Canon Powershot TX1 questions

[poppe]

Hello,

Does anyone know when this product is shipping? I am interested in purchasing it but can not find much information out about it. Many websites have different information on its availability so I am a little confused.

Also what would be the best flash card for this camera for the HD camcorder feature?

Thanks

 

[sushi]

Has anyone purchased this camera?

If so, what is your opinion of it?

 

[skubish]

I have had the TX1 for about 2 weeks now.
I love the camera. It is built very solid with an all metal exterior shell.
Its a standard point and shoot digital which also does video.
The video is shot in motion jpeg not mpeg as most other consumer cameras shoot. My understanding is the motion jpeg allows frame by frame editing.

My only complaint is that I am getting some occasional background noise in the recordings. Its a clicking sound I haven't figured out yet. I may have to send it back to Canon for that.

 

[sushi]

^^^ Thanks for the feedback.

I currently have a Canon IXY 900IS. It does fairly decent video.

However, you cannot optically zoom during videos, and it only records in mono. Other than that, I really like the IXY 900IS.

But for those video needs I am thinking that the 2 shortcomings are important which is why I am considering the TX1. The TX1 is really small -- almost too small -- and very cool.

Have you done any sports filming where you are moving?

I like video tape skiers and snowboards while I am moving with them. So the image stabilization is important. Any comments on the quality of the image stabilization?

 

[flopticalcube]

dpreview has a review on it.

I'd really, really recommend going to a store and trying it for yourself before committing; this is a cool, fun gadget with surprisingly good image quality, but for me it's not a camera I found easy to live with - especially not at the best part of $500. I'd personally forget the movie stuff, save my self $150 and go for a Panasonic TZ3, which might not be as cute but has a more useful zoom range and handles like a proper camera. There is undoubtedly a market for this kind of product, but I think Canon needs to go back to the drawing board before it launches the TX2.

Recommended (but only just).

 

[sushi]

Recommended (but only just).

I saw the TX1 in the store and played around with it.

Really liked it for the most part. I did find it a bit hard to hold since it was so small. But the smallness is part of what I like.

As I mentioned, I like taking ski videos. The TX1 would be easy to slip into your ski jacket and just pull out when needed. Before I used to carry quite a bit of equipment (even a boom mike) and found out that for most cases, a small camera that could do video was better in most cases for my needs.

If my Canon IXY 900IS could do optical zoom, I wouldn't even consider the TX1. Since ski season is a bit away, I think I will wait a bit since Canon seems to update their cameras every 6 months or so.

 

[poppe]

dpreview has a review on it.



Recommended (but only just).

This review is kinda old. I mean it was released before the thing was even in the stores. Not saying its not a good review, but I read this a long time ago when I created this forum.

 

[flopticalcube]

This review is kinda old. I mean it was released before the thing was even in the stores. Not saying its not a good review, but I read this a long time ago when I created this forum.

Dude, this review came out on June 8th. Last Friday.

EDIT: I think I know where you are confused. Simon always starts his review with the same page that was used to announce the camera. Look at the drop box at the top or go to the links at the bottom and you can follow the full review.

 

[poppe]

Dude, this review came out on June 8th. Last Friday.

EDIT: I think I know where you are confused. Simon always starts his review with the same page that was used to announce the camera. Look at the drop box at the top or go to the links at the bottom and you can follow the full review.

Oh my bad thats really weird. I didn't even click on the link. I was actually just talking about the quote that was included in the post, and just assumed the link was of the article I was saying.

The quote that was being said I had heard before almost verbatim so I thought it must be the same article...

 

[guifa]

Well, I imported mine from Japan (and saved myself some money in additino to getting it earlier), but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to already be shipping in the US

Anyways, I love it. For the video, I put it to the ultimate camera nightmare shot test: a dance club. With the median light level next to nothing, but enough bright lights and lasers to bring the dynamic range larger than can be well represented most of the time, it picked up colours and lighting pretty darned well (actually, pretty much as well as I could see things myself heh). More importantly, because it uses Motion-JPEG instead of H264 or MPEG-2, with scenes that have very high movement, the quality isn't lost at recording. For instance, in my club test shot, I was able to see absolutely crystal clear rapidly moving lasers that would normally shred apart in a time-based compression scheme. I've got a sample file, but it's been compressed so as not to kill my bandwidth, but you can check it out. I don't have any daylight videos to show, but from what I've tested, it's monumentally better (and this already is quite good). The only trouble with the club shooting I found was that sometimes it was unable to focus all that great, but shooting through fog lasers constantly and zoomed at 4x I think I can forgive it. The image stabaliser works well, although granted is standard on most cameras made nowadays.

