An interesting camera – Canon PowerShot SX40 HS

[Mike Oxford]

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2011/09/15/canonsx40hs
(Yeah, it's been out for almost a year.)

My wife bought it to replace the G9 I bought her a very long while back. I was surprised at just how far cameras have come, as I'm shooting an old APS-C Nikon D200.

The 35x optical zoom was pretty impressive, and approximately equivalent to an 800mm lens. And it worked with the 1080p HD video recording.

No manual-zoom, no manual aperture, not a true SLR. However, it's if you want something "better" than P&S but don't have the inclination or cash or weight for a true SLR with fast glass, check it out.

Almost makes me want to switch from the Dark Side to the Light Side and see what Canon's new SLRs can do…but I just bought new gear and if I put down on an SLR set I'd be camping outside, right next to the doghouse, for the next year. (Although, that doesn't sound too bad… :)

-mox

[Bob Gross]

It won't record image files in RAW or TIF. That's a show-stopper.

–B.G.–

[drowning in spam]

It has manual aperture. Do you mean mechanical aperture?

If you want manual aperture, manual zoom and RAW, get a Fujifilm HS30EXR. The Fujifilm is heavy though. These cameras aren't far from the price of a Pentax DSLR kit. The Fujifilm X-S1 is even more like a DSLR, but it costs more than a Pentax DSLR kit.

[Mike Oxford]

Well, that's perspective and one of your tradeoffs.

For many people it's not about setting up those shots and doing lots of post-processing.

For you, it is.
For me, it is.

It doesn't mean that it's a showstopper or a bad camera by any means.

-mox

[Doric Swain]

Bob G. Wrote:

"It won't record image files in RAW or TIF. That's a show-stopper."

If you're eager, you can take RAW with chdk, available for this model.

Skibug

[Daniel Fish]

…

[Bob Gross]

Some simpler cameras take the light data off the digital sensor, then process it directly into a JPEG image format for storage. JPEG is a compressed format, so there are little tiny bits of image data that get discarded.

With a more complex camera, you can store JPEG images the same way. Or, more likely, you can store them as TIFF format or else as RAW format. TIFF is uncompressed, so no image data is discarded, but it is a much larger file size. RAW is the raw data coming off the digital sensor, so it needs to be converted (on your computer) into one of the more typical formats, TIFF or JPEG. The advantage of RAW is that the converter allows the photographer to "tweak" some aspects of the image such as exposure, contrast, color saturation, sharpening, light temperature, etc.

The advantage of that is that the photographer can tweak the image and then convert it to TIFF or JPEG with less destructive impact as would be the case with direct JPEG. So, I have RAW files coming out of the camera. Those get converted into TIFF for purity. Then some are converted into JPEG after tweaking is finished and it is ready for publication.

If you are only making snapshots for the web, then none of this matters. If you are trying to take an 18 megapixel image and blow it up to 20"x30", then it matters a lot.

–B.G.–

[Daniel Fish]

…

[Bob Gross]

Don't be confused. There is another person on this forum who is using my name. He must be ashamed of his own identity, I guess.

–B.G.–

[Michael K]

The newer 2012 model, the 50HS allows for RAW images. I was actually recently looking into this camera for pictures and video. The 60 HS should be coming soon and i'm waiting to see how it looks,

[Author]

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