Joho the Blog
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July 21, 2004
After some power shopping with Dan Bricklin (thanks, Dan!) and helpful and generous comments from y'all, I bought a Canon Powershot S60. There are so many models that are so close in features, that ultimately it came down mainly to two factors: First, the Sony guy at Newtonville Camera said that the Sony DSC-V1 wasn't "mainstream" and I should avoid it. He also liked the wider angle lens on the Canon. (It's great dealing with a store that puts your interests first.) I was leaning towards a Canon anyway because my current Sony's picture quality isn't particularly good, even for a 2.1 megapixel truck. Second, the Canon S500 looks cool and weighs about as much as the idea of it, but I found it too cramped for elderly hand. So, the S60 is it. I've been taking lots of pretty random photos and I'm basically delighted, with occasional flares of ignorance-based concern. The UI is complex — there is no end to the camera's functionality — but after a couple of hours, I'm pretty well used to it. In Automatic mode, the thing takes brilliant photos: Sharp, colorful, and just pleasing. In Program AE mode, especially if I turn up the ASA, it gets very grainy fast. So, maybe I'm learning not to turn up the ASA. (I should mention that I have no idea what I'm doing.) Also worrisome: I went through a full charge of the battery in well under 100 photos, albeit all with the LCD on and many using the flash. Minor negative: I really dislike the photo management app that comes with it, all because of little, annoying things. For example — prepare for pettiness — the window that shows a photo full size doesn't tell you the name of the file you're looking at except in the title of the window, which means if you have a bunch of subdirectories, you have to drag the window into the next county to get to the file name. And the window that shows you all the photos on the camera does it only as a horizontal "film strip," an annoying way to browse. Anyway. Overall I'm really enjoying this camera as I get used to how it sees the world. Posted
by D. Weinberger at July 21, 2004 05:04 PM
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Comments
Hmm, I have an S50, which is the immediate predecessor, and I can run through a couple hundred pictures and a week of toting around without running down the battery. Just a data point, maybe they screwed up the S60, maybe you have a bum battery?
Posted by: Tim Bray | July 21, 2004 05:30 PM
Nice choice. Use it in good health, as we members of the tribe say. A big advantage to the Canon is their (conventional) camera-making heritage. Any fool can do digital electronics, but it takes experience to get lens optics right.
Posted by: Mark Federman | July 21, 2004 09:39 PM
on the "photo management app"...the software that comes with cameras is always mostly useless. i have two fujifilm cams, 4900 and s7000, average maybe 150 high resolution exposures most days and am totally dependent on irfanview, free at irfanview.com. be sure to check out the thumbs and slideshow functions.
i also have 2 sets of rechargeable batteries for the s7000. usually have to change them every day but if fotoing is light they can last 3 or 4 days.
canon was a good choice, avoiding sony was a good choice, have much fun.
Posted by: kim | July 21, 2004 11:06 PM
I second the recommendation for Irfanview. And he keeps improving it.
Posted by: Dan Bricklin | July 21, 2004 11:24 PM
Thanks, y'all. And thanks, kim, for reminding me at last to download irfanview. Very cool.
I only recently became a convert to imagemagick. I needed a processor with a command line for a little utility I've been writing for myself, and, damn, imagemagick is good.
Posted by: David Weinberger | July 21, 2004 11:31 PM
did he/she elaborate on what they meant about the sony dsc-v1 "not being mainstream"?
just curious.
Posted by: bb | July 22, 2004 09:53 PM
bb, he talked about the difficult of getting aftermarket products and the fact that you have to send it directly to Sony for repair. Neither of these struck me as compelling, but he resisted my every attempt to warm up to it, so, given that I was dealing with indiscernibles, I took his reluctance as indicative of some deeper concern.
Posted by: David Weinberger | July 23, 2004 11:48 AM
I recommend you look into Adobe Photoshop "Albums": it's everything that iPhoto is on the Mac, but it's for Windows. There's a free version and at least one paid version with additional features. It may not appeal to your open source software sensibilities, but I think it's the best choice for organizing and light editing of a few thousand photos.
Posted by: scott | July 28, 2004 04:47 PM