Canon PowerShot A50Canon's "Digital ELPHs" goes megapixel plus - great picture quality, superb portability!<<Image Storage & Interface :(Previous) | (Next): Test Results & Conclusion>> Page 11:Video, Power, SoftwareReview First Posted: 7/10/1999 |
Video Out
Like many digicams these days, the PowerShot A50 provides a video output signal,
so you can view captured images on a TV (provided it has a raw-video input jack).
The US/Canadian model we tested produced an NTSC signal: Presumably European
units support the PAL standard. One nice feature of the A50 when running a "slide
show" via the video port is that you can rotate pictures in memory. Thus,
images shot in "portrait" mode can be displayed with the proper orientation
on the TV monitor. - This is a very useful feature that we'd like to see on
more digicams.
On the down side, the video signal isn't active when the camera is in either
capture mode (Auto or Program). This means you can't use an external monitor
as a viewfinder, although this may not be an issue for anyone but studio photographers.
(Funny, isn't it, how we view a feature like this as lacking, when nothing like
the function ever existed in the film world!)
Power
The power supply of the PowerShot A50 is a bit different than most digicams.
It ships with a 2CR5 lithium battery (non-rechargeable), which they claim should
be good for about 70 shots with the LCD display on, 500 shots with it off, or
100 minutes of image playback. Given the high cost of the 2CR5 batteries, we
wouldn't recommend them as a normal power source, but they make an excellent
backup, given their exceptional shelf-life.
Alternatively, Canon sells a NiMH battery
pack/recharger/power adapter kit separately for the camera, as their model number
NP-100. The battery in this kit has a capacity of only 650 mAh, a rather low
rating when compared with a set of 4 AA NiMH cells (which typically provide
about 1300 mAh). We were surprised then, by how well the Canon battery pack
seemed to last in actual use. (Canon claims it has a capacity of 70 shots with
the LCD on, 280 with it off, and 70 minutes of image playback.) We suspect that
the discrepancy between its capacity in mAh and it's apparent longevity in the
camera may have to do with the total energy it provides: AA NiMH batteries produce
a voltage of 1.2v each, or 4.8v for a set of four. The Canon battery pack though,
puts out 6 volts, a 25% increase in voltage. Since power is the product of voltage
and current, the 650 mAh of the Canon battery should be more equivalent to AA
cells with a capacity of 813 mAh: While still not up to a set of AAs, it isn't
as far behind as you'd initially think. The A50 also appears to be a fairly
low-power camera, relative to other units we've tested (see below.)
An interesting component of the optional battery pack/charger setup is the power
adapter ("DC Coupler") it includes. This gadget looks like a battery
pack with a tail - it fits inside the battery compartment, with the "tail"
feeding out through a small sliding hatch on the side of the camera. We saw
a similar system in the earlier A5 model, and generally like it: There's no
way the power cord could accidentally pop out of the camera jack. On the other
hand, you'll want to be careful not to trip over the power cord, as it'll yank
the tripod over before it pulls loose from the camera!
We've just recently begun measuring actual power consumption of digicams, to
try to introduce some objectivity to the topic. Now, rather than vague impressions
of how long a camera can run on a set of batteries, we'll be able to see just
how much power the cameras use in each operating mode. Overall, the A50 had
lower power consumption in non-LCD and image-playback modes than other cameras
we've checked recently. Other operating modes appear fairly typical. (We've
tested several of the recent 2-megapixel digicams, but haven't reported on them
as yet, wanting to develop a consistent approach first. From this point on though,
we should be featuring power consumption figures pretty regularly.) Here's a
table showing power consumption in various modes ("mA" means "milliamps",
or 1/1000 of an ampere of current):
|
|
|
| Capture Mode, w/LCD |
|
| Capture Mode, w/o LCD |
|
| Half-pressed shutter, no LCD |
|
| Memory Write (Transient) |
|
| Flash Recharge (Transient) |
|
| Image Playback |
|
| "Sleep" Mode (Auto power-down) |
|
In looking at these figures, it seems that Canon's claim of 70 minutes of continuous
playback is fairly conservative, given the battery's rating of 650 mAh (that's
milliamp-hours, or 650 milliamps for an hour). The raw capacity of the battery
would suggest that it should be able to power the camera in playback mode for
a full 100 minutes or so (650mAh divided by 380 mA, times 60 minutes/hour).
