go ahead, shoot the moon freehand

The shooting ground


crop of the wide angle shot


6x zoom


20x zoom


lets focus to infinity and beyond

look ma, no hands - uh no tripod I mean

to keep or not to keep that is here the question

Yesterday I was so frustrated with the results I was willing to bring the SX10 back and try if I could live with the crappy Panasonic FZ28 screen with a mediocre viewing angle and the hard viewfinder. Today I know that a camera with a non articulated screen is not for me no matter how good she might be. I do lots of creative and unusual angle shots and a swivel screen is just the best, sorry Sony but just up and down is not enough, nice try anyhow.
You have to find out what is really important for you, the so called must haves, then add the I really want its and top it up with the it would be nice if she had thats.
Take reviews as that what they are, a collection of more or less professional opinions mixed with some hard facts, some mindless blabber from the advertising guys like double image stabilisation or that flash reached so far at auto mode (if you read close the handbook you find out auto mode takes the ISO up to 800 to reach that far.Panasonic Fz28).

After another full day with the SX10 I am finding out how to handle her and how to navigate the weak spots. What I can not change is the basic video resolution, even it is one of the best VGA cameras around Canon messed this up too with changing to mov format. For just 25% smaller files it was a step in the wrong direction.

If you do not care much for the movie mode, the SX10 is a very nice and professional looking solid and heavy camera.

If you do not care for the swivel screen and a soft eyepiece, the Panasonic FZ28 with the better movie mode and up to 13 fps shooting and much more is the better camera in my opinion.

So what about me?
I will return the SX10 to the store, wait a couple weeks and then check out the SX1. If the movie mode is what is should be regarding the quality and the camera is much faster shooting with the 4fps to the 1.5 fps from the SX10 then I pay Canon the 150€ more for a camera what should last some years. If  I will not be impressed by the SX1 then I get and keep the SX10.

If the viewfinder and the swivel screen on my S2 where bigger and better I would not change, since she is still doing a nice job. 

close up and personal

The detail pictures are lossless 1x1 crops, as usual, click on the pictures for full size.

3 cm super macro

1cm super macro

Canon SX10 flower closeup macro mode

 


 

Test edge softness
Please take into consideration, that it can not be guaranteed that the camera lens was in an exact angle to the object. I try to be as exact as possible but these are not laboratory conditions.

Canon SX10 macro mode 28mm


Canon S2 macro mode 36mm


Ricoh R6 macro mode 28mm

So, how is the ISO here?

Just shot outside with a flash

ISO 80 to ISO 1600
100% lossless crop to 400x400, so what you see is what you get 1to1








there is a flash less 3200 ISO mode what reuduces the picture size to 2mp
as usual lossless crop


And here is a bigger ISO 1600 lossless crop with lots of detail (more or less)


.. and now compare it with ISO 200 as usual a lossless crop

Just how fast is the lens at what zoom?

This video will show you.
Canon does not show the zoom value on the screen, so you have to guess from the progress bar.

Video Quality S2 vs SX10

 The video from the S2 is in avi format and uses 20mb for 10 seconds

From another clip this time vivid setting 

The video from the Sx10 is in mov format and uses 15mb for 10 seconds setting vivid

The VGA video mode is so 2005 Canon, I know you want to make people buy the SX1 but at least 800x600 would have been nice. 

So in conclusion the video files are 25% smaller and you got the mov format what is a pain in the butt to work with compared to avi. For me this is a halfassed step backwards.

Bad Canon - no cookie

a second chance - Full Zoom

Yesterday I really was not happy how the long distance full zoom pictures turned out. But since I live directly on the ocean I get hazy days. So our dog head mountain what is just 400 meters distance looked already a bit hazy when I took the golf course pictures yesterday.

So with a crisp morning and the golfers already active I gave it another try.

I was asked to show the 0 zoom to get an idea what 20x cropped can do, so here is the 28mm view and a lossless crop with the full detail. You have a nice look of dog head mountain and the Caribbean. Sorry the tele is not that good to see the islands, they are just some 4 or 5000km away but the directionis right.

All pictures are lossless crops without recompression and since I cropped them to 1600x1600 they should show up just fine if you click them. I fixed both ISO at 100 since the SX10 tends to use ISO 200 when you are above 16x zoom to have at least 1/500 sec. 

