Tag Archive: Canon


(Summer 2009) Digital Camera review | Canon IXUS 110 IS

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May 6, 2009

A quick look around any fine online camera store these days and one thing becomes immediately clear. That one thing is – you really don’t have to spend a fortune to get quality anymore.

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Canon has just released a new IXUS model, the 110 IS – which continues the Canon tradition of mid-range cameras chalked full of outstanding features. If any single range of cameras best sums up Canon’s ‘bang for buck’ philosophy, it must be the IXUS.

Take a look at some of the IXUS 110 IS features…

12.1 Megapixels

The number of megapixels determines the amount of sharp detail a digital camera can record. With more megapixels, you can print at larger sizes, plus crop and enlarge without sacrificing quality. IXUS cameras provide all the resolution you need for finely detailed, photo-quality prints with plenty of scope for post-shoot cropping.

4x Optical Zoom

Get the shot you want with a powerful 4x Optical Zoom and genuine Canon optics. Not only does the zoom get you up close quickly, but Canon optical technology ensures that your shots are bright, clear, and alive with true, vivid color.

Optical Image Stabilizer

Any slight shake while hand-holding a camera can cause blurred photos. Canon’s optical Image Stabilizer (IS) technology ensures crisp, clear images by detecting and correcting this camera shake. The camera is able to microscopically adjust its own lens with absolute accuracy up to 4,000 times every second, so the image you see is the image you capture.

Motion Detection

When the camera detects a face, Motion Detection Technology will now adaptively vary the shutter speed according to the speed of the face movement. The amount of camera shake is also taken into consideration and the aperture is set to obtain the optimum exposure for that perfect shutter speed.

Face Detection Technology

Canon’s Face Detection Technology ensures superb people shots by automatically detecting subjects in the frame and setting the correct focus, flash level and exposure. With Blink Detection technology turned on the camera will show a warning that a person in the photo had their eyes closed. This displays for three seconds whilst reviewing the shot right after shooting.

Summary

From a huge 12mp lens to integrated optical stabilizers, face detection and wide-screen movie capability, the IXUS from Canon contains everything possible the average camera toting tourist or home movie aficionado could want – all in one small and sleek package.

Available in no less than four different colours, the CANON IXUS IS 110 is now available from all good camera retailers.

SOURCE: Canon.co.uk | WarehouseExpress.com IXUS page

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Canon LP-E6 Battery Pack | Performance Upgrade

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April 14, 2009

It is no surprise that professional photographers and snap-happy amateurs require the highest quality, longest life batteries possible. If you are an aficionado of the hobby, or it happens to be your profession – that’s exactly what you get with the Canon LP-E6 Battery Pack.

lp-e6-battery-21This battery pack is a must have for heavy shooters. For those familiar with Canon’s very popular EOS 5D Mark II and its long-running BP-511 series battery, on the surface this battery pack may look the same – but the new lithium-ion LP-E6 battery pack is approximately 30% more powerful than the previous BP-511A – with 1800 milliamp-hours capacity, vs. 1390 mAh for the previous-generation BP-511A.

Far from just a more powerful power supply, this new battery teams up with the EOS 5D Mark II camera in new ways to give photographers a precise outlook on remaining strength of a battery, as well as managing multiple batteries.

It’s a fact that today’s digital SLR users almost always have at least one, and often multiple, spare battery packs for their cameras. But with more than one battery pack, it can sometimes be hard to keep track of whether all batteries are being used fairly evenly (in other words, that one or more aren’t languishing at the bottom of your camera bag), and to have an idea of when you’ve last charged each one.

Using the battery pack with the Mark II, you can actually “register” or memorize each LP-E6 battery pack you own, and keep track of up to six separate batteries right on the camera’s LCD screen. Each LP-E6 battery pack has a microchip with a unique, 8-character serial number. You don’t see this number on the outside of the battery, as it is embedded in the battery’s information source but once the battery pack is installed in the camera, you can register it using a menu command.

lp-e6-batteryThe Battery Information displays the information which is extremely useful to the working photographer on location. At a glance, he or she can immediately tell how much remaining battery power is available, and furthermore get information to assist in managing this and other LP-E6 battery packs:

1. Charge Remaining: Special circuits and a memory chip in the battery communicate the precise percentage of charge remaining in the battery, in 1% increments.

