Toe said:
Because of the 10x zoom. At that zoom level, you have to have a tripod, or all you get is blur.
But... with the image stabilizer, you might be able to actually point-and-shoot wildlife close-ups before the critter gets away. Try that with any other "point-and-shoot" camera, and all you get is a fuzzy critter-like-thing.
So I guess it depends on what kind of photography you do. This camera looks awesome for someone who moves around a lot and needs to snap off quick shots, even at far distances. It's like they made it just for me.
Thanks to you, I reviewed the $999
Canon PowerShot Pro1 and am truly impressed; I have another favorite camera, and the price is right. Depending on the "feel", I'd probably like it more than the Canon Rebel, which is the same price. At 8 mp and with that 7x zoom lens, I think Canon has a very hot camera prospect.
Note: it does not have image stabilization, and I must have missed the stats on its movie mode.
While optical image stabilization can be helpful in some consumer cameras, there is no substitute for a tripod or for the things serious photographers do to steady themselves and their lens while shooting. Plus, that's what shutter speeds are for and shutter priority mode.
From 1958 through 1968, Asahi-Pentax (Honeywell brand in the U.S.) made the first successful through-the-lens (TTL) internal light metering system, which revolutionized how photographers took pictures. With the
Spotmatic, Pentax made single-lens-reflex cameras (SLR) and 35mm film the world standard, blowing away 120 film. Japan camera manufacturers led the way with Leica in Germany only following. However, light measuring was not yet "automatic" requiring the photographer to adjust shutter speed and aperature to get the internal light meter into the sweet zone.
When Pentax and Nikon began making "automatic" light sensing cameras, knowing how "Pros" would probably resist, they included Manual Mode. It didn't take long to give into this automatic feature, as long as we could use either shutter speed priority or aperature priority...to make us feel like we were still in control, and not the camera. Ha! Pretty soon, we began to leave lighting up to the camera entirely, so we could worry about what focal length to zoom to, focus on the subject, and most importantly of all, framing the picture.
Next came "automatic" focus - will the saints preserve us. I didn't even know Pentax was making an auto focus camera until one day my brother who lived in Japan for 5.5 years, sent me a Care package with a new all black body and 2 auto focus zoom lenses first available only in Japan. How could photography get any better than this? Problem was, the camera pretty much liked to focus on the middle, so Nikon began to complicate things with varying focus modes - where the camera looked for focus information. Hey, if the camera had a hard time focusing automatically, there was still "manual mode", remember?
Then Canon came up with an "eye-sensor" that followed eye movement to determine where a person was trying to focus by looking at an object. Now that was amazing.
Digital photography imitates film photography by adopting its standards, from ISO to ASA to priorities for shutter or aperature of lens, to all the automatic stuff, frankly making the conversion from film to digital not only easy, but very attractive for experienced photographers. Regardless, some film photographers will DIE before they give up the film medium. They may know that photography is moving away from film and towards digital, but they will never admit it...not in a lifetime.
Like Toe said, the fact is and will always remain, it is harder to shoot a telephoto shot than a wideangle. Regardless of the focal length or the shutter speed, it is ALWAYS important to hold the camera still...as in still photography. Blur is just more noticible and unforgiving with "long" telephoto lenses than with "short" wideangle or normal lenses - BUT it is still there if you don't hold the camera still. Point & shoot sounds like a gun slinger. And, something with moveable parts and as complicated as optical image stabilization is just one more thing on a camera to break or go wrong. Murphy's Law follows us everywhere.
This cross-over of still shots with a movie camcorder, and movie mode with a still digital camera is strange, to say the least. It's all made possible because its DIGITAL. I don't care how hard they try, no camcorder captures a decent still shot, and no still camera shoots a decent movie - each camera is NOT designed for the other's forte. Period. Each is a gimmick on the other camera format, and none are very good at the other. If I want a movie, I get out my Canon ZR70mc and I don't mess with capturing still shots with it.
Admittedly, digital cameras & camcorders are better than cellphone photography.
Even the Kodak DX6490 has a movie mode with sound:
Kodak DX6490 said:
movie mode: continuous digital video with audio capture, audio playback on camera
movie image resolution: 320 x 240 pixels at 20 fps
movie length: limited by capacity of external memory card
GOOD NEWS: prices continue to fall for both camcorders and for digital cameras, while quality and capability soar. Have you ever noticed that there is a NO RETURN policy on digital cameras among retailers? Sure they will
replace defective cameras, but once you buy it, it's yours...and your problem, sucker.
Reason--yesterday's $4,300 digital camera just got replaced by a bigger, better and less expensive model, so its street price is now $1,800, then tomorrow or the next day, it down to half that, or less.
Or, Canon's ZR70 camcorder originally $700 is now $499 or less everywhere.
No Return because a lot of these changes happen over-night, all sales are final.
BAD NEWS: Face it, everything digital we buy today won't be worth 1/2 what we paid in 18~24 months, and we'd be lucky to get a 1/10th bid for it on eBay after 4 years. Might as well give it to one of your grade school kids to play with as a toy, a once very expensive toy. However, the flip side is that things constantly improve, and hopefully, better our lives.
