Canon S1 IS Digital Camera (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

It's at buy.com the final price takes account of using the 6% off coupon on a Simpletech CF 1GB card. At the price, I wouldn't expect a speed demon, so it's all about storage capacity for this particular purchase decision.

 

[Jeremy Stockwell]

Thanks, Pat.

I ended up getting a Sandisk 512MB card from Best Buy yesterday for $29.99 (after MIR, of course). I think this should do fine for me for now, at least.

JKS

 

[Robert Powers]

I decided to go with the Canon S1 IS. I picked it up at Tweeter on Black Friday for $340. All of their digital cameras were 15% off all day Friday.

This is actually the cheapest I have ever seen it at a brick and mortar store. I purchased the 5 year warranty for $60. If I need to have warranty service done on it all I have to do is take it to the store and they take care of everything. This is why I decided not to purchase it online.

I went to Best Buy after I purchased it and tried to price match it so I could get some extra Reward Zone points but the two sales people were so stupid that they didn't know if it could be done. They said they would have to check with the manager. I told them not to worry about it. I didn't wan't to have to return it to Tweeter anyway.

I would much rather deal with Tweeter anyway if I ever have to use their warranty service.

Thanks to everyone who has posted here! This is the absolute best place for research!

 

[Chris PC]

Ok. I received a Fuji S3100 for xmas. Nice camera. I haven't even opened the box. I am still thinking seriously of going for the Canon S1 IS except I have a few simple questions. My father bought me the Fuji S3100 from Best Buy in Canada and he'd by totally fine if I traded up and I paid the difference. He knows I'm a particular guy who is a nuerotic perfectionist

Every camera has feedback comments about difficulty with low light, over or under-exposure and chromatic aberations etc etc. I think once you learn to use the camera, you are ok. The Canon S1 IS appears to be the best 10x stabilized zoom camera in terms of colour and overall picture quality, and I keep having to make sure its not the really cool video mode that is pushing me. Every time I think of the competition, I am faced with $200 plus more dollars for the other camera's that would be sharper, such as the Panasonic FZ15/20. If I could find a Panasonic FZ10 out there for $549 CAD, then I'd get it over the Canon S1 IS, but alas, I can't find them anymore and the FZ15 and FZ20 still appear to be much more than $549 CAD and aren't available everywhere.

Questions:

1) The 3.2 vs 3.87 MP thing drives me crazy. If this camera was a "4MP" camera, I'd have bought it long ago, even if it was more expensive. When you compare 8 x 10 photo's from the Canon S1 IS vs the Panasonic FZ10 or even a lesser 4MP camera, how much less sharp are the Canon S1 IS pictures? I would like to take photo's and print 8 x 10. Am I asking for too much with the Canon?

How are the Canon S1 IS's 8 x 10 photo's compared to:

a) Fuji S3100 (4MP)
b) Olympus D580? (cheap small alternative to the expensive cams)
c) Canon A85 and/or S400?
d) Panasonic FZ10 or FZ15? FZ20?

2) Where is the lowest advertised price for the Canon S1 IS right now in Canada? I will likely buy it at Best Buy for $549 unless I find a lower price and price match it.

Thank-you in advance for any info.

 

[Chris PC]

I picked up the Canon S1 IS. I picked up a 512 MB Compact Flash card by Lexar. Its a 12x card which is 1.8 MB/second. The guy at Best Buy said it was good enough, but of course, he was wrong. In the manual you need 1980 KB/second and so 1800 KB/second isn't fast enough. I'll be returning the Lexar CF. Today I slipped over to Future Shop and picked up a SanDisk UltraII 512 MB CF card for $59.99 CAD plus tax. The 512 Ultra II card will serve as my main photo card, with the included 32 MB CF card as a backup. Later I'll keep my eyes open for larger "high-speed" cards like the Ultra II and perhaps grab one for playing around with video.

Well. I'll take some pictures and report back.

What cards did you all get?
What are the longest lasting batteries available out there?
Does using a faster charger risk wearing out the batteries any quicker than a slow charger?

 

[Chris PC]

Delete this post if possible.

 

[Joey_V]

I picked mine up a 6 months ago for 355$ from best buy. I just do pricematches - usually circuit city has the S1 for 359.99 and best buy does 110% price match... if you talk to them.

To Chris,
Keep your eyes peeled for an S1 sale, you can get some money back if you pricematch.

 

[Joey_V]

I forgot to share this with you guys.

I was about to sell my S1 so I could buy the new Kodak 7590 5.0mp S1-type of camera (you know, 10x zoom, SK lens, yadda yadda) for $500 with included camera dock. However, looking over its specs, it doesnt come with features that I took for granted with my S1.