2. Shots Taken: At a glance, you can see how many times the shutter has fired using this particular battery, since it was last charged-up. (Please note – this display will never show the total number of times the camera’s shutter itself has fired; it only displays the number of shots taken on this battery charge).

3. Battery Performance: It’s a fact that rechargeable batteries have a finite number of charge-discharge-charge cycles they can go through, after which they can begin to lose their ability to hold a charge. While the LP-E6 should allow photographers hundreds of charge-discharge cycles, it’s useful for the working photographer to know whether a battery pack is nearing the end of its useful life after several years of use. The Battery Performance indicator does just that, with a 4-stage icon.

With 30% added life over previous versions and ‘smart’ features that separate it from the competition, it is not hard to recommend the Canon LP-E6 Battery Pack, available from WarehouseExpress.com and other fine retailers.

SOURCE: WarehouseExpress.com | Canon

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The Hi-Def Difference – Canon Legria HF S100 AVCHD Camcorder

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April 14, 2009

legria-hf-s100Until recently, one quick glance at any movie and you could instantly tell whether or not it had been shot with a ‘professional’ camera, or a store bought camera. A fact made more obvious by the Hi-Definition (HDTV) capabilities of all modern television sets.

But thanks to technological innovation, what was once a truism of the film world happily is no longer the case. Until recently, amateur filmmakers had to grin and bear the fact that the equipment they used would never achieve the same quality, or ‘look’, of the big boys in Hollywood. To achieve the ‘pro look’ on your home movies you had two choices, either spend huge money on a professional grade video camera (which more than a few did), or accept the fact that, as a mere mortal with pockets that do not reach into the many thousands, you simply did the best you could with the equipment at your disposal.

Then, Canon’s Legria HF S100 came onto the market, and the rules of the game changed overnight.

Canon’s Legria HF S100 combines the latest in Hi-Definition technology and User Creativity with the convenience of SD Memory for unlimited expansion. All the expected features are there from 25p Cinema Mode to Custom Key and Dual Shot to Video Snapshot. The Canon Legria HF S100 High Definition Camcorder is the perfect camera for enthusiasts looking for a step up without the professional budgets.

As with many of its products, with the S100 Canon has exclusivity and patents on many of its components and features that make it not only a product leader, but a true innovator as well.

Let’s take a closer look at a few of these:

Canon Exclusive: 1/2.6-inch, 8.59-megapixel Full HD CMOS Image Sensor

The S100 captures 1920 x 1080 High Definition video through its Canon designed and manufactured 1/2.6-inch, 8.59-megapixel HD CMOS image sensor, similar to the CMOS image sensors made famous in Canon’s EOS Series Digital SLR cameras.

The HF S100′s powerful CMOS image sensor provides high color resolution and advanced color reproduction for brilliant results. It is also unique in featuring Canon’s proprietary noise reduction technologies for crisp, sharp images. Low noise technology also means that even in dimly lit scenes, the signal from each pixel is as pure as possible, with minimal noise or other aberrations. It’s the ideal sensor for HD.

1920 x 1080 Full HD Recording

1920x10801The Canon HF S100 not only captures images in Full HD, but records and outputs at 1920 x 1080 as well, so you get Full HD from lens to screen. Your memories are preserved in stunning clarity, and ready for playback on your HDTV. With the advanced codec in the HF S100, you can also record at the highest AVCHD bitrate of 24Mbps.

Canon Exclusive: SuperRange Optical Image Stabilization

The high-resolution images of HD video demand a steady hand. It’s easier to get those clear, steady images with the HF S100, thanks to Canon’s innovative SuperRange Optical Image Stabilization. It combines gyro- and image-sensors to give image stabilization through a wider range of camera motions. Some image stabilization systems correct one type of camera motion or vibration better than another. But Canon’s SuperRange OIS corrects for a wide range of camcorder motion: the fast vibration you’d experience while recording from a moving car; the medium-speed motion of hand-held recording; and the slower motion of body sway. No matter what you’re recording and how you’re recording it, the HF S100′s stabilization design corrects camcorder shake instantly.

