The Canon EOS 30D

To mark the 20th anniversary of Canon’s bestselling EOS series of cameras, the company is mounting a massive discount giveaway over the range until the end of the year.

In detail : “to celebrate 20 years of its legendary EOS system, Canon is giving back a total of £1283 ($2656) on a selection of EOS digital SLR cameras, lenses and accessories”. This cashback offer is valid from 1 October to 31 December 2007.

There are many participants in this offer. Try here.

There’s a positive review of the Canon PowerShot A570 over at Cameratown. Here’s a short extract from it :

“… A series PowerShots have improved with each generation and — thanks to the inclusion of comprehensive manual controls and technologies such as the new DIGIC III imaging processor and image stabilization — have become a viable weapon of choice not only for beginners but also the more advanced photographer with limited resources. … this is a perfect camera for anyone wanting real photographic control without paying through the nose. Its well balanced combination of image quality, functionality and handling (and not to forget value for money) means the A570 IS just about deserves our highest award.”

The Canon PowerShot A570 is in the $250 / £120 price bracket.

Bluetooth is a technology to connect electronic devices on short distances, usually under 30 feet.

It is seen often in computer-peripherals like mice and keyboards. It’s also used a lot in phones to connect headsets and transfer data from one phone to another or to a computer.

Now, it’s available in digicams, too: for instance the Ricoh 500SE. However, how much use is it? Bluetooth is a simple, well standardized protocol using very little energy from your batteries — but it’s also rather slow, as people with multi-megapixel cameraphones have discovered.

If you are lucky, bluetooth transfers 15 KBytes per second or 1 megabyte per minute. No problem for small pictures, but a large one with high detail can take 5 minutes per image! So yes, it’s cheap, handy and easy, but has it’s restrictions.

Another technology, available for some time already is WiFi, introduced by Nikon in it’s P1 and P2 models. This is a very fast technology, but also more complicated and energy-hungry.

However, this one is going to stay and has in fact a good future if manufacturers start implementing the technology better. Sending a picture to a printer is easy, but WiFi has far more potential.

The easiest technology to start with is a small embedded webserver, so your camera can act like a wireless website sharing pictures with others.

In the old days the sensitivity of film was a fixed value. Digicams offer a broad range of settings to suit many light conditions.

At the heart of your digicam is a chip that collects light on millions of elements. Each element delivers one pixel of every image you make. But they are not perfect: they produce light information, but also a bit of what we call noise - that’s the specke effect on some pictures. If you use the lowest sensitivity (ISO 50 or 80) there is not much noise, but increasing the ISO value gives more and more noise until some pictures are too speckled to use…

So why would you raise the ISO? Well, to catch more light! If it is a bit too dark, there is a risk of pictures getting shaken. So yes, you have to find the optimal setting for best results!

Many camera’s don’t offer the choice on ISO when set to “auto”. On a “manual” or “program” setting the camera offers you a choice. In bright conditions, always use a low value, but in the evening or inside, consider raising it a bit. Or a lot: never hesitate to experiment with your digicam and simply try all those settings until you find the best one.

Some cameras also offer ranges like “low ISO” or “high values” in which you order the magnitude and the camera has some freedom to choose.

Talking about values: the larger the CCD chip, the lower it’s noise. That’s why DSLR’s can go to ISO values of 1600 or even 3200!

Compact cameras with their small chips don’t go that far. 400 is common, 800 can be seen frequently on new models.

And, there’s that nice Fujifilm Finepix F30 with a very clever design. The elements, put in a honeycomb structure give low noise and you can go to ISO 3200! Do not expect perfect pictures at 3200, but at parties you may be the only one without blurred memories!