Lets start with the obvious, the S1 has the STABILIZER, kodak is a big NO. S1 is COMPLETELY zoomable during movie mode, 7590 isnt. S1 can go 30fps for flawless movie recording, 7590 only up to 15fps @ vga. S1 is faster with its zoom, 7590 is slow as molasses. No swivel screen for the kodak, either. Also, the S1 is much faster off a cold-off than is the kodak... not to mention, the S1 is faster in between pics. Kodak seems to like to be "processing" for extended periods of time.

However, kodak does have the better lens and a higher resolution at 5.0mp. In this case, though, I feel that the S1 beats the new guy overall.

My one gripe though, how come both dont have a dedicated AF light????

Thank goodness for the MF feature on the S1 (and the kodak I think).

 

[Chris PC]

Yeah, the S1 may go on sale and I can price match it. Thanx for the reminder.

I do wish the S1 had an auto focus assist light because the auto focus isn't so good in low light and I can't see the flippin LCD view finder or lcd screen. Oh well, I'm sure I'll figure it out. Its funny because inside, even if its dark, you'll have lots of light because of the mondo flash! Yikes. Its a bit over eager. "Don't worry photographer! I'll make sure you have light! ZAAAPPPO!". Wow. Its a little strong.

I bought a nifty all-in-1 card reader for my S1 IS. So far it works ok

I too wish the S1 IS had 4 or 5 MP. Basically, I'll use the S1 IS until Canon comes out with a 4 or 5 MP version and then I'll compare and consider trading up.

Time to play and have fun with the camera

 

[Chris PC]

Are there firmware upgrades for this camera? I just tried the video function and with 640 standard (not fine) and at 30 fps, the video appears very jumpy and there is a delay between the sound and the video. (ie The dog barks and then you see him bark). I'm using a Sandisc Ultra II CF card. The manual says you need 1980 KB/second for the 640 x 480 pixels (fine) at 30 fps. The Ultra II card is rated for 9 MB/second.

Any ideas why I have jumpy, delayed video?

thanx

...I have improved playback a bit. I suspect it may be my PC and the video playback software.

How good should a 640 x 480 30 fps video look anyways? It seems they look kinda choppy. Maybe I'm expecting too much?

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I haven't played w/ the video features on digicams -- except a couple times w/ a Canon S230 -- but 640x480 at 30fps borders on DVD resolution/quality. Of course, if the compression is heavy, then it'll be more like a crappy DVD or a crappy digital cable/satellite channel.

Is it jumpy when played back in-camera or only on your PC? If it's only jumpy on the PC, then maybe you need to defrag your HDD or need better software (or better version) or whatever else. If it's jumpy in-camera (or both), maybe you need to defrag (or reformat) your card -- and don't do stuff like delete pics that are scattered throughout the card before you shoot video as that will likely fragment the card. Usually, I just reformat my cards after each time I offload the pics -- that will effectively defrag the card. With good quality video, which means high *sustained* bandwidth, you need your storage to be defragged so it doesn't need to skip around the card looking for writable space. And then during playback, you want the playback storage to be able to sustain the playback bandwidth also.

Of course, it's very possible that the S1 can't really live up to its 30fps rating at a *sustained* level too. That happens all the time w/ inexpensive video hardware that's advertised as full NTSC/PAL resolution at full NTSC/PAL frame rates. High quality video is a tough thing to do even though each frame of video is very low res compared to photo stills. That's why there will probably be separate markets for video and stills for a very long time to come even though convergence has been growing.

As for AA rechargeable batts, check out Thomas Distributing (www.thomas-distributing.com). They're one of the most popular on-line sources for this. IIRC, they carry some >=2000mAH NiMH AA's that would probably suit your needs. I wouldn't worry about the fast chargers as long as it's a good smart one. Yes, they will likely shorten the overall useable lifetimes of your batteries, particularly if you leave them on the charger to keep them topped off, *but* IMHO, the gains far outweigh the losses.

And oh, congrats on your new camera.

_Man_

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

RE: the lack of AF-assist light, well, it's probably because they aren't nearly that useful in practice, except at close proximities. I guess they should've provided one anyway, but it almost certainly won't help you at or near the tele end of your 10x zoom lenses. When dealing w/ AF-assist, there's the big problem of parallax. Maybe someday, these camera makers will figure out a way to overcome parallax for an AF-assist light *or* maybe they'll just design compact digicams w/ much better overall AF system instead. For instance, I rarely ever need to use the AF-assist light on my Nikon D70 -- and I shoot at f/2, ISO1600 quite often too.

