Reviews

Camera preview: Nikon CoolPix S570

The Nikon CoolPix S570 digital camera is small — just about the same size as the Canon PowerShot SD780 IS camera — so it invites a comparative look. I looked at it side-by-side with the SD780 recently, and here’s what I think.

The design is good, but not as good as that of the SD780. I like the beveled lines and the metal accents, including the protruding camera strap anchor, but I think the CoolPix logo is badly placed, and ruins the clean look of the camera. Think about it, would you want your brand logo to be smaller than the line logo? It makes no sense, yet that’s what Nikon’s done. They’ve emphasized CoolPix over the trustworthy Nikon name. Canon hasn’t made this mistake. Have a look at the SD780 IS and you’ll see they know how to do this right. Another thing that bugs me is the annoying font chosen for CoolPix. Nikon, please, if you’re going to keep using CoolPix as a line name, then please use a decent font or at least make the writing smaller.

When it comes to features, there are more of them overall than on the Canon SD780 IS, but right off the bat, one can see the S570 lacks HD video capabilities. That may or may not be an important criteria for you, depending on your needs. The S70 certainly offers other wonderful selling points, such as a 5x Zoom and a very nice maximum aperture of f/2.7, not to mention that the price is about $50-75 less than that of the Canon SD780 IS.

  • 12.0 megapixels resolution
  • Ultra Thin and Compact
  • 5x Nikkor Zoom Lens
  • Bright, 2.7″ LCD
  • Scene Auto Selector
  • Smart Portrait System with Advanced Face-Priority Technology, Smile Timer, Blink Proof function, Blink Warning, Active D-lighting and the new Skin Softening function
  • 4-way Image Stabilization with Vibration Reduction, Motion Detection, High ISO (up to 3200) and Best Shot Selector
  • Quick Retouch
  • Standard Definition video recording (640 x 480 @ 30 fps)

Other differences between this camera and the Canon SD780 IS include:

  • The new Skin Softening functionality, which offers three levels of in-camera smoothing, allowing you to diminish age lines or imperfections from your subjects’ faces right in the camera
  • Lack of optical image stabilization, which is compensated by the presence of electronic Vibration Reduction and Best Shot Selector (the SD780 includes the equivalent of Motion Detection and also goes to 3200 ISO)
  • Wider field of view (28 mm equivalent vs. 33 mm equivalent on the SD780 IS)

The Nikon CoolPix S570 digital camera can be purchased from Amazon or B&H Photo.

Photos used courtesy of Nikon.

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Reviews

Camera preview: Canon PowerShot SD780 IS

I had the chance to look at the Canon PowerShot SD780 IS Digital Elph camera recently, and was impressed by the beauty of its design, its diminutive size, and its features. This camera is truly small. Being used to holding DSLRs, holding this camera in my hand was an unusual experience for me. It’s so small, I thought I might drop it or break its buttons when I pressed them. But that’s just an initial illusion. It works fine, it’s sturdy, and its matte, non-slip finish means you won’t easily drop, unless you’re Mr. Butterfingers.

I’ve always liked Canon’s Elph line. I owned their 1st gen Elph camera, which recorded images to APS film, and I still have it, though I don’t use it any more. What I like about this camera is how the Elph legacy, combined with modern technology and design cues, all comes together to create a truly wonderful little camera. This camera is a stunner. The logo, the lettering, the buttons, the lens and all of its other building blocks form a beautiful whole where everything falls into place.

And how could I not be impressed by its features as well?

  • 12.1 Megapixel Resolution
  • 3x Optical Zoom Lens
  • Optical Image Stabilizer Technology
  • DIGIC 4 Processor with iSAPS scene-recognition technology
  • Face Detection Technology
  • Face Self-Timer
  • Advanced Red-eye Correction
  • Intelligent Contrast Correction
  • High ISO Sensitivity (up to 3200 ISO)
  • HD Video Recording (1280 x 720 @ 30 fps) with HD output through mini-HDMI connector
  • 20 Shooting Modes and My Colors Photo Effects
  • Smart Auto Mode
  • High-Resolution 2.5″ PureColor II LCD

The only things that bothered me somewhat were the 3x Zoom and the maximum f/3.3 aperture. While the 3x zoom has been standard on the Elph cameras from the start, I’d like to see a 5x zoom already. It would be a helpful feature for many situations. The aperture could also be f/2.8 or who knows, maybe even f/2.2 or f/2.0. I realize the physics of it might get tricky given the camera’s diminutive size, but I’d like to challenge the Canon engineers to do it. It would help greatly in low light conditions, and would add extra bokeh to portraits and macro photographs.

