By Mikee dela Cruz
June 1, 2010

Jennifer Imus (jenniferimus. com), based in Orange County, California, juggles professional photography with motherhood, not necessarily an easy task since, “as a mom, I am typically carrying 40 other things with me to events at school or the soccer game on Saturday,” she was quoted as saying.

Thus, while she brings out her pro-gear often, Imus is first to say that she has gotten many “frame-worthy shots” with her “little camera”: the point-and-shoot (P&S) Canon PowerShot SD790. Usually keeping the setting at auto ISO since “I am usually shooting on the fly,” the best thing about going P&S is that “I never miss the shot since it’s always with me.

” While many of her friends still get surprised when she brings out her P&S, Imus was actually only one of the professional photographers surveyed by Grover Sanschagrin, a founder of PhotoShelter and SportsShooter. com, to ascertain if the pros really use pointand shoot cameras. Through an “unscientific research” using Facebook and Twitter, as Sanschagrin dubbed his approach, over 50 pros stated their P&S camera of choice. And these pros are heavyweights, including, among others, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers David Hume Kennerly and Brian Smith, “Strobist” David Hobby, adventure photographer Corey Rich, and advertising photographer Tom Hussey.

That it is not the deemed “high techie-ness” of a camera, but how it is used, is the underlying lesson that can be had here. This, too, is why P&S cameras continue to be popular. At the end of 2010, the Consumer Electronics Association noted that similar to the answering machine, the desktop calculator and the Rolodex, P&S cameras have lost the favors of many, no thanks to the growing use of multipurpose smartphones. However, in the US alone, 82% still own P&S cameras. Mainly, while smartphones allow for the instant emailing (thus sharing) of photographs, P&S cameras still have such advantages as the image stabilization feature, and larger lenses and sensors. Also, particularly with newer models, higher resolutions enable even the cheaper P&S units to be as good as the more expensive higher-end models. The NPD Group Inc. noted that as of March 2010, up to 92% of all digital cameras sold (including digital P&S and DSLRs) had 10 megapixels or more.

Even if minimal, growth in sales continue to be noted for P&S cameras – by 2% in March 2010 compared to the year before then (when sales were actually 20% lower compared to 2008 figures), according to NPD Group Inc. Research firm GfK, meanwhile, pegged the growth at the end of 2010 twice that figure (at 4%), still respectable considering that as noted by Flickr.com, citing the most commonly used cameras when uploading in its Web site, this is a market that is “polarizing towards smartphones and higher-end DSLRs.” After the iPhone, the most commonly used cameras on Flickr are a selection of Canon and Nikon branded DSLRs.

Out to buy a P&S camera yet? Not so fast!

According to SquareTrade Inc., worth knowing is that on average, 10.7% of digital cameras fail within two years, and 15.6% are projected to fail within three years (See Figure 1). Of these failures, 6.6% come from malfunctions, and 4.1% experience damage due to accidents.

Not surprisingly, according to SquareTrade Inc., more expensive cameras (in the US, those over $300) proved to be more reliable than the cheaper units (See Figure 2).

Speaking of brands, SquareTrade Inc. put Panasonic on top, leading the P&S cameras under $300 studied, with a failure rate just above 5% (5.3%) in a two-year period. Its more expensive units ($300 to $500) fared even better (only 2% failure rate).

Fujifilm, Olympus, Sony and Canon also did well, with failure rates pegged at around 6% (See Figure 3).

At the bottom are Polaroid and Casio, with malfunction rates at 11.9% and 13.0%, respectively.

All the same, armed with the right knowledge, a P&S camera may prove to be a good investment.

Pulitzer Prize winner Brian Smith, participating in the PhotoShelter and SportsShooter.com’s Sanschagrin informal survey, said that while his Sony NEX-5 is not “really a P&S,” but that it mimics one, able to hide an APS sensor in a P&S size package, makes it appealing. “I love being able to just toss it in my bag or slip it in a pocket and shoot without attracting attention,” he was quoted as saying.

And with shooting high-resolution photographs on the go now a norm – with smartphones not just there yet in offering what digital cameras can do – P&S cameras will remain a must-have.

