Canon Powershot SD1200IS video improvment

One test that I had not done before was to test the SD1200 (and SD780) in video mode for the annoying "light bleeding". If you have an older (a year or more :) Canon camera and use it for video, you have probably seen this. It happens when you have bright lights in the video, like the sun, lamps or reflections. A vertical line is formed up and down from the light. Here's a video capture from SD800:



On SD1200 this is almost gone. I suspect all Canon cameras with the new DIGIC-4 chip will see this improvement. I have owned S3IS, SD700IS and they also had the bleeding. If you use video, this is a good reason to upgrade. Here is a video example of how it looks.



SD1200IS at Amazon: Light gray, Dark gray, Pink, Blue, Green, Orange.

Macro - SD1200IS

I must say that I am very impressed with the Canon SD1200IS, and also its more feature packed sibling the SD780IS , capability to take macros.

I love macros and I have had a good macro lens for quite some time for my various DSLRs that I have had (right now I have a Canon 10D and Sigma 105mm EX, both bought used), and I appreciate how hard it can be to get good macros even with good, or maybe especially with good, equipment. With the tiny Canon point-and-shoot, the IS and the lens makes it possible to take a decent macro without any practice. Prior to Digic-4 (the imagine chip in the camera) one had at least to turn on the macro focus, but now, in auto mode, even that is automatically done. Just point and shoot :). Here's a sample for you of an unknown but very colorful beetle. And then a crop. Keep in mind that this happened to be ISO 250, so there's going to be some noise and noise reduction artifacts.



~100% crop or nearly so:


Buy SD1200 : Light gray, Dark gray, Pink, Blue, Green, Orange.

Canon SD1200 IS vacation shots

Here are some new shots from the SD1200 camera. First an ISO 400 shot with a 100% crop showing the relatively good noise performance of the small 10 Mpixel sensor.


Buy SD1200 : Light gray, Dark gray, Pink, Blue, Green, Orange.

And then a macro shot:

100% crop:


Click on the images to see the details.

And how about this frame capture from a video showing a lightning strike in a thunderstorm:



Buy SD1200 : Light gray, Dark gray, Pink, Blue, Green, Orange.

SD1200IS on vacation

What's better to test a camera than taking a vacation? SD1200 is small enough to always have in the pocket, and it's powering on fast enough to be ready for that shot. Here are some photos from the last few days.


SD1200 : Light gray, Dark gray, Pink, Blue, Green, Orange.


SD1200 : Light gray, Dark gray, Pink, Blue, Green, Orange.



So far so good...

SD1200 : Light gray, Dark gray, Pink, Blue, Green, Orange.