Zack Birlew
April 5th, 2009, 10:39 AM
I've got to say, picking up the S10 felt like picking up my GL1 for the first time. I don't know what it was but I was just reminded of that moment when I picked it up. The camera seemed like a really nice step forward from my HV20. Controls were there to adjust the image, the screen was much nicer to focus with, and I liked the feel of the camera in my hand, much better than the HF series.
However, my one problem with the camera, though this may just be some user error since I was playing with the demo camera in Best Buy after all, was the small dial towards the front of the camera. It's designed to be a multifunctional dial and would be pretty useful for a lot of things but when I tried to focus with it in manual focus mode, the focus was slow as molasses. What's up with that? Are all the cameras like this or was this a busted model? My little HV20 wheel could focus in and out with barely a finger tap but this unusually firm dial took forever to go from foreground to background. Maybe it was just a busted camera but it did cause me to jump back from my initial positive reaction with the camera. Any thoughts on this?
Also, I didn't have enough time to figure the camera's ins and outs, but was there a way to see what your exposure and shutter speed were at and how exactly would you get exposure, shutter speed, and aperture manually controlled? It looked like to me that you'd have to go into the menu options and adjust each one one after the other with the multifunction dial but that seemed off. I hope that there isn't a compromise between auto exposure and shutter speed.
However, my one problem with the camera, though this may just be some user error since I was playing with the demo camera in Best Buy after all, was the small dial towards the front of the camera. It's designed to be a multifunctional dial and would be pretty useful for a lot of things but when I tried to focus with it in manual focus mode, the focus was slow as molasses. What's up with that? Are all the cameras like this or was this a busted model? My little HV20 wheel could focus in and out with barely a finger tap but this unusually firm dial took forever to go from foreground to background. Maybe it was just a busted camera but it did cause me to jump back from my initial positive reaction with the camera. Any thoughts on this?
Also, I didn't have enough time to figure the camera's ins and outs, but was there a way to see what your exposure and shutter speed were at and how exactly would you get exposure, shutter speed, and aperture manually controlled? It looked like to me that you'd have to go into the menu options and adjust each one one after the other with the multifunction dial but that seemed off. I hope that there isn't a compromise between auto exposure and shutter speed.