Wide-angle compact: Canon Ixus 860

Somebody wrote me and asked for advice about finding a compact digital camera with a wide-angle lens, and I didn't think any existed. But then I got curious and googled around for it, and I found one which seems like it's really nice, the Canon Ixus 860 (in the US it's called SD870). The reviews are good, and I have its brother, which is excellent. Review and review and review. Update: I had not noticed this video review.

Compared to the one I have (960), it has 8MP instead of 12MP, which is not important. And it has no optical viewfinder, which is good because it allows for a bigger LCD screen. And the zoom goes out to 28mm equivalent, which I love. And it keeps the image stabilization feature, which you shouldn't be without, it saves so many pictures in dubious light, like indoors.

Oh, and personally I think the "black" version as pictured looks much better than the 960 with its super-gloss "iPod" parts. Also, it's marginally smaller and lighter. But like the 960 it has the nice ISO-auto-shift feature, which is surprisingly useful. For instance when I photographed a place like this, I walked in and out of light and shadow, and even in and out of doors, and that feature made sure the low-light pictures were not shaken, while still setting a low ISO for the strong-light settings so the image quality was optimal, without me having to give it a thought. This is one of those pleasant modern features I could not have dreamed up myself.

It's funny, by the way, the feature that Canon don't promote prominently (like on the box) is the wide-angle zoom. I would have thought this was the raison d'être of the camera.

Quote from DPreview:
"Like other cameras in this range what makes the SD870 IS so appealing - aside from the high quality design and construction - is the 'point and shoot' reliability, which produces good, sharp, well exposed results in a wide range of shooting conditions, something you simply can't say about a lot of competitors. We were also very impressed with the lens; a wide lens usually results in a compromise between the really useful ability to 'zoom out' and a degree of chromatic aberration and corner softness that can dent image quality. Our tests and experiences of real-world shooting show very little evidence of these expected shortcomings, helping the 870 IS stand out from competing wideangle ultra compact cameras."

Update: I think the Canon Ixus cameras are tremendous. I have owned several. I remember seeing the first one, pre-digital, in a camera shop. I asked the clerk: "what's that weird looking camera?" He got sort of offended, which is funny. But the high-quality metal construction (update: the 860 is actually part plastic, but at least it looks nice, unlike most silvery plastic), the strong design factor, and the overall high quality are just neato.

This photo set was taken with my first Ixus, at just 2 megapixels.

Update: funny thing, sites such as imaging-resource.com make such detailed reviews that I find it easier to learn about the features of a new camera by reading their review than by reading the manual!
Quote from that site:
"The SD870's 8-megapixel sensor delivers resolution capable of delivering good quality 11x14-inch prints up to ISO 400, an impressive feat indeed. Canon has increased the size of the LCD but removed the optical viewfinder; optical viewfinders being something of a joke on most digital cameras with extraordinary optics, most users won't miss it. The 3-inch LCD more than makes up for the lack of a viewfinder, and works well in bright sunlight. At 180 grams (6.3 oz), the Canon SD870 IS can fit in almost any pocket, and uses a battery that can take a pretty decent number of photos. It's a lot of camera fit into a small package, and I think it's a great fit for the experienced digital camera user who needs a reliable, take-anywhere shooter that shows off its photos well. And I can't emphasize enough how great it is to have a 28mm wide angle lens in such a small package..."

Comparisons (updated)

Canon Ixus 860, 8MP, tiny sensor
Panasonic G1, 12MP, "4/3" sensor
Canon 500D, 15MP, "APS-C" sensor
Canon 5D-II, 21MP, full frame sensor

All of them had their respective "standard" zoom, set to 28mm equivalent.
All of them set to around F:5.6 or F:8, and 800 ISO, which I find to be representative. Except the IXUS, which I let use its auto-ISO setting which selected 400, wisely since such small sensors suck above that.


Full scene:

Crop from Ixus:

Crop from G1:

Crop from 500D (T1i):

Crop from 5D mark II:

(Big pic when click.)

Update: it's coincicental that the megapixel sizes in my cameras follow the sensor sizes neatly. You might well have a tiny sensor with 14MP and a full frame sensor with 12MP.
At the top is a neat diagram I found which, except for being slightly bigger than real life, perfectly illustrates the four sensor sizes above (two of them even mentioning the same cameras!). (The EP-1 is "4/3" like the G1.) (Don't try to find meaning in monikers like "4/3" and "1/8", they are complete gibberish with no relation to anything real.)

