Re: thoughts on new Canon compacts?


Paul Rubin wrote:

"Mike Henley" <casioculture@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
I don't know about other cameras but for the F810 the cradle is not
needed for recharging. It's possible to plug the power cable directly
into the camera itself to recharge the battery, without the cradle.

OK, but there's still a wall wart, right? That's a charger.

For me it's a non-issue, it's tiny. At home it stays plugged in all
year, cradle next to the computer, and never an issue. Also, if I'm
travelling, I have no intention of taking "all my devices", regardless
of whether it's one or multiple chargers. I did do that once, to
Amsterdam, big mistake, and ended up with all my devices lost when a
bag was stolen. Also, what's the point of taking a device when
travelling? I'd only take what I need, and I can't really think of many
devices that I'd need when travelling. Camera, yes, it makes sense, but
what else do I need? If I was travelling for business I'd take a smart
phone, no AA there. If I was travelling for pleasure I'd take nothing
else; don't want a PDA, don't want to be contacted other than by email
or voicebox, what else would I need?


and dropping them into the
Lacrosse charger which conditions them and displays their measured
capacity on an LCD screen so I immediately know if I got any duds.

I think I may like this charger. I'll look into it. Can it charge odd
numbers of batteries (1, 3) or must it be even (2, 4)?

Four independent channels. Can supposedly charge up to 1000 mA for 4
cells or 1800 mA for two cells, but in practice it gets pretty hot at
those currents (no fan) so I run it at 500 mA for a 5-6 hour charge.
It has a conditioning feature where it repeatedly charges and
discharges the cells until the capacity stops increasing; this takes
about two days for a new 4-pack of 2500 mAH cells. I just plop them
in and forget about them for that long.


Ah, no fan, that's a worry. I have a uniross 15-mins charger that has a
fan. Some may consider it an inconvenience considering the noise but I
like it. I usually use it when I recharge some batteries for an LED
reading light I have. That was my main use of AA/AAA batteries
recently. I no longer use it since I rediscovered Florescent lighting.
In theory I can also use them to recharge my PDA but in practice I
never need to.

I built a collection of classic compact film cameras over the past
years. I have made an effort to sell them all and remain with only what
I need to use but each felt like parting with a piece of heart.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I have five or six Nikon 35mm SLR's and
haven't shot a frame with any of them in years. At least the motor
drives run on AA's ;-).

But even if that's arguable or I'm just imagining it, the main point is
that I already have the F810, and comparing the images of them I don't
see a clear reason in the A610's images to swap it for one as I was
tempted a few days ago on account of AA batteries and SD cards; in
fact, unless I'm imagining it, the F810's images do look better to me.

I'll check a review site for sample images.

I would find RAW important in any camera with a good lens, good sensor
and good performance.

My E-100RS has raw, but the shooting speed is so slow it's ridiculous
(this is a camera that can shoot jpg at 15 fps). The old Canon A5
also had extremely slow RAW. Is the F810 RAW tolerable at all? Do
you use it much?

The F810 has an SLR-like performance in terms of readiness to shoot,
autofocus and shutter-lag. The only thing I noticed that's slow is
flash recharge time, but I don't usually use flash. As for the RAW, I'm
not sure what you mean by slow, but I never noticed that it was, so
perhaps it isn't, but then again I never need to shoot too many frames
per minute, let alone per second. You don't have to use it though, the
JPEG files are good and I'm sure it's fast with that. You can shoot
JPEG if you need machine gun photography and shoot RAW for when RAW is
needed. Yes, I do shoot raw with it.

Why do you need a high rate shooting speed? What are you shooting?


The F810...also, deliberately underexposes by exposing for the
highlights and it hightens the contrast, hence the "dark" JPEG
images it was criticised for by some, but those were actually a
great feature as you can see here
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1012&message=11264959

Interesting. The grass looks much better on the Fuji but there's
a weird color fringe around the arches on the building, maybe some
kind of processing artifact.


The main thing is not the grass, but the areas of highlight. Notice how
well-preserved they are with the Fuji and how burnt they are with the
conventional camera (Oly). Also, you can tell the Fuji has a great lens
and sensor in terms of image detail and noise.

Besides the JPEG, is has RAW, which means it doesn't matter much how it
makes it JPEGs; this is not the case for the A610.

The newer A600 also looks interesting, though no RAW.

.

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