Digital-SLR Reviews

THE ONLY ADVANTAGE THIS CAMERA HAS TO OFFER IS IT'S SIZE. TOO MANY DISADVANTAGES TO MENTION. HERE ARE JUST A FEW: 1)LCD BUILT INSIDE THE CAMERA INSTEAD OF THE OUTSIDE. 2)TERRIBLE PICTURES WITH RECOMENDED SETTINGS(VERY BLURRY). 3)NIGHT SHOOTINGS ARE TERRIBLE (FLASH IS USELESS). 4)TO SNAP A PICTURE, YOU HAVE TO HOLD THE BUTTON DOWN FOR ABOUT FIVE SECONDS BEFORE IT CAPTURES THE IMAGE YOU ARE SHOOTING. IT IS NOT WORTH THE MONEY! DON'T LET IT'S SMALL SIZE CAPTIVATE YOU .... I PERSONALLY WILL NOT RECOMEND THIS CAMERA TO ANYONE.

(...) I thought the build quality was rather good; it felt solid; ive dropped it a couple of times and it's been OK. Pick up the Konica email and see how flimsy and plastic THAT is! Also for your shekels you get USB connectivity and a rather neat pouch that has a canny belt loop attached . Spend £400 on Canon IXUS V, as a friend of mine did, and you dont even get a case! How bad is that? Also its childs play to use from the off (unlike the IXUS), although you have to get used to the fact that its so small, learning where you can put your fingers, not covering the lens etc.
OK, its 'only' truly .3 megapixls but i needed it for a web business to take photos of properties and ive found it perfectly adequate.
OK you have to keep your hands still for a while after clicking , BIG DEAL!! (...) I admit it can be frustrating if u want to capture 'the moment' and the moment has passed and uve missed it because the camera 's still making its mind up. (...) OK, so what we're saying is DON't buy this if you've got Parkinsons.
For me the main benefit is its size; you can have it on your belt in any situation and you don't even know its there, no bulky camera round your neck swinging around. No big camera case saying "steal me, steal me" to any opportunist thieves lurking around. Its not mega expensive so you don't worry about damaging/losing it the same way as an IXUS or Nikon coolpix

The software it comes with OK; its easy to correct overexposure/too hot flash etc with software for those complaining about that (bits of scotch tape? what are you on about? Stand further back from the subject and use the zoom function (...) It even tells you that in the instructions. (...)
The battery IS a pain, they're not cheap and they're not rechargeable ( i thought lithium batteries were supposed to last a long time?). What's the point of saving £/$ on film and developing if u have to fork out every week on batteries? I think the optical zoom is greedy with the juice. Incidentally an OPTICAL zoom not digital as you so often get at the cheaper end of the market.
Ive even managed some 'arty' shots with it; its taken shots where 'normal' cameras would have completely failed me [how many times have I picked up my pictures from a developers in the past only to be totally disappointed with the grainy, underexposed results with those 'quality' stickers all over them]
You don't need to ponce about with memory sticks , cards, card readers (all more expense) because there's easily enough 'onboard' memory to last until you can get to a USB point on your laptop or internet cafe etc.
(...) It would be great if they upped the true pixel rating, included a rechargeable battery option and included a lens cover. My only concern is the report (...) that the LCD display cracked when left in the car but I know the inside of cars get pretty hot (Ive melted a couple of floppy disks in mine and thats in England!)It reminds me of something from Q Branch in James Bond and Im well impressed.

I love this camera! The small size allows me to take the camera everywhere. With my 35mm camera I was always leaving at home and I didn't have it when I needed it. My friends have larger digital cameras with great LCD screens on the back but they burn through batteries so quick they get frustrated. I can review my pictures through the viewfinder which is not as easy but it let's me know if I have captured the moment or need to take another shot. I know there are higher resolution cameras available but for the money and convenience it fits my needs for the next couple of years when new technology will be way beyond everything out on the market now.

As a botanist/ecologist/photographer I do a great deal of plant photography. I have used Canon products for years and swear by them and rarely at them. The Pro1, though, leaves a lot to be desired for my purposes. The EOS 10D does far better even with lower resolution. The Pro1, for the purposes I need, is not very suitable. (See my review of the PowerShot S1 IS).
But as a photgrapher who has been published around the world, mostly medium and large format photographs, I think for most people the Pro1 would be a very good choice. It has excellent construction and the image quality is superb with very true color, much better than most. If you don't want to mess with RAW image processing, you can photograph using the Super high resolution Large (gives you a JPG image) and get excellent results that compare very favorably with RAW processing and none of the fiddling with RAW. The availability of a 28mm equivalent wide angle is also very nice and not all that common.
The sharpest aperature to use is f5.6 or f6.3. The images are just a hair softer at larger or smaller apertures. Even the digital zoom will produce a pretty decent image at 14x, but gets worse at maximum digital zoom. Usually digital zoom is pretty worthless, but when you start with 8 megapixels you can still end up with a suitable pixel count after all the digital footwork that goes on in the camera. But generally you are still further ahead shooting at maximum optical zoom (no digital) and cropping, if you don't mind some additional digital manipulation antics to improve things.
So, all in all, I highly recommend this camera to anyone who needs high resolution and compact size. It is a good buy. But for really good macro photography I recommend a digital SLR and a top notch macro lens. If you only do a little macro work and are not real fussy about having razor sharp images then this camera will do fine. Sometimes it would almost match the 10D, but not quite. For all other uses, the camera is great.