Update: the Canon 5D mark 1 was the king of high-ISO performance for two years. It was impressive that you could get usable pictures at 1600 ISO, albeit rather noisy. No other camera came close for a long time.
But the 5D Mark II kicks it all across the field. At 1600 ISO I don't see any noise at all! In fact I basically can't see any quality difference going from 800 to 1600. And they did that at the same time as almost doubling the resolution! That is f***ing impressive.

Update: even more so 6400 ISO, which I had kind of dismissed, but shouldn't have. At default setting, it's good. But it gets even better if you turn off high-ISO noise suppression (custom settings) and handle noise in the computer. (And this is from JPG, I haven't tried RAW yet.)
I thought only Nikon D3 could do this, and the D3 has only nigh half the pixel count.


Frankly, this goes beyond my expectations. When they boosted the resolution that much, I was sure they'd blown the chance for really good high-ISO performance.

Note: for a long while, I thought that noise was the only penalty for using the high ISO settings. But there are other issues too. Most importantly, you loose sharpness/resolution/detail, and that can't be recovered. The dynamic range also suffers some, and colors may lose some clarity, though with the new generations it seems to be minimal.

The Secret Of Kells (updated twice)

I like flat-perspective, simple, decorated line art like this. I experimented with similar things back in the nineties, and I'll return to it.
You could say it's the opposite to the trend with more and more 3-dimensional art going on in recent years.

Much of the art of The Secret Of Kells is strongly reminiscent of Samurai Jack, they must share designers.
This film is amazing, I don't think I have ever seen so many outstanding compositions in one film. It's an art feast.

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Here's an oddity: the pics I take of the TV with the Panasonic GF1 have interference patterns:

But those I take with a tiny Canon Ixus 860, don't:

The GF1 has a bigger sensor and a better lens, so this surprises me, I have no clue what makes for the difference. Shutter speed does not seem to be it.

Update 2:
Andreas said:
... if you shot both pictures with very similar framing the most likely reason simply is the different pixel count of the cameras (about 22% linear). Try framing the shot 20% tighter with the Ixus and you might get moiré as well. The GF1 on the other hand definitely shouldn't show moiré from 20% further away. For moiré to occur the grids of subject and sensor have to match; due to the different pixel pitch of both cameras you'll see moiré for different subject grid frequencies.

You are right. Watch these down-scaled but un-cropped photos with the GF1 at two distances:

Canon Ixus 60

Canon Ixus 60
(In the US it is called Canon PowerShot SD600)

It is beautiful and really small, even smaller than my beloved Fuji F10, and has the same image quality. Pin sharp lens, low grain, six megapixels.
Actually: only five years ago, a revolutionary camera was the Canon D30. For the first time, three megapixels became available for a somewhat affordable price: $3,000! Six years ago that would have cost you something like three times as much.
Today I can buy a pocket camera with twice the resolution for $300! It staggers the mind.

Update: I just tested the low-light capability: another positive surprise. 200 ISO is practically the same quality as 100 ISO, 400 ISO is very good, and even 800 ISO is usable, which is highly unusual on such a compact camera. On my much larger Nikon 8400, even ISO 200 is very grainy. Big cudos to Canon for this development. (This was the raison d'etre of the Fuji F10, but it seems they are getting competition now.)

Shadows

These last two pictures are from today, taken with my new Canon Ixus 60. I had no idea Canon had continued to improve the Ixus, this one is great. Really compact, nice mechanical feel and looks, really good usability (for instance in show mode the zoom lever zooms in on the picture!). And really high picture quality. It is probably the best carry-everywhere camera I know of.

Early, small SLRs

On the "Death of the DSLR Camera?" post, Neeraj commented:

Something historical: At the end of the seventies I had a Minolta 110 Zoom SLR camera. That was an amazing piece of camera for me: Pocket film format (!), BUT a SLR with zoom ... so, it was very flexible to use and additionally small and convenient enough for me to take it with me during strolling around or traveling. I loved it. I never wanted a bigger camera. The only limitation was to make bigger prints, but that was not very important for me. When I was picking up my pics from the shop after processing, I was often asked, how I had been able to make these fucking pics with POCKET film ... nearly nobody knew about this camera. For example, sometimes I experimented by mounting some own additional lens system in front of it in order to make pics like through a microscope - it worked quite good, because with SLR I could always see what I would get on the film. So, I was able to make some kind of "super-macro". Or I loved to make kaleidoscopic collages by using e.g. 20 prints of the same pic, and invented a technique to produce pentagonal or octagonal or whatevergonal collages with appropriate pentagonal or octagonal or whatevergonal frames, because you can't buy something like this ... I had a lot of creative fun with this camera. Unfortunately it was stolen during traveling in South France, about mid eighties. After that, I had no camera for about twenty years until I started again with a Canon PowerShot A70 and now, after some years, with a PowerShot A630 ... and still I don't want a bigger camera.

