2023 Weekly Challenge Week 4 - Canon Powershot SX720HS

This week's review is for a camera I do not personally own, but was borrowed from a friend who graciously let me use it for my weekly project and review: A Canon Powershot SX720 HS.

Released in 2016 the SX720 has one of the longest optical zooms for a compact pocket camera, 40x; a range that typically is reserved for the much larger bridge camera ultrazooms.  Obviously to get this much zoom in such a small package there are some compromises, but compared to a lot of other pocket cameras those compromises aren't too bad.

It has a 20mp 1/2.3" CMOS sensor which is pretty standard in a lot of pocket cameras of this era. It does have BSI illumination, a technology that came out around the era of the Canon Powershot S100 which makes a slight improvement in ISO noise though in many circumstances its not noticeable.  

The noise is about "average" for a small sensor pocket camera, meaning you can push it to about ISO 400-800 before it starts falling apart.  With built in Image Stabilization you can still get indoor photos without a flash even if it doesn't have the fastest aperture lens so long as the subject isn't moving.  That said, the IS wasn't as good as the IS in the Panasonic ZS50, a competing ultrazoom pocket camera to the 720 HS that I will cover in another review.

In the hand the camera feels nice and solid.  It is not lightweight and plasticky (like the Panasonic ZS50) but there were other factors for me to consider.

It has aperture/shutter priority and manual modes but it has a limited aperture range and can't shoot in RAW. It also lacks a front control ring that many premium pocket cameras in it price range include (like the ZS50).

Overall it was pretty responsive and it could parse the range of its zoom really quickly; which is a major factor for a camera with a 20-40x zoom. 

This camera did a lot of things just okay and left me with a feeling of wishing it could do just a little bit more like the ZS50 does.  The Image Stabilization was okay, but it could be better.  The Macro mode was functional but struggled at times.The images themselves looked okay, and were a little flat with some pretty hard limits with a pretty terrible Dynamic Range to how much I could touch them up since I could not shoot in RAW.

I have plenty of other cameras that certainly do a lot better job at a lot of aspects this camera comes up short on, minus of course the zoom.  So in the end this camera winds up just having a really good optical zoom but is it enough for me to want one?  I don't think so.

I'll give this a 6.5 out of 10.  It was certainly good enough that if I had more time with it I could learn its quirks better and get some nice shots with it.  But other then having a nice build and a good zoom it felt pretty uninspired to me. 

I do have several cameras in my collection that I'd pick first if I was going to go out for a shoot with a pocketable camera with a good zoom. The Panasonic ZS50 is likely the best example as while it has 10x less optical zoom (when you get past 20x that 10x doesn't make as much of a difference as you think) it makes up for that shortcoming over the Canon Powershot SX720. 

I have a few friends who have this camera and love it; but it doesn't feel me. And for what this camera still sells for and is worth I can't excuse the money to buy this one or pick another one up.  It just isn't me.

And now onto the edited versions of the photos I took with this camera. As with before with some touchups I can get some decent photos but you can tell some of the shortcomings mainly in the blown out regions in a few of these photos that I was unable to recover due to a limited Dynamic Range and no RAW capability.

2023 Weekly Challenge Week 3- Olympus XZ-1

In the early 2010s the Olympus XZ-1 and XZ-2 were among of the best pocket cameras you could buy. 

Both models feature two control wheels (a customizable wheel around the front of the lens that clicks with each rotation and the standard one surrounding the 4 way navigation stick on the back), could shoot in Full Manual and Priority modes, had RAW shooting capabilities, a hotshoe for mounting external flashes or some branded Olympus accessories (such as a periscope style EVF attachment or GPS module) and to top it off a huge, bright f1.8-f2.5 zoom lens which even to date is one of the fastest zoom lenses you can get on a pocket camera.

It's not a pants pocket camera as the lens sticks out quite a bit. Additionally the lens has no built in dust/scratch shutter that folds over the lens when the camera is turned off so just like a mirrorless body or bridge camera you need to cover the lens with the provided lens cap or buy a third party folding cap that screws in the lens' accessory ring.

The XZ-1 has a 1/1.7 inch 10 megapixel CCD sensor.  Before the advent of the 1" pocket camera sensor a 1/1.7 was one of the biggest sensors you could get on a compact camera and was the gold standard for premium point and shoot cameras like the Olympus XZ-1, Panasonic LX5 or the Canon Powershot S95. 

As with many non Bayer CCD sensors the images taken with the camera have extremely high color saturation and contrast.  This sensor did, however have pretty terrible dynamic range so it really struggles with shadows. It also struggles going above ISO 800 (but it is really clean up to that point). However in even lighting it can get some really great shots.

