Welp, finally got my camera. Canon PowerShot S110 Digital Elph, known to the rest of the world as the "Digital IXUS V". Merry Christmas To Me!

Wow, what a great freaking camera. Fantastic!

The camera arrived in good condition for a decent price. The only screw-up is that the company promised a 128mb memory card, but instead sent a pair of 64s instead of a 128. I assume they ran out of 128 stock (the invoice did say 128:qty:1), and they knew it was a Christmas gift, they thought it was more important to fulfill the order as best they could. In that case, I think they made a good decision.

Since I can still fit a crapload of pictures on the 64, and I'm going to be carrying the extra battery and charger with me anyhow, it's probably no big deal to cart the second memory card around, too. Which brings me to my only complaint about the camera: Sucky battery life!

I admit that, since it was the first day, I was futzing around with it a little more than I normally would in a given day of shooting pictures. But seriously, I only shot about 30 pictures and one movie on the thing, and the battery was crying uncle before dinner time.

It's a good thing the camera has the mail-in offer for the extra battery (along with some other useless crap), or I'd be disappointed.

By my calculations, if I can keep an extra fully-charged battery handy and I'm careful with the usage, then this camera could make it through the proverbial Day At Disneyland, which is all you can really ask of any digital camera, right?

And on the good side, the battery charges pretty darn fast, considering. And it's the kind of battery that doesn't have "charge memory" so I don't need to fully discharge it before charging it again. I mean, heck, it could be worse, I could have to keep buying AAA's for it.

I'm pretty happy with the camera's features overall. The image quality is good, although I shot a day's worth of pictures with the data-compression set to the "medium" setting (called "fine" on the camera), and discovered that I should have had it set to super-fine all along. Didn't fill the memory card hardly at all, but wanted to pull more detail out of the pictures I did take.

The stitch-assist mode is nice. Came in handy to get some panoramic shots of the snow-covered mountain view from the in-law's dining room. Very nice. Basically, you tell the camera you're going to do a multi-image panorama, and it literally shows you where to move the camera to take the next shot in the series.

Now, I have one question for those who own this camera and know something about it:

The software that comes with it is severely bloated. I've already got all the image-processing tools I want. But they have a 120-meg program for the main software interface. ICK!

Okay, I installed its TWAIN driver and I can easily grab camera pictures straight from the camera into my personal-favorite imaging application. So I don't really need their bloated bundled software. But what I'd really like to do is mount this thing's filesystem directly from the USB cable. So that I could simply drag the files (or use a batch file to XCOPY) into a destination folder on my hard disk. I want to do this without first importing it into an imaging application (and the tedious series of SAVE AS's that entails), and without installing their huge 120-meg bloatware onto my hard drive. Anyone have any ideas on how I can do this?

Note: I know I could probably do this with a CompactFlash reader doohickey, but why would I want to do that when the camera itself is a perfectly good CompactFlash reader with a USB cable and everything?

Hmm, I may have answered my own question. I seem to be getting by with a subset of their bloatware which only takes up 47 megs instead of 120 megs.

Still, a simple Explorer window showing me the files on the camera and allowing me to drag them and drop them onto my hard disk would be nicer than their fancy-shmancy ZoomBrowser "librarian" tool.

Then again, maybe I'll get to liking ZoomBrowser. I dunno.

On the other hand, their panoramic stitching utility is THE BUSINESS. Very cool. Two sets of stitched panoramas from today (one horizontal, a view of the landscape, and one vertical, their 15-foot decorated tree), and they look great.

Hi Tony. I got a Powershot G2 for Christmas. Fantastic camera, same ass-poor software. Bloated is definitely the word. I thought the same thing, "why not an explorer type interface?" Oh well. My advice? Go check out the forums at dpreview.com. I remember looking there a while ago and seeing all kinds of negative talk about Zoombrowser, and a multitude of alternatives. I went there yesterday but the search function on the message board was out of order. Try that place, it's like this message board for digital cameras. Lots of people with know-how and no flaming/trolling that I've seen. Heck, I've seen people posting pics of their kids that they took on Christmas Good place.

These Canons are fantastic cameras. Check out Cnet. Canon holds the top spot in almost every single category. I love mine already.