Oh yes, that Minolta 110 zoom!! I had totally forgotten about that.

For the younger readers, "110" was a very compact cassette film which Kodak had success with in the seventies, but the negative was very small, so when compact 35mm cameras arrived with better picture quality, the cassette 110 (and 126) formats died out.

And how about that Pentax 110 SLR with exchangeable lenses? That's a little beaut. I think by far the tiniest SLR camera ever made.

Still, too small format for me, I want at least sharp 8x10 inches (20x25 cm).

But the modern Canon Ixus (Elph) will do that, and more!

Pixel density

[I wonder if this is getting too technical for this blog.]

It seems very hard to evaluate the benefits of pixel density and photo site size. ("Photo site": each tiny light-recieving dot inside the camera. The larger it is, the more sensitive it is.)

One thing I noted in a professional review in a British mag, comparing the Nikon D3 with the Canon 1Ds III, was that it gave the overall image quality of the D3 to be at least equal to that of the 1Ds, despite the D3 nigh only half the resolution. (And of course you have smaller files and a more sensitive sensor.) The lenses could have something to do with it though.

My Canon Ixus 960, though, makes much sharper pictures than my old Fuji F10 (which I thought was wonderful), and doesn't have more noise despite having twice the megapixels. Of course, then the Canon is three years newer.

Given that there are so many factors, I wonder if we'll ever have a clear answer.

Film vs digital

I went over to digital cameras in 1998, and have never looked back, even though my first camera had just dreadful* image quality compared to film. The speed and flexibility was just too seducing.
But in case you're interested, here's an article comparing film and digital.

*The resolution of the Nikon Coolpix 600 was not even one megapixel (it was 768x1024), and even viewed at that size the noise and lack of sharpness was not even as good as the old 110 Instamatic cameras, or a Polaroid picture. But back then it was new and amazing.
The linked gallery is also a bite of history. I lived in Edinburgh in 2000 in a sublet apartment. I did all my work, including image processing and so on, on an Apple laptop. A simple life, and new and exciting.

I later got a Nikon 950, 2MP and a big step up, and a Canon Ixus, also 2MP, very compact and very good.

Interfacial

Operational interfaces are very hard to make well, that's clear. Here's an example of a poor detail in an otherwise well done design and interface.
On the Canon Ixus camera, if the camera achieves correct focus, there's a beeb, and the focus frame is green. If it can't achieve focus, there's a slightly different beeb, and the frame is yellow. Both these differences are way too subtle, I did not notice at all until I stumbled over these data in the manual. And I've used Ixuses (Elph) for years.
At a minimum there should be a blinking light, or the focus frame should be blinking. And they might even add "can't focus" in blinking text on the screen or summin like that.

A metal sculpture (updated)

Can anybody tell me what this chinese sculpture is likely to be made of? It has rusty spots, but surely nobody would make a sculpture out of iron?


Andreas said:
Why not iron? Find a magnet and find out ... 

Of course!
... Well, it's not iron.
Funny about those rusty spots then.
[By the way, those and the general weathered look has a large part in why I wanted exactly this one. I even mailed to make sure I wouldn't get another sample.]

Update:
Bert asked for macro pictures, which I now provide below, and had a question:

How heavy is the statue? 
Not bad, maybe 6 kilos, it's definitely hollow. The bottom is a thin sheet soldered on, the body is more solid, walls must be several milimeters. Definitely metal, heavy-ish, and doesn't feel like it would dent easily. ... I think on the site it said it was bronze, it could be low-grade bronze with steel and stuff mixed in, perhaps.
It's 40cm (16") tall.

(Click for big pic)

By the way, the pics are from a years-old Canon Ixus 960 (Powershot 950). Those small Canons are awesome. I got it in 2007. Here are some other pics from it. I think the best of class presently is the S95. 

Jade drawing

Jade and Judy are visiting today. Here is Jade drawing.
I was struck by her profile.


Again this is the little Canon Ixus 960. It is awesome. This is indoors at 1/30th second, no flash, and it's pin-sharp due to the image stabilization.

I'm quite pleased with this one. And I printed it out big (40cm X 60cm) for her mom.
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And by the way, if Jade ever starts a photographic career, I have her very earliest efforts: I lend her my camera today, and this is one of the results.


And here is her very first photo ever, featuring the first painting I'd made in many years, in 2006.


By the way, you'll notice that Image Stabilization works great even with a photographer of such tender age.

Megapixels

Mike Reichman pontificates.