This shortfall is typical of digicams, due to their very high current drains:
Most battery life-tests are performed at the so-called "0.1C" rate,
with a drain of 1/10th of their capacity. In the case of the Canon battery,
this would correspond to a test load of 65 mA, less than 20% of the load the
camera itself draws in playback mode. Overall, Canon's battery-lifetime claims
seem pretty reasonable, given the measurements we made.
IMPORTANT NOTE: We're embarassed to report that the same power-interlock
switch that momentarily stymied us with the PowerShot A5 did the same to us
on the A50! The battery-compartment cover has a "lock" slider next
to it (see photo at right) that keeps it from accidentally opening. It turns
out this lock is also a power switch: The camera won't turn on unless it's in
the "locked" position! Don't be fooled (as we were for at least a
few moments) into thinking that the camera is dead after you've first installed
the battery: Check the lock to make sure it's not preventing battery power from
reaching the camera!
Included Software
Canon is unusual in the amount of private-labeled software they provide with
their cameras. We're generally a bit leery of private-label programs, but Canon's
are excellent. The overall application suite favors the Windows operating system,
but all key functions are available on the Mac as well. Commercial applications
bundled with the PowerShot A50 include Adobe's PhotoDeluxe version 3.0 for Windows
and version 2.0 for the Mac, and Ulead's PhotoImpact 4.2 (Windows only).Canon's
own products in clude the panorama and matrix-stitching program PhotoStitch
(version 2.3 for both Windows and Mac), an unusual "album" photo-organizer
program called TimeTunnel (version 2.4 for Windows, 1.6 for Mac), SlideShow
Maker (version 1.3 for both Windows and Mac), an application for assembling
slide shows to upload back to the camera for playback via the video output,
and ZoomBrowser version 1.1 for Windows only. In addition, there are TWAIN drivers
for the PC, and a Photoshop acquire module for the Mac, both version 2.4.
We didn't try all of the applications, but did play with the TWAIN drivers
and ZoomBrowser on the PC a fair bit. Overall, these are very functional programs,
and we liked the level of photo management that ZoomBrowser provided. The screen
shot above shows the main ZoomBrowser screen, which provides a range of capabilities,
essentially a mini-database program for image organization.
This shot shows the user interface of the TWAIN acquire module used by ZoomBrowser,
and also for importing images from the camera into other applications.
The TWAIN acquire module is used by ZoomBrowser as the means to acquire images
from either the camera directly or from disk. Many other programs on the Windows
platform can also use TWAIN to acquire images without passing through ZoomBrowser
or an imaging application as well. Important note: We found that the TWAIN driver
produced somewhat different color and tonal characteristics when importing from
the "CCD Raw" formatted image files than the camera produced in its
own JPEG-formatted ones. This could be very useful for more professional applications,
as we felt that the color from the TWAIN/CCD Raw images was a bit less-saturated
and more natural, and the tonal range a bit greater than in the camera-produced
JPEG files. (See the discussion below under "Test Results.")
A screenshot of the unique "Time Tunnel" image-organizer: Images
appear spiral away into space, distance along the "tunnel" indicating
distance in time when they were originally taken. (Definitely one of the more
unusual software interfaces we've seen.)
This is a shot of the PowerStitch panorama/stitching application. It appears
to work quite well, and will stitch horizontally, vertically, or in 2x2 matrices,
to boost the effective resolution of the camera to something closer to 4 megapixels.
The shots shown on-screen here show widely different exposures, due to the clouds
that were racing by that day, casting intermittent shadows over the scene.
The SlideShow Maker program (shown above) was probably the least-compelling of the lot, but does solve the problem of uploading images back to the camera for a slide show that have been modified by other applications. (Most imaging programs use a different variant of the JPEG standard than do digicams, so photos that have been manipulated on the PC won't display again on the camera.) SlideShow Maker circumvents this problem by re-processing images back to the camera's format.
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