The Canon Digital ELPH	Volume 4 Number 4 July 31, 2000	RealAudio

by Scott Tilley

I've been waiting a long time to purchase a digital camera. Until now, I felt that the quality of the images were inferior to old-fashioned print photographs. A few weeks ago, I finally changed my mind and purchased one of the newer models on the market: the Canon PowerShot S100, also known as the Digital ELPH. The camera is a wonder of engineering: so small that it fits in your shirt pocket, so easy to use that it truly is point-and-click, and so good that the pictures it captures rivals -- or betters -- those produced with a high-end non-digital camera. I'm sold: digital photography has officially arrived, and the sooner you make the switch, the better.

The ELPH

The ELPH LT is an ultra-compact camera that I had heard good things about. It can take pictures in Classic (C), Wide Angle (H) and Panoramic (P) mode. It also supports the Advanced Photo System (APS), which means loading film is a simple matter of dropping the cartridge into the slot and closing the lid. The camera weighs just over 4 ounces and is small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. In other words, it's a great camera to carry with you. It also has auto-focus, a built-in flash, and time/date stamping on the photos. All of this is great for photography novices like me.

The only drawback to the ELPH is that it's an analog camera: you must still take the film to a developer before you can see the pictures. You can have digital images produced from analog cameras, either by scanning the photographs yourself (which is time consuming) or by having your developer do it for you (which is easier, but more expensive). I tried both options and settled on outsourcing the work to the developer. You can have the digital images returned to you on a CD-ROM from Kodak, or have the pictures placed on the Web for secure retrieval. If you're an AOL subscriber, you can use their "You've Got Pictures" service, which I found works very well.

As an example, if you select the Kodak CD-ROM option, the digital pictures are returned to you in JPEG format in several resolutions, with the usual tradeoff of image size for image quality. The wide-angle (H) picture of me (shown at right) can be seen at  low (384x256; 14KB), medium (768x512; 59KB), and high resolutions (1536x834; 353KB). The picture was taken with the ELPH in front of Big Ben in cloudy London. The quality of the images is quite good, however, marks and scratches can be seen on the medium and high resolution versions, probably as a result of dirt on the scanner. The real question is one of cost and convenience: when does the cost of creating both regular and digital versions of your pictures become too expensive? When is it time to go totally digital? After having four rolls of film developed in this manner, I felt the time had arrived: I was ready for digital photography.

The Digital ELPH

Since I liked the analog ELPH, I was intrigued when I read about a new camera on the market: the Digital ELPH, officially known as the Canon PowerShot S100. As can be seen from the photo of the camera at right, it looks quite similar to its analog sibling. In fact, it's nearly the same size as the ELPH LT. The only difference is that the Digital ELPH is slightly heavier (6.7 oz., without batteries) and comes in a stainless-steel casing, whereas the ELPH LT comes in a plastic casing.

When I say this camera is small, I mean it. This animated graphic from the Canon Powershot Web site shows just how small the Digital ELPH really is: about the size of an audio cassette! I selected the Digital ELPH over other cameras in part due to its size: just like I carried the ELPH LT in my shirt pocket, I can now carry the Digital ELPH in my shirt pocket. All the other digital cameras of similar quality I looked at were much larger. When the camera is powered off, a lens cover flips closed when the lens retracts, in order to protect the glass.  The lens provides a nice 2x optical zoom, which can be augmented with the built-in 4x digital zoom.

The camera is equipped with a three-point auto focus system that permits it to automatically select the primary subject, even if the subject is off-center. Camera settings are all changeable through the very usable graphical user interface overlaid on top of photos displayed on the LCD. Menu-driven icons are used to represent typical functions and settings. The only slight area of confusion I encountered was that the menus are different when the camera is in play mode (to review photos on the LCD) versus record mode.

Image Quality

The Digital ELPH supports three different image quality settings: 

1. Super-Fine / Large: 1600x1200; 1458KB
2. Fine / Large: 1600x1200; 580KB
3. Fine / Small: 640x480; 153KB

As with all types of digital images, there is a tradeoff between image size and image quality. Nevertheless, I found even the lowest-resolution setting produces very high-quality images -- certainly more than sufficient for creating pictures to be placed on a Web site. All images are taken with the digital equivalent of 100 exposure. 

The Digital ELPH has four flash settings, the most common of which is AutoFlash. I found this setting works well inside, but the manual FillFlash setting is sometimes needed for outdoor shots when the subject in partially in shadow. The camera also features a slow-sync speed flash mode, for sunsets or other large scale shots, but I haven't tried it yet. 

