WW50
3rd of April 2004 (Sat), 23:59
I dropped by a local camera store early this afternoon to check out the S1 IS. I have a friend that works there and had asked him to call me when they received their first shipment.
I was a little surprised at how small it was..much smaller than I had imagined and much smaller than the G3. It took a little while to get used to its size and shape. I took a CF card with me so that I could bring the photos home with me and play with them a little bit on my computer.
The camera store is located in a busy business area so there wasn't much to take photos of, but I snapped off about 20 shots, using all of the zoom range. I also took about a 1 minute movie.
My first impressions: I was very pleased with the photos. They were quite sharp, with good color saturation and contrast. The image stablization was great...it was obvious even through the finder that there would be no movement evident in the photos. Very smooth.
In the review on Steve's Digicams, Steve mentioned that the zoom moved so fast that it was difficult to stop at the position that he wanted, and had to move back and forth to get the exact framing he wanted. I had that problem at first, but soon realized that there are two speeds on the zoom. If you don't push the zoom lever all of the way in the direction that you want to zoom, just give it a gentle push, it zooms slowly and smoothly. It is very quiet. I could not hear the zoom motor or mechanism at all.
The movie was very good quality...very close to camcorder quality. I wasn't able to capture any sound with the movie, so I can't comment on the sound quality.
The only thing that I didn't like was that the EVF looked washed out. I don't know if there is a brightness adjustment on it or not, but if not, in bright sun it will be very iffy to use. The swivel LCD was fine, but didn't look as sharp or resolute as my G3.
All in all, I was quite impressed.
Wendell
I was a little surprised at how small it was..much smaller than I had imagined and much smaller than the G3. It took a little while to get used to its size and shape. I took a CF card with me so that I could bring the photos home with me and play with them a little bit on my computer.
The camera store is located in a busy business area so there wasn't much to take photos of, but I snapped off about 20 shots, using all of the zoom range. I also took about a 1 minute movie.
My first impressions: I was very pleased with the photos. They were quite sharp, with good color saturation and contrast. The image stablization was great...it was obvious even through the finder that there would be no movement evident in the photos. Very smooth.
In the review on Steve's Digicams, Steve mentioned that the zoom moved so fast that it was difficult to stop at the position that he wanted, and had to move back and forth to get the exact framing he wanted. I had that problem at first, but soon realized that there are two speeds on the zoom. If you don't push the zoom lever all of the way in the direction that you want to zoom, just give it a gentle push, it zooms slowly and smoothly. It is very quiet. I could not hear the zoom motor or mechanism at all.
The movie was very good quality...very close to camcorder quality. I wasn't able to capture any sound with the movie, so I can't comment on the sound quality.
The only thing that I didn't like was that the EVF looked washed out. I don't know if there is a brightness adjustment on it or not, but if not, in bright sun it will be very iffy to use. The swivel LCD was fine, but didn't look as sharp or resolute as my G3.
All in all, I was quite impressed.
Wendell