Quote:
"Things are still silly in the digicam field with shirt pocket cameras now up to about 12MP. This means 2.8 micron pixels (or maybe even less) which if this trend continues will begin to impinge on the size of the upper wave lengths of light. Stuffing photons into these little holes is going to start challenging the laws of physics pretty soon.

In the DSLR world sanity seems to be settling in, with pixel counts in the 12 – 14 MP range becoming the norm. The high end of the pro DSLR market seems to be at the 21 – 24 MP range, and while that leaves room for the lower end of the market to still move upward, the ceiling isn't going to get much higher once pixel count gets above 25MP and photosite sizes below 5 microns, because noise will become too big an issue at anything other than moderate level ISOs. Photographers now want image quality above pixel count, or at least I do.

It also needs to be asked – which photographers need these large files? Typical commercial uses (magazines, newspapers, etc) are easily satisfied with files in the low to mid teens, and while a larger file, such as from a Canon 1Ds MKIII, is great for making a 24X36" print, how many people actually need this? Of course a larger files means a greater ability to crop and still get a usable image size, but this then starts to stress lens performance; a bit of a vicious cycle.

So, as far as I'm concerned, anything north of a high quality 12 Megapixels is fine for most applications, and 20+ MP files (whether from a DSLR or a medium format back) are only needed in the work that I do for my most critical landscape work and some commercial projects. (For example, I have a commission to document a major urban renewal project, and in addition to an eventual coffee table book have been told that wall-sized blow-ups for a presentation center will be needed. So, I'll be shooting much of that with a 39MP medium format back.)"

I agree. I would even say that for most users, anything at or over 6 megapixels is quite sufficient. Really. I have big (30cm x 40cm) framed prints on my wall taken with 6-MP cameras, and they look great.

For critical work and most professional work, 10-14 MP is quite sufficient. Anything bigger is only needed for very specialized work, even for pros.

The move to 12-MP pocket cameras is dumb. Fuji totally trashed their previously wonderful low-light capability when they moved up to 12 MP with the F50. (Though I have to say that Canon managed it better with the Ixus 960/SD950.)

Update: here's a site advocating 6MP compact cameras.
... Of course the noise argument hinges on the shaky assumption that light-gathering and processing is standing still. That's not so. Until a couple of years ago, no pocket camera had decent quality above 200 ISO. Then the Fuji F10 came along and showed low noise even at 800 ISO. So I don't think we can assume anything definite about anything.
Also the same amount of noise per 100 pixels will matter less on a camera with more pixels, because the picture has to be enlarged less when printed.

Memory card prices and new Canon compact

Have you seen that you can now get an SD flash card, 4 GB, for around 30 dollars? Holy crap, at those prices I think I will stop reusing the cards and just keep them for additional backup.

By the way, here is a really promising new camera that I'll get for myself for Christmas. Compact, nice looking, metal body, image stabilization, and really high image quality. And really reasonably priced too. Amazing.

From the review:
"I took a series of shots one evening just to show off what the PowerShot SD950 IS's image stabilization can do. The room was lit by nothing more than 60 watt bulbs (well, the fluorescent equivalent, which is a lot lower). ISO was set to High ISO, limiting it to ISO 800. And I got sharp shots with shutter speeds as low as 1/15 second, something I can't hand hold. [...] Considering that I couldn't do better than 1/60 second with the Canon SD900, that's easily a two stop improvement, and a great argument for upgrading to the PowerShot SD950 IS."

Look at this test image. Impressive.
This one is at the highest sensitivity, ISO 1600. Of course on such a small camera, that setting is very grainy (noisy). But I think actually the noise looks sort of interesting. Arty. Only not to be used if you need maximum detail.

(By the way, if you're interested in it and you're in Europe, be aware that many electronics manufacturers irritatingly still insists on different names for their products in Eu and USA, and in Europe this camera is called "Canon IXUS 960 IS". I fail to see that Canon or anybody else gains anything in the long run by this confusing tactic.)

Sunday morning, playground photos

Today was a gorgeous morning. Quite cold, barely over the frost level (there was still frost on the cars several hours after sunup), but almost dead calm, and strong sunshine from a cloudless sky.

So I went out, and brought my pocket camera (Canon Ixus 960). It turns the morning light was beautiful on a local playground which has been upgraded recently.

The pictures, especially the large versions on stobblehouse.com, also show the amazing quality of modern compact digicams. The contrast was great, but that was no problem. And if one likes deep sharpness (depth-of-field) then they have it. At the wide end of the zoom (35mm equivalent) the pictures are pin-sharp from front to back even at full lens opening (2.8). And they have not been processed at all, no sharpening, no contrast adjustment, no cropping, nothing.
It's also a good example of the pleasure of a good bring-everywhere camera. I really didn't think I was going to photograph today, but this one is so small I barely notice it, so I brought it, and seeing this light I'd have kicked myself if I hadn't.

