canon S2 IS @ dpreview movie clip ?

[Chris Hurd]

higher capacity storage medium rather than SD card?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. SD cards aren't limited in capacity any more than other types of flash memory. It wouldn't matter if the storage medium was Compact Flash, Secure Digital or Memory Stick or whatever... they all top out at around four gigabytes these days, with higher capacities becoming more common all the time. A couple two or three commonly available 1GB SD cards will give you a lot of recording time in movie mode. The camera itself is limited to to a maximum of six minutes per clip at 30fps at VGA size. When you eventually fill a card with a bunch of these six-minute clips, just change cards. SD card capacity really isn't an issue since there's already a limit on the individual clip recording time.

There are no "dropouts" in a PowerShot's movie mode. Hope this helps,

[Jef Bryant]

I found and downloaded another clip from the camera. Tigers walking around in a zoo for 30 secs. Looks like about 2 megs per second of footage.

For some reason, the clips I've fooled around with seem to respond much better to post manipulation than the DV footage I've tried. I had no problem getting a decent film look out of it.

It is a tad strobey (stroby?). Not sure if this is because of the handheld/telephoto nature of the shots, or shutter speed.

There are some jaggies evident when viewing on a computer monitor, but they're not really visible on a tv monitor.

Doesn't appear to be any way to tell (from the manual, I don't have the camera) when adjusting the exposure from locked position while in movie mode whether it's changing the iris or the shutter (or maybe gain?) or a combination.

Pretty nice overall.

[Stephen Chan]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

I'm not sure what you mean by this. SD cards aren't limited in capacity any more than other types of flash memory. It wouldn't matter if the storage medium was Compact Flash, Secure Digital or Memory Stick or whatever... they all top out at around four gigabytes these days, with higher capacities becoming more common all the time. A couple two or three commonly available 1GB SD cards will give you a lot of recording time in movie mode. The camera itself is limited to to a maximum of six minutes per clip at 30fps at VGA size. When you eventually fill a card with a bunch of these six-minute clips, just change cards. SD card capacity really isn't an issue since there's already a limit on the individual clip recording time.

There are no "dropouts" in a PowerShot's movie mode. Hope this helps,

Thanks for your answer. I didn't know SD cards are up to 4GB now. I was doing some wishful thinking when I made the post. 720x480@24fps instead of 640x480@30fps and 10+GB of storage somehow ;-]


P.S - I am also impressed by the clip on this page:
http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/pss2is/sample-e.html