New Canon DigiCam

I got sick of my 7.2MP Casio EX Z750 point and shoot, because the lens kept giving me errors when turning on and the damn thing didn't autofocus correctly. I lost too many good shots, because of the autofocus and decided enough was enough. Yes, I installed new firmware on the Casio, but no dice.

So, I started looking into what kind of comparable cameras there were out there. The Casio was 2 years old, so I wanted something with better resolution, anti-shake tech, and an underwater housing option. I also wanted something small and easy for my wife to use. One of the challenges in Japan is coming up with English reviews on the models available here, as often different names are used for the same gear elsewhere or sometimes completely different camera lines. Fortunately, all the major companies' cameras can be switched to English menus. I also found great reviews and information on digital cameras at the Digital Camera Resource Page. 

After my initial foray to Yodobashi, and coming home with a pile of brochures - I settled on a set of cameras: Fujifilm F40fd, Canon IXY 810 IS, Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3, and Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33. 

I shied away from Casio cameras - I couldn't bear to get another lemon, and I wasn't thrilled by the options for UW housings. I also shied away from Olympus. Their µ (Stylus) series cameras look awful, and the controls felt awkward. Plus the options for housings limited, as most of their point and shoots are waterproof to 3 meters. Oh, and Sony was no-go. Too expensive and I'm not doing the MagicStick thing again.

My decision wasn't easy. I favored the Fuji F40fd's controls and handling the most. Unfortunately, it lacks any image stabilization. [Its new replacement, the F50fd, apparently does have it... oh well.] The Panasonic TZ-3 has an awesome zoom (10X) but only 7MP resolution and too big for the point/shoot category. The Panasonic FX33 looked very nice, and came in several colors. Panasonic's image stabilization tech is rated very high too. However, they don't come with any Mac software AFAIK and the options on the menus left something to be desired. Furthermore, both cameras have USB 1.0 NOT 2.0! Unbelievable. That was the killer for me. Furthermore, you had to use a hard switch to access macro-mode - limiting your options (auto vs. manual).

So, I decided to go with the Canon. Considering I have a digivideo camcorder and a new multifunction printer from them - I felt fairly confident.

The IXY 810 is also known as the IXUS 950 IS and the PowerShot SD850 IS Digital Elph; I believe the latter is the model name in the US. It was announced in May of this year, and is an 8.0MP camera with 4X optical zoom. From the moment I popped in the battery after charging it - I was fairly impressed. 

Some points to ponder:

• I had thought the controls were a bit awkward - but after a bit I found I was incorrect. Basic controls can be accessed by slightly flexing a ring in the direction of the icon you want, and these expand a bit on the LCD screen. Nice touch! 
• You change shooting modes (play, auto, manual, scene, & movie) by using a partly exposed knurled dial. This seems a bit flimsy, compared to other models I saw. There also doesn't seem to be an audio recording mode (though I never used this on my Casio). The 810 IS also has an optical viewfinder, which I thought was important on the Casio - but I never used it.
• Taking photos is easy and quick (get a fast SD card), and the camera makes a satisfying clunk sound when you take the shot. This audio feedback is really useful, for those of us who used film cameras in the past. Probably other cameras have this, but I don't recall it on my two previous digital cameras. 
• The face recognition is fantastic. I was aiming my camera at my daughter today, and she kept moving around bouncing her head up and down. The white face square followed her head across the screen. 
• Image stabilization works well too, though without a flash it has a tough time in low light levels. I played with the manual setting and cranked up the ISO to the max - 1600. It took photos in very limited light, but the image was quite grainy. I think this is to be expected, though. I'll have to play with manual mode more to see its limits.
• Movie mode is nice (640x480) and allows me to zoom while shooting. (Many cameras don't let you zoom movies...). Also, images stayed relatively in focus upon zooming. This wasn't true for my Casio. However, I'm not sure I prefer the .avi format over the .mp4 format in my Casio.
• The IXY 810 IS uses a rechargeable battery, but it doesn't seem to be chargeable in the camera itself. You have to pull it out and pop it into the included battery charger. This means that when your camera runs out of battery, you can't plug it in to keep power in it.
• Another issue I had was with the 2Gb Panasonic Class 6 SD card I used for storage. This SD card won't mount on my Macs via a card reader after formatting on teh IXY 810 IS. In fact, you can't even reformat it via Disk Utility. So, the only way I can move content to my computers is via the USB connector and the Canon Camera Transfer software. This means you have to have a working battery to transfer photos. This is annoying, but I wonder if it is truly an issue for the Canon or for the card. I don't recall having these issues with the same card on my Casio - but my memory's a bit hazy.
• The third problem I have is with the macro and flash. If you use macro mode, the lens barrel actually blocks part of the flash! So you get this shadow over one corner of the image. Maybe I shouldn't be using flash anyway with macro mode. However, I imagine flash will be useful for underwater macro shots. Lets hope the flash diffuser helps with this.
  