Direct to SDHC Memory Recording

As major manufacturers push headlong in the direction of truly solid-state digital recording of not only standard definition video but the very latest high definition formats, too, we’re seeing an ever-increasing tide 32gb1 of models that offer recording to memory cards (such as SDHC and Memory Stick) and also to flash memory that’s actually hard-wired in to the camcorders themselves. If you’ve been studying the market for any length of time you’ll be aware that it is rapidly killing off other traditional recording media such as DVD and tape; even HDD (hard disc drive) is singing its swansong as a recording/playback medium. If you’re keen to acquire a camcorder which is more future-proof than others, the Legria HF S100 records directly to high capacity SDHC memory cards – a 32GB card can store over 12 hours of HD movies at the most efficient setting.

So for the aspiring Spielberg’s out there, your time has finally come. If you fancy having the ‘pro look’ on your home movies at an affordable starting price of less than £1100, these features and many more come standard on the Canon Legria HF S100 AVCHD Camcorder. Order yours online today!

SOURCE: Canon | WarehouseExpress.com

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Studio Lighting | Flashes, Lamps & Equipment

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March 31, 2009

Lighting is a difficult thing to get right without the proper equipment. Even the amateur photographer will be familiar with the annoyances of on-camera flash; washed-out images and a lack of control over the quality or direction of the light is enough to destroy the best-composed image.

studio-lighting1

To get around that in a professional portrait environment, the experts use ‘studio lighting’. Studio lighting can be broken down into two categories, continuous lighting and flash. Continuous lighting has two main advantages, and there are many disadvantages to its use.

The good points of continuous light:

- It’s inexpensive, and makes a good starting point for anyone on a small budget.

- You can see what the light is doing and where the shadows and highlights are.

The main disadvantages of continuous light:

- It generally produces more heat than light, very uncomfortable!

- The light that it produces is not balanced to daylight.

OK, so what does this mean in practical terms? The heat produced by continuous light in a studio can make both you and your subject uncomfortable. Also, because of the very bright light, it will also have the effect of closing down the iris in your model’s eyes, which it is generally accepted, doesn’t make a good portrait. The photos below show the effect of continuous lighting on the eyes.

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Every photographer has taken photos in artificial light and ended up with yellow pictures. To your eyes, the light from a tungsten bulb looks white, but it isn’t. Colour temperature (the colour of the light) is measured in degrees Kelvin, daylight is around 5,600K and a tungsten bulb is more like 3,200K and therefore records on daylight balanced film as yellow.

This can be overcome in three ways: Firstly, you can use tungsten balanced colour film. Secondly, you can put a filter on your lens, which will enable you to use any daylight film. The big problem with these two solutions is that as the tungsten filament in the bulb burns it leaves a small residue on the inside of the glass envelope. This means that the colour of the light gradually becomes more yellow as the bulb ages.

This brings us to the third way to overcome lighting issues: flash.

With a normal on-camera flash there is no way of knowing what the lighting effect will be, other than it will be predictably unpredictable.


Modeling Lamp

In the professional studio, flash units are fitted with a continuous lamp, which can be seen on the photograph below sitting in the centre of the circular flash tube. Because of its position it gives a very accurate indication of the angle and quality that the flash will produce when fired. This makes your lighting easy to set-up, because’what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

light1

As this lamp is relatively low powered you don’t get the heat or brightness problem we talked about with continuous light. The only thing to remember is that the flash will be a much stronger light, so the shadows will be darker and the highlights will be lighter. To trick your eye/brain built-in compensation device when setting up lighting, first close one eye (a camera only has one) then squint through your lashes.

The key to successful studio lighting is, of course, experimentation (no two subjects will ever be the same). There are many ways in which you can light a subject – the options are countless. Once you have acquired some more light sources you can begin to experiment with multiple-bulb lighting, which can produce even more complex, interesting effects.

Experimentation is the key!

SOURCE:  Wikipedia | WarehouseExpress.com

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The Digital Camera Ice Age? Not so much.

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March 30, 2009

polaroid_sx701

Remember the Polaroid camera? Ok, the author accepts that some (maybe most) of you won’t. But it was super-duper-popular in its day. Like Twitter is now. Ok, not like Twitter. More like Facebook. No that’s too much. Let’s say it was MySpace popular. A lot more useful though.

