Zen Haiku: Usability, General Topics & A Bit of Poetry by Chad Lundgren

Canon S1 IS Pictures and A Mini-Rant

Update (11/14/2006): Check out www.FiendishMasterPlan.com for another sunset picture, this one set in Albuquerque.

I haven't been posting regularly for quite some time, but the site's not dead, just going through a slow period.

However, I have been taking quite a few pictures with a Canon Powershot S1 IS, which I've had for nearly six months now.

My mini-review. Overall, I'm quite happy. The zoom lens is a great deal of fun, and the image stabilization actually works as long as you try just a little to hold the camera steady. With other cameras, "holding steady" was an exercise in frustration. I found that in any other light condition than full blast sunshine, handheld shooting produced too much blur. With the S1, I can go down to 1/30 and even 1/15 if I have to, although that's starting to push it.

The purple fringing issue occurs more often than I expected, but usually in small areas.

Here's a picture I could only have gotten with a zoom lens:

The overall sunset was decent, but these clouds look almost hellish to me, and it was the detail in them that I liked.

Here's a postcard picture taken in the Jemez, ones of my favorite places to go for landscape photography.

Some people would mean postcard pejoratively: I take it as a compliment. Taken at nearly full zoom.

Here's a picture I took to shut up the "But where's the picture of you with your really long shadow in it? That's never been done before!" emails I constantly receive.

Here's the mini-rant: the follow-on to the Canon S1 IS is the Canon S2 IS. There are two problems with Canon expecting people to just smoothly upgrade: 1) They switched from CompactFlash to SecureDigital memory formats, which means the 800+ Megs I have in CompactFlash would be worthless with the S2. and 2) They changed the adapter size from 52 to 58mm, which means almost all the filters I have are worthless. What a slap in the face.

And now, I leave you with a picture I found mildly humorous:

Posted by Chad Lundgren on Thursday, July 21, 2005 (Link)