hha
Leading Member
A very good point and shoot camera for $99, with great flexibility for advanced photography training.
Plus: Shirt pocket size, about the same the Nikon L11 or the Fuji F11, with a good 3x zoom lens (35-105mm effective) with automatic control. In addition, program and full manual mode allowing control over almost all shooting parameters except focus. Uses AA batteries, large 2.5” LCD with 150K pixels. Good grip for single (right) hand shooting, good audio feedback of focus (when enabled). Bright, well exposed pictures under good outdoors conditions. Pictures as sharp as any 6 Mp camera. Reasonable quick in time to first shot, shutter delay and image replay. Optional display of all camera settings in capture and review mode. Nice 640x480 30 fps movie mode with zoom, stabilization and sound, plus the option to capture selected frames to a 640x480 jpg.
Minus: No optical viewfinder, CCD (presumably Panasonic brand) shows noise starting at iso200, worse at iso400, but this is obvious only when pixel peeping into dark areas under indoors shooting conditions. Advanced Shake Reduction (ASR) is clever, quick to engage with the command wheel, but limited to iso200 and takes 2 seconds per shot. When the battery is empty (red signal) the camera shuts down sometimes without pulling back the lens. Inserting fresh batteries restores everything to normal. Three shot bracketing is available fixed to -1/3, 0, +1/3 EV, but it takes 6 button presses to get there via the screen menu, pictures are taken at 0.3, 1.7 and 3.6 seconds, but the LCD remains off for almost five seconds. Bracketing mode is tuned off when the power is turned off. Continuous mode (at 0.6 frame per second) is also of limited usability since the LCD display is turned off until the shutter is released. There are no customizable buttons.
Problems:
None this far.
Comment added after taking the s630 on a 10 day trip with almost 900 pictures, most taken in 3 Mp Program Auto ISO mode: Very impressed, missed no shots on technical grounds. The ASR mode is very effective down to 1/3 second hand held shots in museums. Got 300 pictures per charge from Duracell 2650 mA*hr NiMH batteries.
Plus: Shirt pocket size, about the same the Nikon L11 or the Fuji F11, with a good 3x zoom lens (35-105mm effective) with automatic control. In addition, program and full manual mode allowing control over almost all shooting parameters except focus. Uses AA batteries, large 2.5” LCD with 150K pixels. Good grip for single (right) hand shooting, good audio feedback of focus (when enabled). Bright, well exposed pictures under good outdoors conditions. Pictures as sharp as any 6 Mp camera. Reasonable quick in time to first shot, shutter delay and image replay. Optional display of all camera settings in capture and review mode. Nice 640x480 30 fps movie mode with zoom, stabilization and sound, plus the option to capture selected frames to a 640x480 jpg.
Minus: No optical viewfinder, CCD (presumably Panasonic brand) shows noise starting at iso200, worse at iso400, but this is obvious only when pixel peeping into dark areas under indoors shooting conditions. Advanced Shake Reduction (ASR) is clever, quick to engage with the command wheel, but limited to iso200 and takes 2 seconds per shot. When the battery is empty (red signal) the camera shuts down sometimes without pulling back the lens. Inserting fresh batteries restores everything to normal. Three shot bracketing is available fixed to -1/3, 0, +1/3 EV, but it takes 6 button presses to get there via the screen menu, pictures are taken at 0.3, 1.7 and 3.6 seconds, but the LCD remains off for almost five seconds. Bracketing mode is tuned off when the power is turned off. Continuous mode (at 0.6 frame per second) is also of limited usability since the LCD display is turned off until the shutter is released. There are no customizable buttons.
Problems:
None this far.
Comment added after taking the s630 on a 10 day trip with almost 900 pictures, most taken in 3 Mp Program Auto ISO mode: Very impressed, missed no shots on technical grounds. The ASR mode is very effective down to 1/3 second hand held shots in museums. Got 300 pictures per charge from Duracell 2650 mA*hr NiMH batteries.