun feature to have.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Does anyone know of a better lens cap replacement (which would have a spring-lock to hold the lens cap in place better than the one provided by Canon) for the S1? The Canon lens cap provided is a joke.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Pat there's a much nicer metal lens adapter that you can put on the S1. Once you have that on you could go to a regular clip on lens cover. Click here for details

 

[Patrick Sun]

Thanks for the link, I just wish the solution wasn't so pricey (relatively speaking, since I want a $5 solution, not a $25 solution, just my pocketbook talking). Grr...

 

[Andrew Pratt]

I agree with you pat the lens cover isn't very good...but on the other hand I know a guy that has either an Olympus (or maybe its another brand but i think its an olympus) that has the clip on lens cover...but its attatched to the outer body not the zoom so if he forgets to remove it before the camera powers up the lens tries to push against the lens cap!

I'll likely get one of these adaptors so that I can play with filters so in that respect its not that bad a price...esp considering the quality vs the plastic one from Canon.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Quality of Lensmate's adapters are quite good -- well, at least mine for the Canon G3 are. I even bought 3(!) of them for my G3 just so I can swap filters and lens converters quick and easy. Of course, since the S1 is already a super zoom, you probably won't bother w/ a tele converter. And oh, if you're concerned about protecting the lens, I think it's very nice to have the adapter absorb whatever possible knocks the lens would otherwise take. And you can also add a clear filter to protect the lens also although that might weaken the already weak AF performance in some situations -- definitely use good filters, if you do.

_Man_

 

[Patrick Sun]

OMG, the AUTO Flash mode is so strong, I got plenty of over-exposed shots today at Dragon Con. Even if I go to Manual mode to set the Flash strength, 1/3 is too weak, but 2/3 is too strong, no matter what I use for the film speed (even down to 50). But I think I went with 1/3 Flash strength for most of the shots later this evening to avoid the over-exposure problems.

I'll try to post some photos later, probably next week once I get through all the photos I will have taken this weekend.

 

[Patrick Sun]

At least my photo-taking got a bit better on Saturday and Sunday. Hopefully I'll recover from Dragon Con and tackle the tasks of getting all my photos sorted out.

I managed to snap over 4700 photos in 3 days, with 2 cameras, the S1 (over 3300 photos) and the A70 (over 1400 photos). My right index finger is very very tired...

But a lot of that was experimentation and shutterbug fever.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Good lord pat you've taken more photo's on your S1 in 1 day then I have in several months

 

[Patrick Sun]

Let's just say I was in a target-rich environment...

 

[Andrew Pratt]

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Yes, and I thought I'm in danger of wearing out my D70's shutter. It's a good thing the S1 IS doesn't have any mechanical shutter -- or so I assume.

_Man_

 

[Patrick Sun]

Okay, taken by my Canon S1 IS, here are some medium to big photos of my afternoon at Turner Field watching the Atlanta Braves beat up on the Phillies (I was lazy and just shot with the camera in the AUTO setting since plenty of sunshine was available):

Small Bud (278 kb)

Big Bud (321 kb)

Eli Marrero's big swing (1,059 kb)

Press Box seats 1X (1,075 kb)

Press Box seats 5X (1,449 kb)

Press Box seats 10X (Radio announcers Don Sutton and Pete Van Wieren (723 kb)

Young fans (717 kb)

Big hatted fan (960 kb)

Mexi-snack (211 kb)

A view of the aisle (304 kb)

Andruw Jones (275 kb)

Dewayne Wise (233 kb)

Here's the pitch... (395 kb)
Here's the swing... (311 kb)
There goes the ball... (261 kb)

Here's the bunt (731 kb)

John Smoltz unleashed his 96mph fastball... (708 kb)
...and there it goes (757 kb, look carefully, the ball is in mid-flight)

 

[Patrick Sun]

Any thoughts, comments?

I did notice some fringing, and it seemed to be a little worse on the edges of the framed shots, while the center had less distortion for fringing to creep into the shot.

 

[Chris PC]

Fringing is one of the biggest complaints with that camera. I heard that one of the reviewers simply stopped down the aperture alittle more and reduced the fringing. Of course, thats not ideal as it limits your photographic range, but I was wondering if it is a solution to the problem.

The S1 IS is good, but the 3.2 MP and lens are holding me back. I love the digital video abilities. I wish canon would up the res to 4.0 or 5.0 and upgrade the lens. The Panasonic FZ20 is another option instead.