See full gallery here.


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With a thought back to the recent post about simplicity, Canon (like many others) could learn a thing or two. I'm trying to figure out whether there has been a worthwhile upgrade to this camera, and it's just impossible! There are so many models with such similar names and features. And to add insult to injury, the same models are called slightly different things on either side of the pond. There's even a "990" model in the US now which is not the same as the "990" in Europe last year. Or was it vice versa? It's just headache-inducing.
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Nice aerial photos.

Liebhaver cameras

Digital cameras have reached maturity in just a decade. My breast-pocket-sized Canon Ixus 960 (or SD950 in the USA) has image quality to match any camera I've ever used, an astounding feat.

Now I'm just waiting for somebody to make digital cameras which look as nice as for example this Zeiss Ikon ZI, which is new, but it's a film camera. Dang me if I'm gonna run around getting film developed and scanned again.

("Liebhaver", is a danish-germanic word meaning something you own just for the love of it. Beautiful things for those who can afford it, in other words. Collectors' items in the best sense of the word.) (The worst sense of the word would be items which are made solely to prey on people who consider themselves "collectors". Like the same comic book in five different covers.)

(Mike J's review of the Zeiss Ikon inspired this rant.)

Canon 40D

I've been saying that Canon has been behind Nikon technically for a year or two. In the mid- and low-range market, that is. The Nikon D200 and D80 and D40 are very strong. But I gotta say that Canon's upgrade with the 40D is very powerful. It's very fast, more rugged, and it has the same sensor technology which makes the 1D such amazingly low noise in low-light situations.
I would say that it is basically a professional camera, only at "prosumer" prices. Well done to Canon. If one does not demand a full-frame sensor, this camera is a great option.

If I were Canon, though, I would apply more imagination to design and to naming. All these cameras look the same, and sound the same too, 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D, D30, D60, D40... blah blah blah.

Notice how much attention Apple got for the new iMacs a couple weeks ago, and they were really only evolutionary upgrades. But because their design is fresh and beautiful, everybody notices and wants them.

Actually Canon's super-compact line (called Ixus in Europe) is really nice looking. They should use those designers for the DSLR line too.

Crane, New pics from today

I like the clean lines of the new steel, it looks like it belongs in a different universe from the surroundings.




(Taken with the shirt-pocket-sized Canon SD950 (Ixus 960). Man, that little thing takes sharp pictures. Seriously.)

Update: I had overlooked this one. I think the cloud makes it worthwhile.

Canon SD890IS and pricing

The Canon PowerShot SD890IS is the same camera as the Canon Ixus 970. In the states, it sells for around $350. In Europe, about €450 or £350. And the Euro is worth 1.5 dollars, and the Sterling is worth 2 dollars. In other words, the price is twice what it is in the states. Bah, humbug.

Depth of field

Compact digital cameras have tiny sensors. This makes for less sensitivity, which creates problems in low light. But: they do have a property which will often be an advantage: great depth of field. This means it's easy to get both the foreground and the background sharp at the same time when you want that.

In portraits you often want a blurred background, and for that a camera with a bigger sensor (a digital SLR) is better. But for landscapes and such, big depth of field is usually good.

Take for instance this picture, taken with the Canon Ixus 960 (called SD950 in the USA). It's a telezoom picture, which usually means it's nearly impossible to get the background and foreground sharp at once. And yet because of the small sensor, in this case they are. The statue in the lower left is pin-sharp, just as the figures in the front.


(This picture also demonstrates the overall superb sharpness and dynamic range of this little camera.)

Update: there's some evidence that you can get the same depth of field with larger cameras without penalty, here's a rather technical article.

Fall Day photos

From today. It's the first shoot with my new little Canon Ixus 960 (which I finally got tuesday). (Known as SD950 in the US.)
Below are the first and the last picture I took. The blue one is perfect for a desktop (wallpaper) picture.
Here is the full gallery, 12 photos. (Large.)



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By the way, isn't it funny how you can be snobbish about anything? :)
You can be: "I'm making my pictures on a camera costing twenty grand and the size of a bread box. I'm the business." But you can also be: "I'm making my pictures on a $200 camera which fit in my breast pocket. I rule."

But then of course one might also simply get pleasure from any of these facts without being snobbish about it. There's a world of possibilities.

Update: I almost omitted the bricks/fence picture for being too boring. But then I got the idea to make it monochrome, and I very much like it now.