10mp was low in resolution at the time;  however this was done to make the sensor a little less pixel dense and make the photosites slightly more sensitive (we see this in some modern cameras like the Sony A7S and Panasonic GH5S).  It's still plenty of resolution for web posting with enough wiggle room to do small crops and still have decent web-sized photos.

I bought my first XZ-1 used in 2012 and at that time it was remarkable having about the relative image quality and controls of my first DSLR in such a small package. It was my first really solid pocket camera; up to that point any of my pocket cameras were pretty meh and if I wanted a photo that looked decent I had to lug out my DSLR. 

The Olympus XZ-1 bridged this gap and put the joy into shooting pocket cameras for me.  Since then I've had newer, better pocket cameras like the Panasonic LX100 (which broke), Sony RX100 (first generation) and my current 1" sensor does everything sidearm the Panasonic ZS100. In essence the XZ-1 was the grandfather to the Panasonic ZS100 that I now carry almost everywhere when the weather is pleasant. Its still a capable and fun to shoot camera under the right conditions.

The Olympus XZ-1 is quick and responsive, and gets really sharp high quality images just at a lower resolution then we're used to in the modern era. But for web sharing its more then enough.  

The two biggest limiting factors for me is the limited 4x optical zoom and the inability to shoot above ISO 400-800 which is helped somewhat by its fast lens; meaning I can still use it indoors and get reasonable photos at lower ISO since the lens can let in more light.

I have a lot of fond memories shooting this camera a decade ago, and its still a joy to shoot to this day. It often becomes my pocket camera I carry during winter months when I don't want to risk losing something more expensive to a slip and fall or dropping it on the driveway because it fell out of my jacket pocket and later getting run over on the street (this happened with my first Panasonic ZS100.  May it Rest in Pieces).

So with that, enjoy a few photos I took on the Olympus XZ-1 on the third week of Jan in 2023. A pocket camera that may be over a decade old but is still a really fun camera to shoot.

2023 Weekly Photography Challenge Week 2- GE RS1400

In the early 2010s just prior to the influx of Smartphone photography everyone was making a pocket camera. People were still carrying pocket cameras because while early smartphones were able to take photos the quality of photos from early Smartphones could not compare to a pocket camera as they can now. 

During this time phone photography just wasn't popular and hadn't caught on yet, it was a lot like comparing early digital cameras to Film. People were still accustomed to reaching for a pocket able digital camera instead of their phone. More people were used to having physical buttons to take photos, navigate menus and change settings with. So this era was the golden sunset to the pocket camera age (though like film, shooting with Pocket Digital cameras has now become a Niche and a bit of a hipster craze so it will not go away fully any time soon).

This meant a flooded market on the pocket camera side and everyone wanted to make a bank in this market during this time. If you couldn't make a better camera; then you could make a cheaper one and trick people into buying it. 

This was the strategy of brands like Kodak, Vivitar and Polaroid for making "affordable" pocket cameras along with other companies that normally didn't make cameras such as GE, Insignia, Sanyo and Coleman (yes you heard me right; Coleman as in the camping supplies company- I'll be reviewing a Coleman camera later this year).

I have a few of these off brand cameras from the late 2000 and early 2010s and many of them share a lot of similarities.

Many will claim to have a high resolution sensor (as in the GE which claims to have a 14mp sensor in it though the output quality looks like something a 3mp camera from 2003 would take) so what the marketing lists as the "resolution" may not be the true resolution of the camera but artificially interlaced to create a larger image.  Since I cannot find a user manual or any information about the RS1400 I cannot verify if this is the case with this camera or not.

They all have cheap plastic bodies and most will run on AA batteries vs having a dedicated battery pack.  Many of these off brand cameras will have very low resolution back screens making previewing the photos on the camera after they have been shot look pretty terrible. So let's dig into the first of these off-brand "Knock Off" pocket cameras that I have access to. Behold the GE RS1400:

Getting details about this camera online is extremely difficult. If you search for the GE RS1400 on Google you will get a single digit number of hits on the camera which is unheard of. There just isn't a lot out there. I can't even find a release date.  

All I know is I originally bought this camera at a Radio Shack in one of their last years of operation between 2011 and 2013 for $50. Which for a new digital camera was pretty damn cheap. Turns out this camera is pretty obscure and rare in spite of it being terrible. I imagine a lot of them didn't last as long as mine did and quickly got returned or turned into E-Waste.

As with all of my reviews I am looking at the still photography aspect only.  I am not covering the video quality but they generally go hand in hand. 

