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PowerShot S10
Canon's latest PowerShot digital camera is the most compact 2.1M pixel camera on the market at this time. But size is one of the few things that this camera lacks. In the small metal body, there's a 2x optical zoom lens with aspherical elements, Canon's latest high speed dedicated signal processing IC, a CompactFlash card slot for Type I or Type II cards and even a USB port for high speed downloads. With the familiar full auto mode, program mode, new image mode and stitch assist the camera can be configured to deal with most shooting situations.
From the program mode you can choose from nine combinations of compression and image size, spot or centre-weighted metering, exposure compensation +/- 2EV in 1/3EV increments, white balance and even sharpening and contrast of the final image. In image mode black and white, slow shutter, night scene, landscape and fast shutter set the camera to produce optimum results in most situations.
In use the S10 works well with the IBM microdrive, battery life intervening before storage runs out. Though that doesn't mean the battery life is a problem, just that at over 200 1.5MB large superfine images that's a lot of shooting potential. Recent events have shown that in certain cases the S10 doesn't work with the IBM microdrive.
Update: Canon's BeBit page has now got the firmware update for PowerShot S10 owners.
S10 tips and tricks
- Hands-free image review in shooting modes
- With the S10 in a shooting mode, you can hold your finger on the shutter after taking an image and a preview will appear on the LCD. (Assuming you have Review On in the menus) However this display will disappear as soon as you release the shutter. But keep your finger on the shutter and then press [SET], now you can release the shutter and the display will stay on. Much easier to pass the camera round for a quick review. To clear this simply press the shutter button and the display switches to the live preview mode.
- Quick delete in shooting mode
- Follow the steps above to freeze the preview, then press the [SET] button and the {omni-selector LEFT}, you should now see Erase? [OK] [Cancel] in the LCD. Move the selection to the right to OK with the omni-selector and then press [SET] to delete the image.
- Infinity focus for landscapes
- When taking pictures of landscapes some images can look out of focus. The reason is that in normal shooting modes if the autofocus cannot determine the focus distance then the camera selects a pre-set focus distance.
This distance is based on Canon's knowledge of the types of photos most people take, knowledge gained from over half a century of photo expertise.
However in the case of landscape photos it's quite possible this is too close, so using the Landscape mode on the S10, will modify this default to select infinity focus when the real focussing distance cannot be determined by the camera.
Check out the full specifications or the sample images in our gallery pages.