I’d have loved to test out the camera’s HD video feature, as I’ve been looking for a small HD camera, but I didn’t get the chance. At any rate, I was very impressed to see a camera of that size offer HD video. That in itself is an achievement, given that it’s already got a ton of other circuitry crammed in that very limited space. Ideally, one hopes the quality of the HD video is good, without banding or compression artifacts, like that of the HD video from other digital cameras. If anyone’s used this feature on the SD780, please do let me know how good it is.

The SD780 IS comes with all the accessories you see above. You can get a good idea of how small this camera really is by having a look at the charger for its battery, which is a good deal longer and thicker than the camera itself.

The Canon PowerShot SD780 IS is available for purchase from B&H Photo and Amazon. (Amazon is currently selling it for $199, which is a pretty good deal.)

Photos used courtesy of Canon.

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Thoughts

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By the way, I’d like to apologize for the frequent and recent server outages. I’m looking into what’s causing them. They started happening as soon as I upgraded to WordPress 2.9. I’d hoped they’d go away with 2.9.1, but they’re still here… I made no other changes on the server side before or immediately after the upgrade, so the only thing I can think of is that 2.9.x has some issues. I disabled all but three essential plugins: Akismet, FeedBurner FeedSmith and WordPress.com Stats, and while my server crashes less frequently now, it still does.

It’s the strangest thing though. The server doesn’t run out of memory, my other sites stay up, Apache stays up, mySQL stays up, and yet raoulpop.com goes down. I’ve tried tweaking and re-tweaking Apache2 and PHP5 and mySQL settings to no avail. The only thing I need to do to bring my site up is to reload Apache2, but it is a very annoying thing indeed. If I had to deal with this thing long-term I’d schedule a cron job to restart Apache every once in a while, but I’ve got something in the works that should eliminate the need for that.

If anyone is having this problem and you’ve got it solved, I’d love to hear how you did it.

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Places

Espresso at Pensiunea Stejarul

A few days ago, on Tuesday, we’d woken up early to drive to Cluj, and we were passing a place I’d often wanted to stop at, but never found the time. The place is called Pensiunea Stejarul, and they’re open 24/7. The setting for this restaurant is quite beautiful. It’s high up on the tallest hill outside the city of Tarnaveni, in the middle of an oak forest.

That day, we had the time. It was freezing outside, it was snowing slowly, we were driving slowly, and wanted to stop and take in the scenery for a bit. So we did. I had an espresso, and Ligia had a tea. My N95 refused to focus properly, and all the photos I got were rubbish. This was the best of the lot.

The espresso was almost great. Much better than this one, but not among the best I’ve ever had.

This is what the restaurant looks like from above, courtesy of Google Maps. And this is their exact location.

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Places

Espresso at Hotel As

The photo you see below doesn’t tell the whole story, but I like photographing espresso cups, what can I say…

It was a little past 6 o’clock in the morning this past Thursday, we’d been driving all night, it was snowing and freezing outside, there was black ice on the road, and we needed some warm breakfast. We stopped at a hotel/restaurant called Hotel As, on E60, between the villages of Tureni and Copaceni, north of Turda, in Transilvania, Romania.

We had scrambled eggs, I had the espresso, Ligia had a tea, and we walked around the restaurant looking at the beautiful paintings they had on the walls, depicting quaint medieval streets and buildings. Unfortunately the waiter couldn’t tell me who the artist was, and didn’t have any contact information for him/her. We wanted to buy one of the paintings.

I suppose I need to rate the espresso: it was barely decent — nothing special, but at least it had a modicum of caffeine to keep me awake. Got a screenshot of the hotel from Google Maps below, and this is their exact location. We’ll probably stop there again at some point in the future — if for no other reason than to look at the paintings once more.

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