Actually, you may find that sometimes you just need to know how to work around the weaknesses of the AF system in your compacts. For one thing, aim your focus on something that has contrasty vertical line-like elements as that's what most of them are designed to look for. If there are horizontal lines, then just rotate your camera around to make them appear vertical to the camera, lock focus and then recompose. Also, the AF is usually designed to work best w/ white/green/blue-ish color targets, not red -- red is toughest. Take advantage of the intrinsically large depth of field (DOF) of compacts, eg. if something else near your subject makes for a better AF target, use that for the focus lock instead. Also, take advantage of the large DOF and relatively limited focus steps when you use the otherwise unuseable manual focus feature of most of these compacts.

On many Canon compacts, they offer a custom mode (or two) that allow you to store settings that could help out for this. You might consider using one to store a hyperfocal distance setting for certain kinds of shooting, eg. indoors w/ flash at/near wideangle, or another that works reasonably well when zooming across a reasonable range. I did just that w/ my Canon G3 (before upgrading to Nikon D70) and had one custom mode set to f/3.2, manual focus at ~12ft that worked very well across the entire zoom range (35-140mm, 35mm equiv) for shooting 1/2 height adults or full height little kids when using flash. I got so used to the manual focus on my G3 that I often didn't even need to use the custom mode and just guessed the approx distance and rely on the large DOF and fired away w/ my external flash on top (and bouncing most times). Rarely did I ever bother to rely on the weak AF system on my G3 for indoor/low light situations.

Just some tips for ya to overcome the weak AF/MF of these compacts. Also, the more you learn about photography principles, the more you can work around the weaknesses of digital compacts. Learning about DOF would be one important step.

_Man_

 

[Patrick Sun]

I think the size of your CF card will impact the enjoyment you will derive from the camera-mode of the S1. Plus, I still haven't figured out how to get the AVI it creates to play on my PC (none of the codecs I have loaded are sympatico with whatever Canon is using, and I haven't quite loaded all the Canon-related software that came with the S1).

 

[Chris PC]

I didn't load the canon software. I just bought a handy little all-in-1 flash card reader and installed the driver for that. I use Windows Media player 9 and it works ok. All the AVI video's that are examples from the Canon S1 from the internet seem to play back with some missing frames or stuttering. Perhaps I'll try some video's from other camera's and if they're better then I'll have to admit that there's nothing I can do. To me, it should look like seamless video. I don't care too much about the resolution or colour depth, as I'm sure it'll be ok, but from what I'm seeing on my PC, the res and colour depth ARE great, but the frame rate appears poor. I changed how it looks on my PC, so perhaps I'll try playing back on the unit and outputting it to the TV. I suspect the AVI's and windows media player are suspect. Still, its possible that the video abilities of the camera are probably not as fast as they say they are. I basically see tearing of the image and what looks like fewer frames/second and what looks like stuttering.

Someone quickly remind me how to play back video on the player itself. I'll check the manual

Can I convert AVI's to MPEG's?

 

[Chris PC]

The video mode is more than adequate. Its my fathers PC thats not working well. My dads PC has no problems with MPEG's, but AVI's aren't playing back so well.

I played it back on the camera and on a couple of TV's. The resolution and frame rate are fine on interlaced TV's. There is a bit of noise in the image, but it looks pretty good. At least as good or better than my old GE VHS-C camcorder of 15 years ago!

I think the lousy frame jumpi-ness on my PC has to do with the video playback.

Well. I'm going to keep playing with it and I'll report back when I've had some experience and taken some photo's.

Happy Holidays

 

[Joey_V]

I just recorded a movie at 640x480 (30fps) and it is smooooth. It must be your video playback, Chris.

See if dl the newest codecs help.

 

[Chris PC]

I'm sure its the PC and/or codecs. Oddly, it looks a little better on quicktime, but still has missing frames. In bright light, the resolution and colour are incredible. This is the one reason I bought this digital camera. Smoooooth video. It looks good on the camera and on a TV, so I'm sure its fine. I'll figure out the codec's deal

Does anyone know of an application that will convert AVI's to MPEG's? I'd like that.

 

[Patrick Sun]

For MPEG-1 encoding, TMPGEnc 2.5x is free (via the trial edition), but if you want MPEG-2, then you'll have to pony up for the licensed version of TMPGEnc 2.5x. Click here for its website for that product and other associated products. Their newer TMPGEnc XPress 3.x requires periodic online validation for their licensing.

BTW, this topic (AVI -> MPEG) should continue in the Computers/HTPC area, and there are many thread dealing with this subject should you do a search in that area.

Let's keep this thread about the Canon S1 IS.

 

[Chris PC]

Ok. I'll look into that stuff over there

 

[Chris PC]

I'm finding the autofocus on "AUTO" setting kinda lame indoors compared to my fathers Fuji Finepix 1400 zoom. Is it possible I'm doing something wrong?