A bastion of the 60s, 70s and 80s if there ever was; Polaroid created the first ‘instant’ camera (actually invented in 1947) that became ubiquitous with holidays, birthdays and everydays in between for 20 to 25 years, minimum. To get the ‘instant’ picture to develop, as soon as it was ejected out of the camera you shook it as violently as you could for 10-15 seconds. When you were done, hopefully (not always), you had a medium-to-low quality picture captured ‘instantly’ for posterity.

It was seriously high tech in its day.

Guaranteed, there is a Polaroid camera at your parent’s place, somewhere. Unfortunately in 2008 Polaroid discontinued the film used in the camera so there’s no chance you can live the dream and play out your 1979 fantasies for kicks. The Polaroid camera came along at a time when the world was waking up to the potential of technology and everything that ‘new technology’ meant at the time.

Remember the Polavision? Not so much. That’s ok, because no one does either. Not only did Polaroid make instant still-image cameras, but in 1977 they also manufactured a type of little-known instant movie camera, called Polavision. The kit included a camera, film, and a movie viewer. When the movie was shot, it would be taken out of the camera and then inserted into the viewer for development, then viewed after development.

polavision

It was awful. Poorly thought out, poorly designed, weighed a ton and was constricted by that rather important ‘space / memory / processing power’ limitation thing that still burdens other technology makers 30+ years later.

But ‘A’ for effort.

In the 90s things changed. Or did they? As the first Digital Cameras came on the scene, the process did get more ‘instant’. You could even ‘see’ the picture you took. Wow. Good luck trying to delete a picture from memory though, as the interface of the first digital cameras were Atari-like in visual extravagance (the author does NOT accept that you do not remember Atari – immediately go buy one on Ebay).

At the dawn of the digital camera era, cameras (again) started out microwave in size, with poor-to-medium quality pictures and still more than a little awkward to use. Things really hadn’t changed much after all.

But that was 15 years ago.

Now, even the most basic digital cameras look like spy cameras from 1977 Bond movies. Size isn’t the issue. For the layman photographer, quality isn’t an issue anymore either. Your average digital camera can pull off decent enough looking photos. Functionality on the other hand, combined with the ability to do double duty with HD video, is the consideration when looking for a new camera now. Why shouldn’t you have both – when for the first time – you CAN have both, without compromise?

You should, because for the first time you affordably can. If you are in the market for a new camera this spring there are a couple new offerings on the market that tick both boxes at a reasonable price.

Canon’s hot off the press EOS 500D certainly fits the bill.

canon-500d1

The new EOS 500D features a 15.1 Megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor – ideal for large detailed prints or enormous cropping possibilities. For shooting in near-dark conditions, the EOS 500D offers a high ISO sensitivity up to 3200 which is expandable to 12800, giving photographers the power to shoot in the dimmest light conditions.

Oh, and it’s a brilliant HD video camera as well.

The EOS 500D introduces a new way for photography enthusiasts to get their HD video on. It pairs outstanding still image capture with Full HD 1080P video recording. For longer video shoots, users can also choose lower shooting resolutions of 720P or VGA. A built-in HDMI connection allows easy and instant review of images and movie clips on any compatible HDTV.

Straight up awesomeness. Available at quality retailers in late March.

The Nikon D90 SLR will also rock your world, if you let it. The D90’s 12.3 effective megapixels provides unreal resolution, delivering images with extraordinarily defined detail and expanded enlargement capacity. The extremely wide sensitivity range of ISO 200 to 3200 delivers incredibly low-noise pictures. As long as you don’t shake it violently.

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Best of all, the D90 is the world’s first digital SLR camera with a movie shooting function that delivers genuine cinematic results. This is further refined by the optical quality and broad selection of NIKKOR lenses — the same lenses relied upon by professional photographers the world over. Thanks to the D90’s large image sensor, digital movie images exhibit less noise than those of a typical camcorder, especially in low-light situations.

These two lovelies from Canon and Nikon prove beyond any doubt that rumours of the digital camera’s demise are greatly exaggerated. If the era of the Polaroid camera gives any indication of longevity, looks like we have another 10 good years of digital picture taking left in the tank.

No ice age just yet. With HD video coming into play now – we’re just getting warm, actually.

Agree? Disagree? Your thoughts are welcome below.

SOURCE: WarehouseExpress.com | Polaroid

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