The Powershot Pro1 is the best all-around 8 megapixel digicam. It is compact (unlike the Olympus 8080, Sony F828, and Konica Minolta A2); has a fast 28-200 lens (Olympus only goes to 140mm equivalent, Nikon doesn't allow wide angle); and allows for fine adjustment of focal length (Olympus and Nikon use a crude zoom lever that makes it difficult to zoom exactly as you want to). An additional important point is that the Powershot can actually be used in RAW mode: the Olympus, Sony, and Nikon cameras lock-up for a while after taking a picture in RAW mode (this means the camera is not usable for up to 12 seconds after a RAW picture is taken).

Perhaps the closest competitor to the Powershot Pro1 is the Konica Minolta A2, but the A2 has an old lens design that lacks the resolution of the Powershot Pro1, and the A2 is much bigger, lacks the high resolution LCD screen on the Pro1, and has limited movement of its LCD screen. The A2 has a very high resolution viewfinder, but with a good LCD screen (like the Pro1), using a viewfinder is not preferable (for me at least). The A2 also has been noted in online reviews to have quality control problems.

Comparisons aside, some reviewers here have suggested that the Pro1 has "slow" autofocus and that the LCD screen freezes for a moment as the autofocus operates. The conclusion given is that the Pro1 is therefore difficult to use with moving subjects. The difficulty, however, is primarily with photographic technique rather than the camera's autofocus system. Because of the sensor size and lens design, the Pro1 has a large depth of field, meaning that subjects will appear in focus over a fairly large distance. Even at the telephoto end, the depth of field for a portrait (e.g. 100mm) at f/4.5 will be sufficient that you can pre-focus the lens and follow a moving subject easily. The shutter response is very very fast when the lens is already at its focus point. This is a standard technique often overlooked by people who never used a manual focus camera. And this technique is far better than relying on the autofocus system in any of the 8 megapixel cameras: none of them is faster than intelligent pre-focusing! The Pro1 makes this even easier by allowing the user to store a focus distance in the Custom1 and Custom2 settings.

This is a terrific camera. No camera is perfect, but the Pro1 makes the best compromises in its class.

And for those worried about image noise when looking at photos magnified on screen: this is eliminated from actual prints using any of several noise reduction software packages. Don't be afraid to use 400 speed on the Pro1, put the file through good noise reduction software, and print it. The result will still be very nice.

This is my 3rd Canon Digital camera - Powershot G2 and G3 were the previous ones. Took 20,000 pics with them.

Things I love about the Powershot Pro1:
-takes excellent macro (close-up) photos. The clarity is incredible, especially when using the "Super Macro" mode.
-Color is exccellent.
-Moveable LCD panel on back. I take mostly nature shots - closeups. This allows me to take photos from positions I could never get into without the moveable panel. Shoot from under flowers, raise the camera up to shoot down onto flowers that are above my head, etc.
-battery life is superb - about 400-600 or more photos per charge.
-the 7x zoom is awesome. From 30 feet I can take a photo of a 2" diameter flower and see the details of the flower in the resulting pic.
-Many advanced features. READ THE MANUAL! You won't discover this camera's full potential until you do.

Drawbacks:
-The first Pro1 I got had dust and fibers INSIDE the lens. I was able to trade it for another one 2 weeks later after I discovered the flaw - the dust and fibers were only visible when examining the lens in sunlight. One of the replacement camera they were going to give me also had dust inside the lens.
-This second unit I had became defective after 2 weeks. The zoom lens started moving in and out with jerks - sticking. So now I am on my 3rd Pro1 unit. Hopefully the problems with the prior ones are not typical!!
-Slow focussing and composition, as mentioned in other reviews. Not as much of a problem for me, as I do mostly plant photos. But it has caused me to miss butterfly shots.
-The lens cap is a pain to put on and remove. A simple push-on one would've been MUCH better. And I am wondering if the necessary action of squeezing the two little tabs all the time caused the failure of my 2nd unit (lens movement sticking - this action may be always pushing the lens from side to side, and cause the mechanism to wear prematurely?
-Have to watch exposures. I find my photos are often overexposed. I have learned the conditions under which this happens, and have learned to compensate for it (which is easy to do). But this was an issue with the G2 & G3 also.
-Regular macro mode is poor at auto-focussing. However, the "Super-Macro" mode is VERY good at auto-focussing.

So far, I HIGHLY recommend this camera. I have taken 4000 pics with it in the 40 days I have had a Pro1, and I like it a lot.
It has very advanced features, and even has more features than the Rebel. For example, you can select center-spot metering - can't do that on the Rebel except in Manual mode (if I recall correctly). It is "pseudo-SLR" in that the vewfinder displays the same info as the LCD panel. The zoom is excellent, although some people don't like the "zoom-by-wire" aspect of it.

I got this lens a couple years ago and use it extensively. It is well constructed and easy to use with any Canon EOS body, though it must be focused manually. This is the only tool I know of that enables easy *field* photography above 2x magnification. I have stalked the tiniest insects and peered into the hearts of flowers with this astounding lens, and my transparencies are crisp and clean every time. It comes with a tripod ring (same one as several other Canon lenses use, just in black), which greatly aids switching to a vertical format without having to reposition everything.

Buy the MR-14EX ring flash with this, as it is impossible to see *anything* in normal daylight conditions at 5x. Its focus lamps frequently help in obtaining sharp pictures, though even they can't provide enough light to help you much when the lens is stopped down. A focus rail is also helpful--I use the Velbon macro slider since it moves in two directions, not just one. Tripod use is essential, as 5x magnification only covers an area about 5mm by 7mm.

The biggest advantage to owning this lens is that I travel less to do photography--I spent several hours on my patio this winter photographing white flies, moss, spiders, and anything else that visited the potted plants there. Plunk down in a field and *stay there* a while, and you'll start to notice the small things around you.