Canon Powershot Pro1 Review
Canon’s PowerShot G5 was the company’s top-of-the-range non-SLR and has been for some months, but those who thought digital camera technology had reached a plateau have had a rude awakening because the latest 8-megapixel CCDs have changed everything. In response to this 60% hike in resolution, Sony, Nikon, Minolta and now Canon have produced brand new, ultra high-res flagship cameras that not only leave their 5-megapixel predecessors in the shade, but must be giving digital SLR owners a few sleepless nights too. With an all-new 7x optical zoom, high-end specs and SLR-style handling, is the Canon Powershot Pro1 the ultimate digital camera?
Let’s start with the lens. The zooming range of 28-200mm eguivalent puts it on a par with the Sony F828 and Minolta DiMAGE A2, and it’s a bit more attractive than the telephoto-biased 35-280mm equivalent on the Nikon CoolPix 8700. What’s more, the Canon ditches conventional zoom switches in favour of a rotating collar on the lens. You also use it for focusing in manual focus mode.
The standard macro mode is boosted by a super macro mode that can get right down to 3cm. This lens has a very wide range, both in terms of focal length and focusing distance. It also includes fluorite and low-dispersion elements, which provide an expensive but effective way to minimise chromatic aberration.
As you’d expect in a camera at this level, Canon Powershot Pro1 boasts a full set of exposure modes. These include a ‘green’ auto-everything mode for absolute beginners, program AE, shutter-priority, aperture-priority and manual modes, together with a set of subject-specific ’scene’ modes (Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Stitch Assist). You can also save two lots of custom settings, and these, like the other modes, are directly accessible via the main mode dial. This adopts an unusual position on the sloping bevel between the top plate and the back of the camera, presumably so that it’s visible both from above and from behind.
There’s a control wheel built into the handgrip, just behind the shutter release. You use this for various control functions, including changing the shutter speed in shutter-priority (Tv) mode and the aperture in aperture-priority (Av) mode.
Also on the top plate are buttons for changing the metering pattern (evaluative, centre-weighted or spot) and illuminating the mono LCD status panel. To the left of the flash housing are two more buttons, one for setting the flash mode and the other for switching in and out of macro mode.
On the back of the digital camera are more pushbutton controls, two of which are especially significant. One of these is the MF button, which you press in order to focus manually (you turn the lens ring to focus and the centre section of the viewfinder image enlarges automatically to help you). The other is the multi-purpose ‘Func’ button found on many other Canon cameras. This opens an abbreviated set of menus that overlay the scene shown on the LCD, rather than covering it up, and which you can leave ‘open’ while you shoot. The options here include ISO, colour effect, bracketing, flash compensation, and quality and image size-all the settings you’re likely to need, and without the hassle of entering the main menu system. However, you need the menus to enter the super macro mode and set first and second-curtain flash options.
Many cameras offer a ’slow flash’ option, where the flash is fired but the camera also exposes the scene long enough to record the ambient lighting too. This can produce very striking indoor, party and twilight shots without the usual flash ‘white-out’. This works well enough, except where you’re shooting moving objects. In these cases, the object is ‘frozen’ by the flash but then continues to move during the exposure. The upshot is that the movement blur appears to travel forward from the subject. With second-curtain sync, the flash is fired at the end of the exposure. This means the movement blur appears to trail behind the subject which is much more natural-looking.
Canon has even included a high-resolution movie mode in the Powershot Pro1, capable of shooting at a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. It can only manage a frame rate of 15fps though, and a maximum movie duration of 30 seconds at this resolution. If you want to shoot high-guality movies, you’re much better off with Sony’s F828 or numerous higher-end Fujifilm cameras, which can shoot at 30fps.
Canon Powershot Pro1 picture quality
The list of things this digital camera offers is as long as your arm. It’s coming in as the most expensive of the new 8-megapixel cameras so it needs to justify that price difference, and in terms of image quality alone, it very nearly does so.
The other 8-megapixel digital cameras we’ve seen produce images that are much sharper than those from 5-megapixel cameras and possibly better even than 6-megapixel digital SLRs can manage. The Canon matches this performance with excellent fine detail rendition. However, camera makers will be quick to point out that there’s more to image quality than detail rendition. We want accurate, saturated colours too, as well as strong, contrasty tonal rendition, good dynamic range and accurate exposures. Impressively, the Canon excels at all of these.
The credit Is due to Canon’s DIGIC processing system. In fact, the Canon’s results make an interesting comparison with those from the Nikon D70. The Canon’s shots are maybe a little sharper, and certainly much more colourful and contrasty. The Nikon’s shots need more ‘massaging’ in Photoshop, whereas the Profs images are ready to print straight from the camera.
Photographers still dithering over switching from film to digital should take a look at what this camera can do. Its saturation and contrast really do rival that of film, especially if you habitually shoot colour negatives. Only Fuji Velvia can top this level of depth and clarity.
Normally, contrasty images can be a problem in bright lighting, especially with digital cameras, but the Canon’s processing and the accuracy of its exposure system keep this under control. Normally you’d expect to sacrifice contrast for dynamic range, but Canon Powershot Pro1 manages to offer both.
Canon Powershot Pro1 Handling and usability
The quality of the images is beyond doubt and if that’s all you’re looking for, you can stop reading here. However, it’s worth carrying on because there are other aspects to the Pro1 that are less appealing. It’s not the world’s fastest, most responsive camera, for a start. It takes around three seconds to power up, and the AF system, while sophisticated, is far from fast. The 8-megapixel files presumably give the processor lots of work too, because it can only manage a continuous shooting speed of 1fps, and as any sports photographer will know, that’s just not quick enough to be sure of capturing the action. You can speed it up to 2.5fps using Fine quality and switching off the display, but it’s pretty hard to follow action you can’t see.
The controls are a mixed bag too. The navipad is a bit small and woolly-feeling, while the positioning of the MF button is a much more obvious flaw-it’s directly under where your right thumb goes as you hold the camera, meaning you continually activate the MF function by accident.
And then there’s that zooming/focusing ring. It doesn’t actually move the lens elements directly. Instead, it operates them electrically. It has a sluggish, ‘dead’ feel that’s really guite unpleasant. In fact, ‘dead’ is the operative word. Ours twice failed to work properly, and we had to pop out the batteries and re-insert them to reset the camera’s electronics.
There are other areas where the Canon proves somewhat less useful. The EVF has a resolution of 235,000 pixels, but it’s not enough for precise focusing-the image looks distinctly coarse and pixellated. The Minolta DiMAGE A2 has a 1-megapixel EVF, and even that’s only approaching adequate. Also, while the flip-out and swivel LCD offers immense flexibility, there’s a significant fiddle-factor too. Most of the time, you only want to swivel the display for waist-level viewing, and the simpler mechanism on the A2 is quicker and better.
It’s difficult to reach decisions about the best 8-megapixel camera to buy because price is such a key factor. As things stand, though, Canon Powershot Pro1 offers all the image quality we could possibly wish for, but it falls down somewhat on its responsiveness and usability.
Tagged with: bracketing • Canon • chromatic aberration • exposure modes • flash compensation • macro mode • metering pattern • super macro mode • zooming range
Filed under: Canon
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