If you find an alternative like you're talking about, please let me know! (and I didn't know zoombrowser took that much!)

edit-oh yeah, I just remembered. the closest I've gotten to what we're talking about is simply using Zoombrowser to download the images, then closing it and working with the folders as I like. It just saves them to the program's directory (in "Image Library One" or something).

my only complaint about the camera: Sucky battery life!


Hmmm. Maybe I've just got a super battery then. My wife took ~180 pictures WITH Flash during our Xmas on one charge. (128M flash + 64M flash, highest resolution and fineness). I've been very impressed with it, period. Does get quite warm after taking that many shots tho...

RE: Software. I KNOW there is a way to pull the photo's directly in Windows... I never installed the stuff that came with the camera. I did get a 4-8M download from their website tho.

Of course, all I use now is a PCMCIA to CF adapter on my laptop. Much easier, and only $8

Good choice on the camera. I've got one myself and love it. It's so Pocket Sized and the quality is high.

I definitely recommend a USB Compact Flash Reader or PCMCIA adapter if you've got a laptop. It's the only way to download pictures. It's quick and you can use the card as a drive in explorer. Usually, you don't even need a driver for the reader depending on your OS.
Using a card reader saves battery on your camera as well.

As for battery life, turn off the screen as much as possible. You don't really need it for taking pictures, and there is an auto review feature which shows you the picture for 2 seconds after its snapped. You can optionally turn these on as needed. I've had a battery last through 128MBs of pictures no problem that way.
Even then, the battery charger is fairly quick to get you snapping again.

As it stands right now, I'm having a problem with the power circutry in the camera. It was shutting itself off itermittently. This was not due to a powersave or low battery because it would just snap off without closing the lens. It's under warranty and I should have it back soon.

Ben

If you find an alternative like you're talking about, please let me know!

Sorry nobody has told you about this sooner...

You NEED to check out BreezeBrowser. This thing blows away that crappy ZoomBrowser.

The biggest benefits are that it is MUCH faster than ZoomBrowser. It can extract the EXIF data from the RAW and JPG files into a text file. And it's very fast at doing conversions from RAW to TIF.

Check it out.

Thanks for that link to BreezeBrowser, I will give it a shot. It looks like exactly the thing I was looking for.

Thanks for the other information, everyone. These have been good replies. Here are my comments on the various things so far:

Bmiller: As for battery life, turn off the screen as much as possible.

That's good information. It is true that I spent a lot of time messing around looking at pictures on the built-in screen, so it's likely that this was the reason the battery drained so quickly. Makes sense.

Bmiller: Using a card reader saves battery on your camera as well.

This is a good point and I think I shall look into how much a separate CF->USB reader costs.

Synergy: I never installed the stuff that came with the camera. I did get a 4-8M download from their website tho.

So did I, I grabbed their TWAIN driver and it worked. I can open the camera files directly in my imaging application. My problem is that they are not saved to my hard disk when I do it that way, they still have to be "SaveAs'd" each and every one, which would be irritating for a cardful of photos. I was looking for more something inbetween, a way to quickly dump all the images to a specified hard disk folder. Their included ZoomBrowser does this, I just needed to figure out how to pare down all their utilities to the bare minimums.

DiGNAN17: (and I didn't know zoombrowser took that much!)

Actually, I pared it down to the Twain driver, ZoomBrowser, and PhotoStitch only, and those three together take up 47mb on my hard disk.

Wait, make that 46. Just ripped the Sample images out of the PhotoStitch folder. Already had ripped the "My Camera" images and sounds out of the ZoomBroser directory.

Wait, make that 45. Just ripped the extra camera bitmaps out of the ZoomBrowser directory (only needed the ones for my brand of camera). Next I'll try and see if it works with no camera-brand bitmaps at all.

DiGNAN17: It just saves them to the program's directory (in "Image Library One" or something).

Oh, I got farther than that. I figured out how to feed it a different directory for the images. It now dumps the images into my folder instead of its folder.

Next I'll try and see if it works with no camera-brand bitmaps at all.

It does. Puts up a generic picture of a camera lens.

Next stop, BreezeBrowser.

In reply to:

---

Bmiller: Using a card reader saves battery on your camera as well.

This is a good point and I think I shall look into how much a separate CF->USB reader costs.

---

It's not expensive at all (Thinkgeek has one for ~$30). And allows for the very nice ability to transfer images while someone else is still shooting.