The camera is lightweight and plastic. The buttons are spongy and not very responsive which includes the shutter button.  The video record button is right next to the power button on the top so needless to say I accidentally recorded a few videos when I was trying to turn the camera off.

Turning the camera on and off is surprisingly responsive. There is a short delay between writing each photo, but it isn't terrible and no real burst mode to speak of. 

The RS1400 doesn't have any priority or manual modes but for a camera like this I shouldn't be surprised. Overall its just very underwhelming to shoot.  It has a underwhelming feel and it has an underwhelming 4x optical zoom. The photos from the camera are equally underwhelming, and we will get to that later.

The live view does render at a smooth 30fps so its not choppy like some early pocket cameras were.  The startup and shutdown lag is about on par with what you'd expect from a camera in this era. I'm not sure if its a CMOS or CCD sensor but the photos are very bland, cold and low color depth and WB accuracy as you will see in the unedited photos below.

While it is one of the worst cameras I've used it is not the worst I have used.  There are plenty of pocket cameras and kids cameras which are far more frustrating to use (sadly the Kids Camera I did own I e-wasted since it was just that unusable and I also stripped the cheap battery door screw when installing the first and only set of batteries into it, so sadly I won't have a kids camera in this review cycle unless I happen to buy one before the year is over.

 Here's the un-edited photos from this camera:

As you can see, the above photos taken straight from the camera are cold and lack any real color depth.  They are very de-saturated. A lot of these photos have an ugly haze on them (espically the one of the Rooster) that shows up and while it can be corrected is something I normally would not have to deal with.

With the magic of Lightroom I'm able to clean them up into something more worth posting; however with most cameras I would not have to put nearly as much work in to make them look respectable.

Overall I'd give this camera maybe a 3 out of 10.  It wouldn't be anything I'd want to carry and take around with me unless I had no other option.  The photos off of it did clean up in LR surprisingly well but this is more credit to my editing software then the camera itself. It's one that will probably sit on my shelf for some time again unless I really want a challenge.

But for how obscure this camera is, and how little information I can find out about it this makes it a worthy collection piece for sure. Even if its not good it is Unique and sometimes that's all it takes to perk my interest.

2023 Weekly Photography Challenge Week 1- Panasonic TZ5

The Panasonic TZ5 is a mid-range pocket camera from 2008 aimed primarily at people who don't know a lot about Photography.  As such its a basic fairly no-frills pocket camera but made with better construction with a metal body over a super cheap camera.  TZ stands for Travel Zoom and all the cameras in this range are pocket sized cameras with a decently long Optical Zoom especially for the late 2000s.

 

The TZ5 has a 10x optical Zoom just like my much newer go-to pocket camera the Panasonic ZS100 (which I will get to in a future review).  It has a 9mp 1/2.33" CCD sensor which is a fairly standard size sensor for pocket cameras of this era. Like other CCD sensors, it has the potential to create higher contrast and color saturation images then that of a more traditional CMOS sensor.  It tops out at ISO 1600 with a firmware pushed ISO of up to 6400 which was really impressive for a compact CCD sensor.

That said, the noise levels above ISO 400 were abysmal and the camera is pretty much unusable at the higher ISO of its range like most pocket cameras.  When I do these reviews I tend to try and get decent shots with the camera so I quickly learn its limits for reasonable photos.

I bought this camera at a local Thrift Store for $20, so it's one of my Bargain Finds. It came with a battery but I had to pay another $7 for a charger.  Luckily when I charged the battery it worked fine though the zoom does stick sometimes at around halfway through the zoom likely due to just age and use (but it will power through the sticking spot without effort after a short pause.  There's no grinding so its possible it just has some worn teeth)

While this camera has some pretty definite limitations as you would expect, with a lack of priority modes including Full Manual control it was pretty responsive to shoot. It also had a nice solid responsive feel to all of the buttons including the shutter and had a nice weight to it; the camera didn't feel fragile as many pocket cameras can be.  Overall I enjoyed shooting it while taking in mind that this camera was made for the average person and not the enthusiast even as far as pocket cameras go. 

The Panasonic TZ5 is quick and responsive and did not have a noticeable write delay between shots as some pocket cameras have (especially during this era). It was quick to start up and shut down which even some more expensive cameras have more of a delay then this camera does.

Overall it was responsive, simple and easy to shoot. I enjoyed taking photos with it even if its far too basic of a camera for me to take serious photos with. For casual shots as a backup camera and something I just throw in the car as an alternative to taking photos with a smartphone it would fit this niche just fine.

To end this review here are a few photos I took with this camera during my test week of Jan 1st through 7th.