Canon S2 12x ISO 100 1/1000 F4 handheld distance ca.400m



Canon SX10 20x ISO 100 1/320 F5.7 handheld  distance ca.400m

Canon SX10 20x ISO 100 1/320 F5.7 handheld continuous shooting at 1.4 pic/sec  distance ca.250m

Canon SX10 20x ISO 100 1/320 F5.7 handheld continuous shooting at 1.4 pic/sec  distance ca.230m

With these results even with no tripod at 20x I can live. I compared them with the tripod shots I took a few minutes earlier and there was no improvement in sharpness with the tripod shots.
So scratch my remarks from yesterday. The SX10 is significant better in usable resolution then the S2.

a second chance - Manual Focus

I really was not happy with the results so far from the Canon SX10 IS.
So on this crisp Monday morning I gave the SX10 another chance to proof me wrong.
The night before I downloaded the manual because I did not wanted to open the one what came with the camera. I read the whole thing from front to back. Since lots of functions are identical to my S2 I could skip lots of pages.
I also compared the SX10 and the S2 a bit closer.

While with the viewfinder from the S2 it is impossible to use it for manual focus the viewfinder from the SX10 is like watching IMAX. I have glasses and with them I can not see everything what is displayed without moving my head slightly. Without glasses (I have +4) the diopter adjuster produces a sharp image at the end of the adjustable area and you see everything. But the bigger picture I get while using my glasses makes more than up that I just see 90% on a first glance.The eye piece is rubberized and not hard plastic as on the Panasonic FZ28 also, with the flipped out screen you have an little depression next to the swivel what is an exact place to put your nose. This makes it so much more nose friendly for the longer non Asian noses. 

With all the little helpers in the SX10 manual focus is possible, not great but usable.

So lets take the SX10 for a manual focus tour, shall we?
Flip out the screen  
DISP Button until the viewfinder is active

don´t worry, all the clutter can vanish with a press of the DISP button
now press MF

with the thumb wheel you give your thumb some exercise and soon the Distance Bar begins to move up or down. After you turned it for a while up or down, it moves like a geriatric turtle and you find what  for you is the sharpest image. Since the center is enlarged it really helps you with your decision.

If you think the Canon should check if it could do better, press the lowest of the spider eyes the AF Frame Selector Button

You can do this several times and see where the Distance Bar ends up each time

Just when you half press  the Shutter Button, a blue light goes on. This is because your turned Auto ISO Shift to On. Your SX10 tells you that ISO 200 is just not the right choice and recommends to increase the ISO to a higher value.

So while you still have the Shutter Button half depressed you accept the choice by pressing the blue lit Shortcut Button once.

We finally shoot our picture and review it.

With the Zoom Slider we go to maximal magnification to see if it is really sharp.

Pressing the DISP Button brings up more info.

Manual Focus

And this concludes our Manual Focus adventure.

tell me about it

Click on a picture for full size - Important pictures are straight from the camera without any post processing - Lossless crops are croped out of the jpg without recompressing - SX10 in auto mode with factory settings - I just noticed that Google limits the images to 1600 pixel, so I will uploade the images in real size to another foto sharing site and the link here. - New info to this post added 2008-11-17-1.31 


SX10 - S2








The Swivel Display


The Viewfinder
(MACRO SHOT) the border unsharpness is from the macro camera


The Swivel Display in bright sunlight
(the sun shines directly onto the display)



macro lossless crop


canon sx10 20x zoom lossless crop
shot from a tripod with 2 sec timer delay to avoid any shaking
not happy with the result



same shot but handheld

 

SX10 10mp - S2 5 mp full zoom


A spiderweb shot from the same loaction with 20x and 12x zoom

canon s2 12x zoom spiderweb


canon sx10 20x zoom spiderweb


A little group of objects shot at full tele
even the cameras where propped on a table and just had to be angled a bit up , most shots where not too sharp from both cameras. These are the best fotos from both cameras.

canon s2 12x detail test


canon sx10 20x detail test

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Manual Mode


Manual Mode hand held


Canon SX10 IS movie mode full tele and digital auto focus


Canon SX10 IS movie mode full tele and digital manual focus


The movie quality is not better than the one from the 3 year old S2 IS