October 2, 2009

Budget Cam with Good Mainstream Features
By Luis Anthony G. Oliveros
Published in the August 2009 print edition of PC World Philippines

Canon PowerShot A480
P9,450
www.canon.com.ph

Released during the first quarter of this year as an update to the PowerShot A470, the Canon PowerShot A480 is definitely for those who want good quality photos from their digital cameras at an affordable price but can do without having to tweak the camera settings for every shot. Frankly, it’s not really the prettiest kid in the playground with its boxy exteriors but it does carry the stylish toy camera vibe with a choice of metallic blue, black, silver and red variants and complemented by pale silver trimmings. With its 92.1x62x31.1mm profile tipping the scale at just 140g, this point-and-shooter has an excellent build quality and is compact enough for packing in most pockets and bags and it feels solidly comfortable in your hand during use. It even slaps in a subtly raised metallic sheet to its left side panel to offer a better grip.

The power button and the shutter are naturally located on top of the unit while a battery compartment (for two AA batteries) is at the bottom along with the memory card slot. The controls at the back have been kept to a minimum with a zoom rocker, a playback button, the Mode and Menu buttons and a five-way D-pad. This button layout is pretty basic and simple, offering an intuitive usage even for newbies. The D-pad is essentially for navigating through the camera’s unfussy graphic user interface, giving you access to the cam’s features, functions and settings. Next to these is the 2.5-inch LCD display which doesn’t pack in a lot in terms of screen resolution, with a pixel count of just 115,000 dots with the resulting images appearing a tad bit grainy at the very least. Despite this, it has considerably good horizontal viewing angles though we find it a challenge to view outdoors on a bright day.

Typically found in point-and-shooters and compact cameras, the A480 has the standard Auto shooting mode accompanied by 12 preset scene modes to choose from and includes the usual array of options such as Portrait, Night Snapshot and Indoor among others. However, if you’re feeling a little bold and you think the settings could use a little tweaking, you can always switch to the Program shooting mode. This mode gives you free reign over your still photos, allowing you to make adjustments to the ISO (which ranges from 80 to 1600), white balance (with six preconfigured ratings) and color effects, among others.

This cam features a quick start up where you’re good to go roughly a second after hitting the power button. During usage, we noticed a gap between shots when we enabled the Continuous Shooting mode in bright environments while a slower four-second idle time were spent between shots recharging the built-in flash when we enabled it. Also worth mentioning is the lack of any form of image stabilization or even a decent mode for capturing action shots, so if you want to capture photos or videos of the latest live sporting events, you may want to check out other digital camera models lest you risk capturing a generally healthy amount of motion blurred images.

The A480 has a maximum resolution of 10 megapixels and is accompanied by a 3.3x optical zoom, which is a distinct upgrade its previous seven-megapixel predecessor, the A470. It yielded considerably good quality photos in JPEG during our tests. Indoor shots produced bright images with good clarity and colors that pop. The blacks, however, looked a little pale than they ought to be. For outdoor pictures, on the other hand, we noticed a subtle deficiency in terms of sharpness with some of the brightly lit areas of the shot looking too soft and exhibiting some amount of noise. Some of the colors, particularly cool ones like blue and green, also looked bland but modifying the settings further remedies this.

Aside from taking still shots, the A480 does an OK job with videos which it churns out in the AVI format at 30fps. But again, without image stabilization, we got a handful of jitters and sudden movements like quick pans and tilts resulted in somewhat blurry scenes when we took it for a test run. This shouldn’t be an issue if you plan to just set it up to continuously shoot from a single angle with a tripod sturdily propping it up, but it’s trial and error if you’re doing the cam-in-hand route. The integrated mic proved to be sensitive enough to pick up sounds, albeit with a tinny quality, even from eight feet away.

To sum it up, the Canon PowerShot A480 is a straightforward entry-level point-and-shooter, with a nice balance of mainstream features that produces good quality photos and decent videos at a price that won’t break the bank. It’s an excellent starting point for first-time digital camera users like students who want to jumpstart photography as a hobby.