Thursday, March 19, 2009

Summary - so far

Well, I have had it for almost a week now and before that studied many photos and videos from others. What can I say? Although this is not a real review, if you look at all the posts I have done, you can get a fairly good idea on how the camera works and you can download many photos directly from camera (no editing in Photoshop or elsewhere) here and print them for your own review. My personal impressions would probably be something like:

Positive

  • Small, slim, and well built
  • Quick and snappy operations (one exception, flash recycle)
  • IS - cannot say enough good things about IS in cameras, especially for video
  • Adequate zoom range
  • Fantastic macro ability
  • HD video with good (mono) sound and H.264
  • Ok ISO performance, especially considering it's 12Mpix and small sensor
  • Good, balanced AUTO mode (one exception, the over exposure

Negative

  • Tend to overexpose in AUTO and no way of dialing in compensation
  • Do not re-adjust focus when taking videos
  • Cannot use optical zoom in video mode (digital can be used)
  • Somewhat slow lens
  • HD video (and actually also 640x480) requires modern (2yr old max?) PC to playback without stuttering
  • Flash cannot throttle back enough for use in macro (most times)
  • Cannot do manual exposure compensation during video (and do intital)


I guess that's about it. Overall (if you have a new PC or good MAC) I think it is a great small camera. If you do not care about the size, then you might find others that are as good or better, but if size is important, then I am not so sure that there are better today.

Order Canon SD780IS from Amazon: Deep Red Black Gold Silver

4 comments:

Mads said...

Hi
Thanks for all the info :-)

Im just waiting for it to be released her in Canada.

Any chance that you would dump the firmware to CHDK (hacked firmware)?


Link:
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Porting_the_CHDK

Thanks

Mathieu said...

Thanks for the info.

I have a somewhat old PC as well (Athlon 3200+) and the videos are choppy in quicktime.

I've solved the problem by converting the files to the xvid (or divx) format. I can keep the same HD quality and it plays smoothly on my "old" pc.

It's not ideal, but it allows me to watch my videos on my PC until I upgrade to something more powerful.

You can convert to xvid using many different software packages. I use RiverPast videocleaner

Victoria said...

Thank you so much for all of this info on this camera! I saw it and fell in love with it, but read some so-so reviews on Amazon, but after seeing these samples and your opinions I'm convinced. I'm going to go pick it up tomorrow! :)

LKPCA said...

Many thanks for your posts on this camera, I found it the most helpful of all the reviews I've been reading, including Amazon.

Unrelated: recently read Mankell's Wallander series and Nesser's (translated). Swedish mysteries gotten very popular. Haven't visited yet, but my Hubby's been to Malmo, Stockholm, and surroundings, and said, 'Beautiful!'