Here are a few sample photographs from the Digital ELPH, taken at different times, using different settings, and in quite different environments:

	A high-resolution image of my cat, Moriarty, taken inside without the flash (1600x1200; 438KB). The outside light is shining through the blinds, behind Moriarty, making her face slightly dark. In this case it would have been better to have used the FillFlash, but I didn't know that at the time (this was one of the first pictures I took with the Digital ELPH).
	A low-resolution image of a dog swimming towards ducks in Big Bear Lake in California (640x480; 156KB).This picture was taken very rapidly and without any manual focus. The dog jumped into the lake and started swimming after the ducks so quickly that it startled me. Considering these factors, the lake's colors and rippled water came out reasonably well.
	A low-resolution image of the San Bernardino mountains at 7500 ft. (640x480; 65KB). The photo was taken from a rest stop on a very winding road up to Big Bear from Riverside. The mountains in the picture are several dozen miles away. The bright blue sky was captured very well, with the focus set to "infinity." Notice the snow on top of the mountains.
	A low-resolution image of a view of the University of California, Riverside campus from local Box Spring Mountains (640x480; 94KB). The colors are a little more muted here than in the image of the San Bernardino mountains shown above. The sky is also not as clear, reflecting the unfortunate haze and smog in the area on this very hot day.
	A medium-resolution image of flowers in front of a house in my neighborhood in Riverside (800x600; 90KB). This image was originally a high-resolution 1600x1200 image, then resized to medium resolution using PhotoShop. The combination of the blue sky, greenery, and varied colors of the flowers came out very well in this picture.
	A low-resolution image of me trying to golf in 114F heat of Palm Desert (640x480; 122KB). The many subtle greens in the image show quite well, considering I am not in the direct sunlight and I had someone quickly snap the photo for me. Thank goodness for the misting machines: it might be a dry heat in the desert, but 114F is still HOT!

Manipulating the Digital Images

Images in the camera are stored on a CompactFlash card. The Digital ELPH comes with an 8MB card, which can store about 4 images at Super-Fine/Large resolution, about 12 images at Fine/Large resolution, and about 48 images at Fine/Small resolution. CompactFlash cards up to 192MB are currently available, but they remain expensive: a 32MB card costs about $100, a 64MB card costs about $200, and a 128MB card costs about $350 in my area.

The images can be manipulated while still in the camera (e.g. rotated), but it's easier to use a proper PC to do this. To download the images from the computer, a USB cable (provided) is used. At 12 Mbps, the images are downloaded very rapidly. If this is not fast enough for you, then PC Card adapters are available for the CompactFlash cards.

Canon ships the Digital ELPH was some very good software to accompany the camera. It comes with Adobe PhotoDeluxe and PhotoStitch (for both Macintosh and Windows), as well as with ZoomBrowser EX for Windows and ImageBrowser for the Mac. The PhotoStitch software is used to create panoramic images composed of several separate but related images. The individual images are taken using a special setting on the Digital ELPH. I particularly like the ZoomBrowser EX software: it handles downloading of images from the camera to the PC and managing the stored photos once downloaded. The printing capabilities are especially noteworthy, enabling even novices to create professional-looking pictures that -- when printed on photo-quality paper -- look nearly indistinguishable from 8x10 glossies produced by a regular camera.

Camera or Computer?

One might ask why is SIGPC reviewing a camera, digital or otherwise. The reason is that the Digital ELPH is really a very powerful computer in its own right, just one that happens to run an embedded operating system and is attached to a fixed camera lens. It uses a dedicated digital signal processor (DSP) to achieve high-speed image processing. According to Canon:

All images are recorded as JPEG files and a built-in buffer memory allows continuous burst-mode shooting of up to 2 frames per second when set to its maximum resolution of 1600x1200. The interval between shots in single frame mode is only 1.7 seconds. In addition, basic operations such as camera start-up, high-speed search mode during playback, image enlargement and image scrolling, can be executed swiftly, due to the DSP's high-speed compression and decompression operations.

Using a digital camera really does change the way you take photographs. No longer do you have to worry about taking just the perfect shot, for fear of wasting film. With the Digital ELPH, you can be much more experimental: take a photo and immediately look at it in the LCD screen. Keep it if you like it, or delete it immediately if you don't like it. Even if you keep it, the cost is nil.

There are several more technical reviews of the Digital ELPH available elsewhere on the Web. In this article I just wanted to give you my personal impression of the camera from a regular user's point of view. The Canon advertisements for the S100 ask "Are you digital yet?" I can now answer "yes."