| I wrote a previous review of this camera, but I intended to give it a 5-star rating instead of 4 stars, so I wanted to correct that here. This camera was one of the possible gift choices for my 10-year anniversary gift at my company. So I decided to give it a try. The only other small point and shoot camera I have is a Fuji Tiara 1000, which has a fixed lens and is APS format, whereas this camera is a 2X 38-76mm lens and is 35 mm. I got a free roll of ASA 100 Kodak Gold (12 frames) film so I ran it through the camera over the weekend, and was pleased with the results. The camera's short zoom lens runs from F4.2-F7.8, and has a maximum 1/500th of a sec. shutter speed, pretty standard for a point and shoot camera in the $100-$200 range. You can find some that are 1/700th, but not too many. The little Contax point and shoots go up to at least 1/1000th of a sec., and my Rollei QZ35W has an amazing 1/8000th of a second maximum shutter speed, but this camera is ten times as expensive as your typical point and shoot model and weighs almost 2 pounds, so it's a tank, and the Contax cameras, although not as high as the Rollei, are still pretty pricey. But getting back to the Canon Sureshot. The photos look good and are very sharp. I tried shooting photos under bright sunlight with a very contrasty subject, and also the next day it was quite overcast and so I took somemore photos then too. Both sets of prints look nice and sharp. I was a little worried about the ASA 100 film shooting on a foggy day. I suspect the shutter speed wasn't more than 1/60th of a second, but I concentrated on trying to minimize camera shake when I took the shots, since I wanted to test the sharpness of the lens. Anyway, it looks like I managed it and the photos looked good. Another nice thing the camera has is a multi-function green LED focus indicator light. But it also does 2 other cool things. It flashes at 12 times per second when it thinks camera shake might be a problem, and at 4 times per second when the light is too low. I suspect the shake indicator actually is telling you about a slow shutter speed that might be affected by camera shake, rather than actively detecting any hand movement, such as video camcorders are able to do, and cancel it out. The autofocus system is able to handle situations where you have subjects or people in the foreground but the focal frame of the camera is actually centered on the background, much further away. Another nice feature. I was not able to determine from the manual whether it has active or passive autofocus, however. It's better to have passive autofocus. Active autofocus uses an infrared beam, and this can cause problems when trying to shoot thru the window of a car. The infrared beam will bounce off the glass and screw up the focus, unless there is a setting to disable it. With active autofocus the camera is usually sensitive to vertical lines. However, this can sometimes cause a problem with scenes that lack strong verticals. It would be nice to know what the Sureshot has but the manual just says it has AiAF--artificially intelligent autofocus. So far this looks to be a good little camera at an attractive price. About the only downside to it is that it isn't as small as some of the more compact point and shoots; however, these usually cost much more money, such as the Minolta 125 Freedom Zoom, which is a nice camera but is much more expensive. Also, many people will perhaps want a longer zoom capability around 3X or so, but I actually prefer not to have anything that extreme because there are too many optical comprises that have to be made in terms of the sharpness of the lens and other optical problems. I understand that some of the newer point and shoot zoom models, such as the new Nikon 125 and the Minolta 125 Freedom Zoom, are incorporating asperical plastic elements, which have done a lot to address this issue, but not having tested them myself yet, I'll stick to the 2X-3X range for now. One final thing to consider with point and shoots with datebacks like this one, is that many of them will default the dateback feature back to on when you change the film. Since I've only run the one test roll thru so far I don't know how this particular camera will respond, but probably most of them will do that. So remember to check every time you change the roll if it does. If it doesn't, you have one of the few that don't and you're home free. Also, since it prints the time and date on the lower right corner in a yellowish font, this means you need to be careful about photographing scenes with strong yellow colors in this area, since it may obscure the dateback "imprint." The camera comes with a better than average camera bag with a main compartment more than big enough for the camera itself, and a smaller external pocket big enough to hold a couple of extra rolls of film. Altogether a nice little camera, especially considering in my case it was free! |
