Rediscovering Canon cameras

I've had two Canon cameras before. One was a honking giant of a thing that I used for years and then kept packed up in a dark corner for many more years. It was the Pro90 IS, with a long zoom, a flip-out screen, and manual focus capabilities. I bought it in the year 2000 and it cost nearly 4 times as much as the Canon camera I purchased last week. I finally donated it and all the accompanying paraphernalia (batteries, chargers, etc.) to the French charity organization Emmaüs (think Good Will) a month or so ago.

I loved that camera but it was too big to haul around every day. In fact, it once almost got me pick-pocketed in the Paris metro. I think carrying it signaled to a gang of would-be malfaiteurs that I might be a rich American. They started pushing me around and patting me down. I was able to fend them off and start shouting at them in French to alert the other passengers in the metro car to what was happening. They made a clean getaway, but empty-handed.

The second Canon camera I bought was much smaller. It was the Powershot S70. I bought it in 2005. I liked the camera, but it didn't have image stabilization, which is a feature included on the earlier Canon and the several Panasonic Lumix cameras I've owned and enjoyed using over the years. Here's a blog post about all that.

Image stabilization made it possible for me to take this fully zoomed hand-held photo of the moon a couple of mornings ago.

Without optical image stabilization (a built-in gyroscope) it's difficult to take hand-held photos using a long zoom. And I don't see myself hauling a tripod around on my walks in the vineyard with Callie. My first Lumix camera, the TZ3, soon replaced the Canon S70.

Back to the future... and the present, I guess. Here's the camera model I just acquired and started using: the Canon Powershot SX700 HS. I paid just 218 euros for it on Amazon.fr — an amazingly low price considering all the camera's features. It takes full-HD movies and has built-in wi-fi. And it fits in my pocket.

The old heavy Canon Pro90 IS had a 10x zoom. The SX700 has a 30x zoom. Both have or had both automatic and manual focus, and the newer camera has full manual capabilities (which I don't use). The Pro90IS produced much smaller images, even though I don't ever take photos at the largest size — at 16 megapixels they'd be far too large to post on the blog, which is what I take photos for. I stopped printing photos years ago.

Anyway, there you go. I'm happy and I like the images the SX700 produces, which are the ones you see in this post. Here's a page that lists some of the camera's features and specs.

Oh, and by the way, yesterday I got the refund from the Amazon partner vendor from whom I had bought the Panasonic TZ40. Thanks to them, and I'm sorry I had to return it. Fact is, it cost more than the new Canon camera.