My Wife works at a public library, where we have a teen night once a month, with bands, coffee, etc... So, we've gotten in the habit of having her go around taking pictures during the night, and dropping off the CF to me to upload onto the web via my 802.11 connection on the laptop.

Zero downtime, thanks to dual cards.

Plus, that connector on the side of the camera just doesn't look real durable to me.....

As for battery life, turn off the screen as much as possible. You don't really need it for taking pictures

This is one of my biggest problems with digital cameras. I find that I do need the screen, because the viewfinder is so far off. I mean, I recognize that it's not an SLR camera, but still.... And, really, for the kind of money that folks are spending on digital cameras, why can't someone make a decent SLR digital camera that isn't professional grade (and professionally priced)?

Wow, you're right about the viewfinder being off.

I just checked. Its center-point is reasonably close to accurate, but the edge cropping is way off. The actual image is about 10-20 percent larger on all sides than what's shown in the viewfinder.

I mean, sure, I can fix some of that with postproduction cropping, but I should have to do that. I should be able to frame the photo the way I want at shooting time.

Well, at least the screen works good on this camera.

The elph is a great buy!

I have a Nikon CoolPix 950 that came with a "lexar" USB enable CF card. THe Cool Pix came with a serial connector as it's only option to download from the camera, it was DOG slow and the software was totaly usless.

I ended up at the Lexar site www.digitalfilm.com and found that their USGB enabled cards have the USB protocol embeded into their design and because of it the readers are dirt cheap.

As far as batteries, I use Raidio Shack AA NiMh 1500mha batteries and a quick charger. They are 10x better than Duracell Ultra.

John

Heh, you should see how bad the parallax is when you're shooting up close.

Unlike Canon's point-and-shoot cameras, the Canon D30 is designed so that you use the viewfinder and not the screen. The LCD is only active once you've taken a picture. All the info that you need, like aperture and shutter speed, are displayed in the viewfinder like a normal SLR. Because of this, the viewfinder on the D30 is supposed to be great.

And the centerpoint will probably change depending on how close or far the object your photographing is. This is the majority of the reason that cheap cameras tell you that the subject should be at least 4 feet away. Any closer and you run the risk of not photographing the right thing at all. Most have enough depth of field to get a reasonably crisp picture well closer than that. Which is why I prefer to use the screen, when forced to use a digital camera.

Have you seen the size of the S110? And for less than 500 bucks, (Tony chime in here) It's a damn good camera for getting images on the computer and being very handy to carry around.

I'm not a pureist when it comes to cameras. You can't find enough arguments to convince me that film is better than storing all my photos on a CD and duping it for people rather than developing film.
It's all about perspective I suppose. (pun intended)

For me, I'm really happy with the S110. I never get a picture I don't like. If I'm that concerned with how the piciture is going to turn out before I take it, I use the lcd. Usually, I fire at will knowing I wont have to pay to develop pictures that don't turn out, just hit the delete key.

My problem is that $500 is a lot. I realize that good CCDs are expensive, but I find it objectionable that it's packaged inside what is essentially a disposable camera. Cheap lenses, fixed focus, separate viewfinders, etc. And don't get me started on digital zoom. I understand why you like the ease of use, but I've never been an ease-of-use type photographer. Personally, I hate taking snapshots of family vacations, etc. I figure that if I can't remember it, it's not likely to be worth remembering. But for those of you that like that sort of stuff, more power to you. I'm sure that it's a good and inexpensive camera relative to the other consumer cameras out there (I don't mean to knock it specifically), but I'm still not likely to get one until it's about $20 plus film -- uh, memory.

I certainly hope that Tony enjoys his camera to its fullest extent. Merry Christmas!

I'm glad you are enjoying your new digital camera. I thought I would comment on your battery life issue. Nickel metal hydride batteries need to be charged and depleted 2 or 3 times before they reach their full capacity. So don't worry too much about battery life - it will get better.

Sean

but I find it objectionable that it's packaged inside what is essentially a disposable camera. Cheap lenses, fixed focus, separate viewfinders, etc.