For still shots it's pretty good as a candid/point and shoot camera. You can do some more manual set ups than in past SD-series, but not quite as much as in their higher end models. Overall it's a good hybrid, and if you do traveling, etc, it'll be great. I personally can't wait for water polo season to start back up, because from what I can tell so far, we'll be having some amazing quality videos.

Oh, and for cards, I got a 4 GB SDHC card from Amazon for about 40 bucks. At high quality HD that spots you 17 mins of video, and at "low quality" (which unless you KNOW what to spot for it is nearly indistinguishable. If you do lots of video work it should be obvious but a consumer shan't notice hardly anything) gives you around 30 minutes. I know 8GB cards can go for 70-90 these days, which of course gives you about double that recording time.

The only major downside to the TX1 is its battery life. It just doesn't last as insanely long as my SD630 which could fill my SD card before it went dead. This one you can definitely run into battery issues, but again, Amazon sellers search for batteries can get you some cheap ones (I think I paid 7 each maybe) and well worth the small investment. Incidentally it uses the same batteries as the SD series, so if you already have some spares from those you can use them.

Oh yeah, the actual sample video (the first isn't enabled for a fast start, both have been recompressed in H264, hence the artifacts):

http://mateo.elahorcado.net/video/pvd110507.mov (360p, 13MB)
http://mateo.elahorcado.net/video/pvd110507hd.mov (720p, 46 MB)

A note if you plan on using the movies in iMovie. You can't import directly into it, rather you can either use Image Capture or iPhoto to get them off of the camera and then drag it into an iMovie HD project (or for zero-conversion, save the project and quite, and dump the video file into the project's media folder, then reopen and drag it from the trash to the clip shelf).

Hope that's enough information for you, if not let me know... I personally love the camera if you can't tell. The TX2 should be great if they can fix some of the small cavets.

 

[flopticalcube]

Oh my bad thats really weird. I didn't even click on the link. I was actually just talking about the quote that was included in the post, and just assumed the link was of the article I was saying.

The quote that was being said I had heard before almost verbatim so I thought it must be the same article...

Another Simonism I'm afraid. He cuts and pastes A LOT. Many of his reviews have familiar rings to them.

 

[Butthead]

This review is kinda old. I mean it was released before the thing was even in the stores. Not saying its not a good review, but I read this a long time ago when I created this forum.

Hmm, can we get a mod to move this thread to either the video or digicam forums, this is an Apple hardware forum...unless I'm corrected and Apple now makes Canon products, lol.

The review that is probably being referenced is the one on http://www.dcresource.com which was the 1st to appear on the net over a month ago.

If mod's can't move this, how about we just start up another thread in the digicam forum (and link back to this one for reference), as this is supposed to be a 'hybrid' digicam, in the Canon Elph series.

There has been a more favorable review by one of the less 'professional' Oz reviewing sites recently, IIRC.

While a TX2 could move the start/stop button so it's easier to use one handed, you really can't do to much to make it easier to use and have it thin enough to fit in a shirt pocket, that's the compromise you're working with.

dpreview is overly conscious about how soft the HD image looks, most are overly sensitive about limited recording time. But how many people in the target market, which would primarily be cell phone users or those who already have the Canon Elph series thin autoeverything compacts, are going to be concerned by 13min max record times, they aren't making first run feature films to be shown at Sundance or other indie film festivals.

 

[tx1]

tx1 memory speed vs HD video quality

First off this cam seems very promising...however..

After Getting my new Tx1 i went memory shopping. My local pro camera shop recommend a Delkin 8gb 150x sdhc. After taking some HD video clips with this card i noticed that the camera was lacking in motion clarity when shooting fast motion, dogs running on the beach. I am no expert, but I am guessing it was dropping frames.

This got me wondering, or hoping, that this wasn't as good as it would get. So, I looked in the manual, and canon says if you are shooting Hd video they recommend 20mb per sec or greater write speeds.

I have returned the 8gb card, and after many calls to card manufactures, and web research I have found that cards that do this rate aren't easy to find, and as far as i can tell simply aren't available in the 8gb size yet.

