Canon Digital Still Camera Information?
 

i recently purchased the canon powershot S80, plan to use it to capture stills (and maybe crude motion clips) for use in a DV project that i'm mostly shooting with my GL2. my question: i'd like to get a better handle on this new camera's advanced features. anybody know of a forum along the lines of dvinfo.net where i could gather some quality still camera tips and tricks?

thanks,
phb

Thread moved to our "Still Crazy" digicam forum... welcome home,

Actually the Canon Powershot S80 is truly a groundbreaking camera because it features a high rez movie mode with full XGA resolution (1024 x 768) at 15 frames per secound. While the camera does not quite meet high definition specifications which would require a capture rate of 24 frames per secound nevertheless it is quite capable of shooting some very sharp footage. DVinfo has an affordable high definition forum that addresses general aquisition questions that may be appropriate to discuss the movie mode of your camera.

What do you want to learn?

i'd like to learn more about the advanced features--how to use the histogram, in particular.

phb

Start right here. Some books if you want to go into greater depth: "Adobe Photoshop CS2 for photographers", "Photoshop CS2 artistry", "Real world Photoshop CS2".

So which camera produces the better video The Canon powershot S80 or the Canon GL2 ?

actually, there's a histogram in the camera's viewfinder that i'd like to figure out how to use properly. i'll figure the photoshop part out after i get the camera operations under control.

phb

the GL2. no contest. the S80 image produces a lot of stair-stepping and artifacts, esp. if there's any movement in the frame.

phb

Of course the temporal resolution of the Canon GL-2 is higher because the S80 only shoots 15 frames per secound. But the spatial resolution of the Canon S80 is higher than the GL-2. The pixel count of the S80 is 786,000 pixels while the GL-2 is only 345,000. So the Canon S80 has more than twice the spatial resolution.

I do not know the specifics of your camera, but histograms basically tell you the distribution of the light. Generally, the goal is to avoid clipping--having a large number of pixels that are completely black, or white. This happens when the contrast or the saturation is too high.

I think you will find that the article I referenced is still relevant.

There's *so* much more to the equation than "spatial resolution," Tommy. Counting pixels is next to meaningless. Video from the PowerShot S80 is much more heavily compressed than video from the GL2, and besides, the GL2 is first and foremost a video camcorder, with among other things a much larger lens using fluorite elements, so of course it's going to produce better video. But this is all academic and nearly pointless (with sincere apologies to Paul and Emre for the momentary thread hijack).

Paul,
I picked up an S70 early this past summer as a camera to carry when I don't want to carry a camera. It's really been a terrific camera. The S80 seems to have a more refined industrial design, although its lack of RAW support makes it just a bit less appealing to me personally.

But as to your question...

The more prominent sites, such as Fred Miranda and Rob Galbraith, deal mainly in dslr gear lust chatter. Phil Askey's Digital Photography Review has some forums with broader topics (see: "Canon Talk") that might lead to your destination.

But basically the best teachers for these cameras are the manual and some dedicated experimentation. Work through some settings, pull the images into Photoshop and pay close attention to the EXIF information embedded in each image. It's a terrific instructor that faithfully records when and how you took each image.

Have fun with that S80!

In my humble experience, the worst miniDV camera produces better video than the movie mode on the best still camera.

dpreview.com
 

dpreview.com has a great site and they just did an in depth review of the S80. I also think the reviews they provide are better than the manuals in a lot of cases. I was disappointed that they got rid of the raw feature, but it's just been disabled and they might bring it back in a firmware update. Great camera though.

Well the Canon Powershot S80 changes all the rules. For the very first time a digital still camera with ists high resolution movie mode has better wide angle spatial resolution than most mini-dv video cameras. Now I'm not saying that it can beat a dedicated video camera because after all pixel count is not everything. For example if it would be compared to the Canon GL-2 the Canon GL-2 in full telephoto mode would have 10 times the spatial resolution of the Canon S-80 because the Canon S-80 has no optical zoom capability in its high rez movie mode. Also its low temporal resolution rates of 15 frames per secound make it very jerky and almost unwatchable if you pan the camera too fast. Nevertheless according to the Phil Askey the overall quality of the video it produces is good and compression artifacts are negligible and a one gigabyte SD card can shoot 8 minutes of high resolution video. Of course the Canon S-80 is not a video camera it is a digital still camera and it cannot replace a good quality video camera. But there is no doubt in my mind that the Canon S-80 has the best movie mode of any digital still camera and it raises the bar even on dedicated video cameras. Pretty soon you will see dedicated video cameras with high rez movie modes selling for around 500 dollars in order to compete with the Canon S-80.

No, I'm pretty sure you won't. Resolution is irrelevant compared to how the footage coming out of it looks. Additionaly, 15fps will never compete in a consummer market with 30fps. More importantly 8 minutes on a $100 1gig chip will never, ever compete with 60 minutes on a $6 video cassette.

Also, did you really say "temporal resolution rates"???

Most good digital photo "how to" books give a good explanation of the histogram and how to use it. Also, many of today's photo mags devote a lot of space to the digital workflow....and histogram's are a common topic. I have and can really recommend PCPhoto.

Hope this helps.

back again
 

...in fact, the 12/2005 issue of PCPhoto has an excellent article on the Histogram.