Have you ever SEEN one of these Canon's? It is far from a disposable item. It is very high quality machined parts with some pretty advanced servomotor-based stuff in it. It's not fixed-focus, it auto-focuses with a mechanical focusing system. I agree that digital zoom sucks, but this thing has a small amount of optical zoom before the digital zoom kicks in. And it's very clear on separating the optical from the digital zoom. It stops zooming at the optical limit, and if you want to push into digital zoom, then you have to release the zoom lever and press it again.

I can't comment on whether or not the lens is cheap, but the folks at DPReview seem to think it's pretty good as it doesn't suffer from the chromatic aberration problem which plagues many digital cameras.

Won't argue about the separate viewfinder being cheap, but as has been discussed elsewhere in this thread, the LCD on the back of the camera takes care of that problem.

I do agree that this camera is not a professional grade unit. I don't expect to be doing anything more than taking Happy Snaps and the occasional empeg install picture. If I were a professional photographer, this is the last camera I would consider. However, for its intended usage, its size and quality make it worth the steep price tag.

Nickel metal hydride batteries need to be charged and depleted 2 or 3 times before they reach their full capacity. So don't worry too much about battery life - it will get better.

That's great news! Thanks!

Okay. I was exaggerating. It's obviously got a more durable case. I honestly didn't realize that it was variable focus (but don't get me started on auto focus, either). And most photographers worth their salt wouldn't even touch an optical zoom lens, but I understand their necessity given the fact that the lenses aren't interchangeable, and, for that matter, the need for digital zoom considering the short maximum focal length.

You know, I was just looking for some nice SLR digital cameras to compare. I knew that they were out of my price range, but I didn't realize how much they had not come down in price in the last year or so. What I want is in the $2800-$5500 range. Ouch! Oh well. I guess $500 really is a steal.

PS: I seem to get more and more unintentionally argumentative. Please accept my past, present, and future apologies for any offense I cause. I don't intend it. Or, rather, if I did, you'd really know it.

I find it objectionable that it's packaged inside what is essentially a disposable camera

Exactly the same way I feel. If you have any interest in digicams checkout the sony DSC-D770. Sony discontinued the line, but you can get them pretty cheap on eBay. It is a 1.5 megapixel camera (very consumer level) with a SLR look and feel and a lot of professional features that don't exist on other digicams. If you like the feel and features of a traditional SLR, but don't need the pixels (or can't afford) something like the Nikon D1 it is a great compromise. I am surprised sony every made the d770 in the first place as it is pretty radically different from the rest of their camera line.

-Mike

What I want is in the $2800-$5500 range. Ouch! Oh well.

I agree with you there. I really wanted the D30, but didn't want to spend $2500 for the body, then even more for some lenses (which I don't have). I'm very happy with my Canon G2, which after various rebates and whatnot, I got for $620. This thing is as close to SLR as any point-and-shoot camera will get.

I figured I'd get the G2, wait a few more years while the technology continues to get better, then pickup a digital SLR when they're at like 10 megapixels (and hopefully cheaper).

Why don't you have a look at this toy. You can use it with (some) "old fashioned" camera's. It's resolution isn't that great compared to today's 3 and 4 megapixel stuff but the price is reasonable (around $600 if I'm correct).

btw, santa must be into digital camera's this year, he bought me a canon powershot S40 and it's great. Incredible how they're able to cram all of this stuff in such a small package.

That's pretty nice. Too bad it isn't an interchangeable lens; it looks like it would have cost them next to nothing to do that. Oh well. On the other hand, I've seen the quality of the other Sony cameras, and they all look like someone accidentally set the JPEG quality level about 2 orders of magnitude too low. Is this one any better (he says as if he has any money to spend)?

eFilm has been vaporware for years...

Check this out:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0109/01091702siliconfilmvaporizes.asp

should've checked, my bad.

I really liked the idea though.

Too bad it isn't an interchangeable lens

Yep, that and somewhat slow autofocus are the only things I think they could have done better considering that the camera was introduced 3+ years ago.

they all look like someone accidentally set the JPEG quality level about 2 orders of magnitude too low. Is this one any better

The highest quality JPEG is pretty decent and there is a super high quality mode that produces an uncompressed image (a TIFF I believe, I generally just use the highest JPEG). The images it produces are a little flat and look a lot better after being sharpened in photoshop or a similar tool. Supposedly it is better to have a flat image than an overly sharp one as you can extrapolate sharpness but not missing detail.

