Thread: Canon EOS 550D

ah I reckon I seen that, I am a member of another forum that deals in photography, this old feller showed half a dozen or more piccys of flowers with various number of photos stacked, in one he had 134 images, incredible, hell I reckon i got better things to do in my day, but the result was brilliant! a terrific hobby but one that I cant master, too many variables

Originally Posted by crowie

Thanks Dave, I had a quick look and noted the zoom is only 5 while the XS30 IS is 35zoom and the XS20 IS is 20zoom. Have you heard or read any reports on either of these as I know she wants the high zoom function for photos from the stadium onto a preformer. Cheers, Crowie

What brand is the "XS30 IS"?

When I put "XS30 IS" into google it tells me there is a Toshiba DVD recorder by that name but that is all.

Do you mean IXUS?

Digital (and video) camera with those massive zoom number are complete con. They do it by a combination of digital and optical zoom but digital zoom is not worth much for still photography.

G'Day BobL,
It a new series Cannon Digital Point & Shot.
Sorry for the stuff up as I got the first two letters back to front.
Cheers, Crowie.
Canon - SX30 IS

Originally Posted by crowie

G'Day BobL,
It a new series Cannon Digital Point & Shot.
Sorry for the stuff up as I got the first two letters back to front.
Cheers, Crowie.
Canon - SX30 IS

OK I see it - yep 35 x optical and 4 times digital, pretty amazing.

What I like about it is that it is P&S but it also has a fully manual capability.

It's max aperture at max zoom is F/6 and it's Max ISO is 1600 (but above ISO 400 the XS range are ordinary performers - the CCD is just too small and therefore noisy) which means it needs much more light to take photos at high zoom that a DSLR. I 'd like to see how good the Image Stabilization is at those high zooms, since few people cannot hold a camera still enough to get a shake fee picture above about 10x zoom.

A couple of other limitations are, stated battery life is 280 pics (I'll bet it will be closer to 200 for newbies because the chimping factor will be high) and no optical viewfinder (i hate that) which is why the battery life is ordinary. At full telephoto the lens is moved a very long way from the body - there's no way they can make that mechanism robust enough for anything that's expected to last but then again these camera's have a 5 year lifetime and then you usually buy another. There is no overall Zoom time stated but for the previous model it was a frustrating ~1.5 seconds.

Nevertheless, despite all of this, it still represents very good value for money - and a nice half way house between a basic P&S and a DSLR, in fact the SX20 IS might make a good Xmas present for SWMBO.

Originally Posted by Dave50

ah I reckon I seen that, I am a member of another forum that deals in photography, this old feller showed half a dozen or more piccys of flowers with various number of photos stacked, in one he had 134 images, incredible, hell I reckon i got better things to do in my day, but the result was brilliant! a terrific hobby but one that I cant master, too many variables

Re- photography, I reckon we are on the same forum and both from SA

probably so, upper mid north for me at the base of the flinders, I drop in to the other joint under the name of "northerner", my guess for your habitat... I would say around Edithburgh, nice spot, we met a big Maori down there when we were walking back along the jetty, I said G'day, hoping he wouldn't eat me, he said howdy, he had a snorkel and flippers, I asked what he was after and he told us to drop back in five, we didn't, we just went to our camper and had a cuppa, he came back with a seafood platter and shouted to us to come down and have a bight, it was some of the freshest and tastiest tucker I'd ever had, we sat down with him and his umpteen dozen kids in the park just back from the jetty and spent a lovely couple of hours with them,

those pic's that the bloke put in were amazing but hell 134, I would be in tears before then! I have just started focus stacking in macro but really haven't the time to commit!