I've been taking pictures for a long time, using a variety of 35mm film cameras, then digital ones. I've always had a selection of lenses, filters and other gear. I'd go out on a morning walk or an evening photoshoot and take it all with me.
Lately, though, I've begun to travel extensively and frankly, carrying it all around all day takes its toll. So, I started looking for an all-in-one camera. However, I had some must-have requirements.
1. It must shoot in RAW mode.
2. It must be able to do auto exposure bracketing
3. It must have a big focal range, starting with moderate wide angle and moving to a decent optical zoom.
4. It needs to be small, light and portable.
5. It must have Image Stabilization (Canon's name) or equivalent.
I looked at a lot of cameras. I checked out some pancake lens cameras like the Olympus and some really tiny ones like Canon's famous G-series.
I wound up with an SX1 IS. Although it is slightly larger than I had hoped, it meets all of my requirements.
I've used it for about 3 weeks now, including taking it on a business trip to the Netherlands. I really do like it, though there are a few minor issues.
Things I like:
1. It is small enough to fit into my briefcase
2. It is light enough to carry all day
3. The LCD swings away from the body and rotates, so I can hold it down low or above my head and see what I'm shooting without needing a right-angle view finder.
It has some surprise features like wide-HD format and video. I'm not sure I'll ever use them but if I do want to experiment, the camera will cooperate. One really nice feature is auto-focus bracketing. This camera will take a series of pictures at slightly different focus points. Photoshop will merge them. I don't usually work in macro mode, but I did experiment with a flower and got three shots, auto-focusing on the front-middle and back then merged them together quite easily.
There were a few things that took a bit of getting used to. Most digital SLRs have a crop factor of about 1.3 or even 1.5 to one, so a 35mm lens looks like a 50. Given that I carried a large range zoom (28-300) I usually didn't know exactly what focal length I had used when I framed a shot the way I wanted it, so when I saw it in Lightroom at, say, 200, that seemed right. This camera has a crop factor of about 6:1. At 8mm (which would imply fish-eye) there's no distortion at all because it looks like 35mm. The lens barrel does have marking that show actual vs effective, but I'm still finding it strange to see very low numbers in the EXIF while looking at images that clearly have much longer lens appearances.
Coming from a mid-range camera body, I'm used to a continuous shooting mode that's pretty quick. This camera is noticeably slower, so some shooting techniques had to change. Here's an example of what I mean. I took a canal boat cruise in Amsterdam. There was a spot where I knew the boat would pass an intersecting canal and I wanted a right-angle that was taken on the centerline of the intersecting canal. Normally, I'd set the camera to burst mode and take 6-8 shots over two seconds and one of them would be just about perfect. This camera is much slower. I had to anticipate the motion and then hit the shutter, then wait for it to focus and shoot. I didn't even come close. Perhaps after taking a few thousand more images I'll have better instinct for the timing, but I suspect that this kind of shot is not one I should plan to get very often.
Another bit is that the menus are quite deep. They scroll on and on, so getting to a particular feature isn't quick. Fortunately, I'm one to pretty much pick a setting and stick with it, so that isn't a problem for me, but it might be for others.
Since the lens is built in, it doesn't have a manual focus ring. Similarly, the controls for changing shutter speed or aperture are on the back of the camera (a rotating ring) rather than on the lens or a wheel near the shutter as on my other camera body. Again, this is something to get used to, not a particularly big problem. A more negative version of this problem is that there are no threads for a polarizer or protective UV filter. I do have a split density filter that I can and do hold up in front of the lens, but sometimes the situation calls for a polarizer or ND4 and I just have to do without it.
However, there are two things I particularly don't like, and they're related. This camera eats batteries.(4-AAs)
A fully charged set is good for about 120 images. That means I have to go out with a spare set or two and then remember to recharge them. That will be an inconvenience on the next multi-city vacation. I would be happier with a single, slightly larger battery that lasted for twice as long. The other thing is that I use a monopod with a quick-release head. The plate, when screwed in, covers the opening to the battery compartment, so changing batteries requires removing it. Even if I mounted it directly to the monopod, it would still interfere. (I have a small "gorillapod" with an attachment head about the size of a US silver dollar. I tried it on and it just clips the edge of the battery cover.) These are, to me, more than just minor annoyances, and others might even rate them as more severe than that.
Reading other reviews online, I've seen some comments on the quality of the lens or some possible distortion. If I can figure out how, I'll include two pictures here, one from a canal in Amsterdam, one from Utrecht. Both were taken as 3-shot RAW files, converted to HDR in Photomatix and slightly color enhanced in Photoshop and Lightroom. Photomatix had no problem aligning the images (I used a monopod, and of course the image stabilization helped) and I didn't observe any distortion. I'm perfectly happy with the optics.
All in all, I recommend this camera. It is what it promises to be, and it meets all of the criteria I had when making the purchase.Get more detail about Canon PowerShot SX1IS 10 MP CMOS Digital Camera with 20x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.8-inch LCD.
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