Most manufactures post only read speeds which are significantly higher than write. A class 6 hdhc card only needs to do 8mbps to fall in to a class 6 rating. Many can do faster but most manufactures wont guarantee anything faster that 8 mbps.

I have since ordered (Lexar 4 GB, 133X High Speed Series professional) this card along with a panasonic 4gb and a sansdisk III 4gb were the only cards that i could find guaranteeing 20mbps write transfer rates. The lexar was $78 before a $30 mail in rebate at B&H.


After I get the cards I will post a follow up regarding any improvement to the quality of fast motion and or image in HD movies.

any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated

Thanks

Mark

 

[guifa]

I've got a 4 GB Transcend SDHC card I got off of Amazon for $42 (and post-purchase I found it a bit cheaper, but ah well).

Anyways, it's rated at class 6, but it doesn't have any trouble with high motion scenes. Check out this video from Ferry Corsten at Opera last weekend (it's only a second, but it's a full 30 frames and you can cycle through each one to see it hasn't dropped any). Sometimes in lower light I've found it might be keeping the shutter open a bit too long resulting in slightly excessed motion blur in higher-lighted areas. I'll see if I can test around with that later and I'll post around some videos that show a little more of how I think the TX1 might be processing some of the video.

http://www.elahorcado.net/video/glowstick.mov

Play it back frame by frame. In this case, it's obviously taking a stream of the sensor data, since the end trail of one frame's glow stick begins at the exact same spot as the other ends. Not side by side but actually overlapping by the width of the stick. I just haven't done enough high-light filming (correction/admission: no high-light filming) to see if it does the same thing for higher motion things in normal lighting conditions.

 

[tx1]

Transcend SDHC tx1

Thanks for the clip. I will try to post a clip when I get the cards that are running at the speeds canon is recommending. next monday.

I did some research on the Transcend SDHC they are fast, but run closer to 12 mbps. A person at canon said speed could effect image quality and other factors.....who knows if they know what they were talking about....we will see.

 

[sushi]

Anyways, it's rated at class 6, but it doesn't have any trouble with high motion scenes.

The current SDHC classes are:
- Class 2: 2 MB/sec minimum data transfer rate
- Class 4: 4 MB/sec minimum data transfer rate
- Class 6: 6 MB/sec minimum data transfer rate

But they don't tell you the whole picture and are kind of meaningless in a way. They only tell you the minimum transfer rate -- which could also be the maximum depending on the manufacturer.

Bottom line is that you can have a Class 4 card that is faster than a Class 6.

Maybe in the future, since higher transfer speeds needed, we may see more classes added. That would help to clarify things a bit I would think.

On a different topic, I am looking at getting a TX1 or the follow up model. In doing some research I came across the Xacti E1. Seems like a good camera as far as handling and use. Not sure about the video quality since it uses a different format.

Anybody looked at the Xacti E1?

 

[tx1]

Some manufacturers that I have listed above guarantee 20mbps transfer rates..on sdsc cards.

As far as the sanyo goes it doesn't seem to compare. Ist off early generation of these products from sanyo (hd models) got bad reviews for breaking. Second , it doesn't shoot HD is only 6mp, and uses a ton of compression to get the file size down. If it were cheaper it might be worth it for the types of things they recommend "birthday parties" etc

 

[guifa]

My main request for the next TX is a manual focus. The autofocus doesn't seem to work too well in video recording, and either my friends were a little more drunk than normal but it didn't seem to focus as well in video recordings. But again, this might be different in higher-light recordings that I've not done. I did see a test video of a San Francisco trolley that had very nice clarity, so it might just be my current poor test scenes.

 

[tx1]

Yes i noticed the focus problem as well. especially when zooming. One thing you might want to look at is your auto focus settings. I am too new to the tx1 to know if the setting on the camera side corresponds to the video side, but if they do, the face detection or what ever its called could be the issue especially when zooming. This was what the canon tech told me.

 

[guifa]

Hrm; I didn't even think to try that. I should be hittin up the clubs again next Friday and I'll check it out and see how it does. Sadly no big clubs here in Auburn, AL (a college town without a dance club, unfathomable I know).

 

[sushi]

My main request for the next TX is a manual focus. The autofocus doesn't seem to work too well in video recording

That would be nice.

I noticed that it was having trouble focusing when I tried it out in the store. So I thought that it might be the type of lighting. I then tried some other video cameras that had no trouble auto-focusing in the same environment. So I think that it was the camera.