Oh, I also love the battery on this camera. It is a version of the smart batteries sony uses in their camcorders. It will tell you exactly how much battery life is left and is generally good for over 100 pictures if you are not using the flash or LCD constantly.

-Mike

My problem is that I used to work (sort of) for a newspaper, and they had a Nikon F5 (or maybe F4) body with an adapter to make it record images on a digital medium instead of film. It looked like it had an autowinder on the bottom, and I think that it had a CCD that stuck up into the body instead of film; I never had the guts to take it apart as I'm sure that it cost at least $15,000. It all got recorded on a Type-I PCMCIA card that must have had almost no memory at all in it, but this was back in 1993 or so, well before anyone had ever thought of making a consumer digital camera. It was sweet. Of course, I had a chance to play with it again a couple of years ago, well after consumer digital cameras were available, and its image quality was pretty lousy in comparison. Maybe the electronics had gone to pot; I don't know. But being able to put a 400mm telephoto lens on it still rocked.

but I'm still not likely to get one until it's about $20 plus film -- uh, memory.

I know you're exaggeratting, but even in the low price ranges, you're not going to get a good film camera.

As for that used Sony someone mentioned, honestly you can NOT go lower than 2 megapixels if you want a decent camera. I had a Mavica until this fall which was a ~1.2 MP camera, and I was lucky if I got a decent 4x6 print of any picture I wanted to frame for the folks.

As for the quality of digital cameras, I can see what you mean in many cases, but that will change. I think the only reason the cases are so cheapo is because the stuff inside is heavier, isn't it? Anyway, the G2 has a nice case.

As someone mentioned, the G2 can give you professional quality at much less than an SLR. 4 MP gives you one hell of an image, and sometime I'm going to see exactly how big a print I can get with it (when I have the money). The camera also has many features you'll find in pro cameras. Exchangeable lenses including a macro ring; a hot shoe for external flashes (there's about 5 of them); 4 selectable focus areas; adjustable white balance, aperature, and other exposure modes. I realize that it's expensive for just a camera, but it's not $2500.

As for your philosophy on photography, I think that's a bit odd. "I figure that if I can't remember it, it's not likely to be worth remembering." Is that all you take pictures of? Things that you deem worth remembering? Or is that an exaggeration? What about things worth remembering for friends who never saw it? What if it's a use like Tony's friend's install of his empeg?

Digital cameras give you the freedom of choice without fear of money. $700 is not much at all to spend after you factor in developing costs. I can discount the $5 or so that I might spend on prints in the next year. My parents went to Italy with a Kodak digital camera and a laptop. They took over 500 pictures! How much did it cost them for all those pictures? $0. How much would they have had to spend to get them developed? A heck of a lot.

You can talk about the quality of digital cameras, but if you don't NEED a true pro camera, it's a worthy purchase.

I don't think that autofocus, zoom lense etc are bad per se (of course, I will also want convenient, quick manual focus with good focus screen etc), especially for casual, documentary, sport and other types of photography where one doesn't want or can't afford to carefully setup each shot. I spent my 'formative' photography days (highschool, more or less) using Exacta, essentially a totally machanical but very robust 35mm laboratory SLR made by the original Zeiss guys left on the Eastern side of the Wall. You could get all sorts of microscope, telescope, endoscope, whatever-scope adapters for it, but not a zoom lense , so I have grown to appreciate control over ease of use. I have never learned, for example, to control zoom using motor and buttons, but only mechanical ring. However, things change and one has to keep open mind.

I browsed a little around after reading your posts, trying to see whether I agree with your $2800 and up price range. As always, it depends. For example, one manufacturer (I forgot which) claimed that ease of use, sealed and so dust-free interior and added rigidity made possible by non-changeable zoom lens outwieght loss of versatility (or loss of quality if converters are used). Similarly, manufactuters of non-SLRs try to convince us that paralax is not so bad or that composition is better done on LCD. Anyway, if one just wants vacation photographs or something for web site, there is plenty of choice. If, however, the aim is to replace a traditional midrange 'photochemical' SLR, things are not so bright. For example, the best Canon camera bellow EOS-D30 (which you probably deem acceptable), PRO90 IS (at $1500) 'features' vignetting, perceptible chromatic aberration, noise at longer exposures and too long shutter lag, according to some dpreview.com users. Hm...

I think I will wait some more before plunging into digital photography