Printer Predicament Over

This is a follow-up I didn't get around to until a couple folks asked me about what I bought. I was trying to choose between the HP5180 and the Canon MP600 multifunction printers.

I chose the MP600, mostly for the reasons I indicated here. My wife picked up the printer for me from Yodobashi Camera, a major electronics retailer in Japan that sells much more than just cameras. They had a 'points' campaign and were giving 20% value in points for various printers. [Usually it is 5-10%. With 20%, I get ¥4000 I can use towards a future purchase or this one.] I was surprised when she called me from the shop and asked if I sure I wanted the Pixus and not the Pixma. This confused me, as I thought I had told her the wrong printer. The sales person told her that the Japanese version is Pixus (export model is Pixma), apparently because they use a different kind of ink. So, I have to buy all my ink from Japanese retailers - no biggie. Apparently there aren't any other differences between the Pixma/Pixus MP-600, at least functionally. The only differences I could see was that they did include the CDROM tray, for printing on CDROM disks, as well as a USB cable. My understanding is that both of these are absent from export models of the MP-600. The other difference is that the bundled OCR software only has Japanese menus (no other install options). Otherwise, the print drivers are in English, and you can use English on the LED menu.

Set up was fairly easy, thought the MP-600 has a rather large footprint. You can put paper in two different feeders: the vertical sheet feeder and the horizontal paper cassette. You can switch between the two with the click of a button on the printer itself. Or you can select from within the print dialog box. This is handy, as we need to print in both US Letter and A4 size paper. However, my guess is that most folks will put some sort of photo paper in the cassette. Scanner function works well, and calls up an app called "MP-Navigator" which saves it to file on your hard drive or opens it, depending on the option you choose.

Print speed is actually so-so. It takes a few seconds to wake up the printer, so if its your first print in a while - this slows the process down. You can choose 'duplex' mode from the print dialog box. I like this, but duplex printing is even slower. Quality of printed pages is good, though I didn't make a lot of comparisons. Although I can easily connect the printer to my AirPort Express, you can only print via airport and cannot use the other functions like scanning to the computer, or downloading photos from a memory card. With an airport connection, you also cannot access the printer utility from your computer. However, these functions can be accessed easily from the printer's LED menu itself.

We had a bit of a scare when printing our first photograph on photo paper. I loaded the cassette with some Epson 4x6 glossy photo paper and gave it a shot. [Loading the cassette was a bitch, so I may try by feeder next time.] The first photo we printed looked.... awful. I began to wonder if ignoring the directions to use only Canon paper broke my printer. My wife noticed that I had printed on the wrong side, and began to berate me. I wondered how this could be, and we discovered that you had to load the cassette with the printing side of your media face down. WTF! That seems bass-ackwards to me. However, once we printed on the correct side of the paper - we were both very impressed with the results. [And Epson paper works just fine...].

Another nicety we noticed is that if the front door from the printer is up, the printer will open the door automatically so that the output has some place to go. Nice touch! We also like that we can close the LED flap to save space, and that the printer puts the LED and other functions into a sleep mode. I'll take the trade-off for warm up time if we can save energy.

I haven't had the chance to try photocopy function, card slots, pict bridge, or even direct download from camera yet. My guess is that we won't use these much - but we will see.

In any case, we are quite happy with the new printer. Having everything networkable would be great, but the slow file transfer speeds via ethernet (or heaven forbid airport) would be a drag. Now I have to figure out if I have an open USB port on my iMac or whether I should just leave it as an Airport printer.

So, the Canon MP-600 gets a MacKenchi "Thumbs Up" for now. Let's see if it stands the test of time.