Canon PowerShot Pro1

I own the Digital Rebel (300D) and last week I bought this Pro1 for my wife. So after a week of intensive use and testing (we are both professionnal wedding photographers) here are the pros and cons, some of them compared to the rebel:

PROS:
- 8 MP
- L "pro" lens, really delivers crisper and sharper images than the bundled EF-S of my rebel, but I still prefer my EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
- 28-200mm equivalent is everything we could ask for weddings, we usually stay in the 28-80 range anyway because of flash range limitations
- the built-in flash is reliable, fast and strong
- lots of functions and modes, + 2 custom settings
- very small, *ideal* for a woman's hands, yet again I'm used to the rebel plus the battery grip so...
- 1 compartment for CF card and battery
- incredibly bright, big and clear LCD, very useful
- flip over LCD panel
- good battery bundled (1350 mAh versus 1100 for the rebel)
- also bundled: 64MB CF, neck strap, 58mm filter adapter, remote control (!) and hood
- Good price (same as rebel)
- hot shoe for external flash
- black "pro" look

CONS:
- Electronic zoom ring, a bit slow and drains battery
- autofocus too slow for wildlife or sports
- not as user friendly as previous Canon models
- maybe a tad too small for most men hands
- smaller cmos sensor than the digirebel
- takes like 2 seconds to turn on (I expected less than the rebel, but it's the same)
- usb 1.1 (should be 2.0 what the Hell was Canon thinking??)
- almost impossible to focus in low light, even with an external flash with IF assistant beam
- freezes the viewfinder for a sec when if focuses, annoying
- not many additionnal accessories (like battery pack, eyepiece extender...)

Bottom Line: I would still recommend it for weddings or maybe all-round, but the next thing I'm buying in about 6 months will definitely be another digital SLR (like the 1Ds), give the rebel to my wife and sell the pro1. It's a great camera, but it's not really "pro" like the name and the L lens suggests.

Well that's about it, I hope it helps.

I'm a fairly inexperienced camera user, and this is my second digital. My previous camera was a Canon Powershot A80, which did everything exactly as expected, and is great for the money.

I waited excitedly for months to get my hands on this camera, and, as a whole, the camera is exceptional. Image quality is great. It's also very responsive, and super easy to use (for a manual cam). You just can't beat the swivel LCD screen, (super) macro mode, and 8mp resolution.

There are, however, some things which should be mentioned:

-High noise at ISO over 200 (camera does 50/100/200/400)
-Autofocus very sluggish, making it hard to catch action shots
-Made to hold with right hand, in which it fits nicely. On the left side, however, there is no "comfortable" spot to hold the camera. Not ergonomically correct. Even bizarre. I usually just "rest" it on my hand.
-No AF assist light for focusing in low light/night time situations. This is truely bizarre, as my A80 ($300 camera) has one built in, and it works great! Seems like a ridiculous oversight...
-Alot of buttons on a small camera. Fingers may cramp.

By no means is the camera "junk", and I've enjoyed it thus far, but felt it necessary to mention these problems for others to consider.

I have had atleast 6 film slr's over the past 20 plus years, and when digital came out over 5 years ago, I waited for the right time to buy. The advantages of a digital over a film camera are obvious, but the resolution and lack of wide angle below $1000 was the main limitation. Now those are no longer as much an issue unless I was shooting something for a large poster.

Reasons I chose this camera at this time:
1. I pondered the Digital rebel because of the 17 odd EOS lenses I have, starting at the 20 MM wide. I find the wide angle most useful for scenery and indoors, the medium tele for people pics. The 1.6 lens multiplier for semi-pro DSLRs made all my wides except the 20 mm useless. That killed the Rebel idea.
2. I find 28 mm my MOST used wide angle since it captures scenery in a way I want to remember it. The 20 is great indoors, but for scenery, it really makes the background too small. This camera has 28 mm.
3. I find the 85 to 200 mm range great for people portraits, 85 being best. This has that range.
4. I didn't want to end up cleaning dust from my CCD with interchangeable lenses, especially on a camera I want to use a lot. That killed the rebel idea again.
5. The L lens really shines, with great colors and resolution. Look a www.dpreview.com and see for yourself. The color is definitely cleaner and the resolution fantastic.
6. For wideangle, the stitch mode really kicks (...). There is nothing as good as Canon's implementation of this concept.
7. With digital at 8MP, I can get a better picture into the computer than the best 35 mm slide film and home slide-scanning. Less artifacts, noise and NO DUST!
8. Once you get a high quality digital picture into the computer, the possibilities are endless. You can't add resolution in a computer, you need to start with it. You can do things with masks etc. to show highlight and shadow detail like no film could ever do, just not enough exposure latitude.
9. At 50 ASA, this camera blows the competition away, in ALL respects. Hence for the best digital shot below $1000, this is the camera.
10. Built like a tank, is compatible with all of Canons newer gadgetry, takes filters, polarizers (yes!) had built in ND filter, what more could you ask for under $1000.
11. I love the controls. Took a couple of hours reading through the manual and familiarizing myself with the camera.
12. Turn OFF the the continuous focus if you are not going to need it, esp. for things that are not moving, focusses beautifully.
13. The 2" 235K pixel CCD in the back is the best Ive seen, probably the same from the 4.5K$ new Canon Pro D1 MkII camera. Plus the 180 degree rotation is priceless. I use it when I do self timer shots with groups, macro etc.etc.
<14> Camera does focus bracketing, which I never had on my EOS Elans and isn't available on probably any DSLR. Manual focus is available just in case. <15> I checked moire and noise in Photoshop, none to minimal. Photos need no equalization and noise removal. A little moire removal on things like reflections on hair (only sometimes).
<16> The only thing I might add are..live histogram, but most time I know whats going to be overexposed, the camera only confirms it. Exposure latitude is wider than film.<17> The Depth of Field, the space in which everything is in focus, is much much greater than in a 35MM film camera. Hence f-stops over F8 that I used with my wide angles is unnecessary. At 28mm, I get depth of field from 9" to infinity on the Pro 1 whereas I needed F22 on my 35mm camera. This had held me back from buying digital until I dicovered this fact doing some research.

The Powershot Pro1 is the best all-around 8 megapixel digicam. It is compact (unlike the Olympus 8080, Sony F828, and Konica Minolta A2); has a fast 28-200 lens (Olympus only goes to 140mm equivalent, Nikon doesn't allow wide angle); and allows for fine adjustment of focal length (Olympus and Nikon use a crude zoom lever that makes it difficult to zoom exactly as you want to). An additional important point is that the Powershot can actually be used in RAW mode: the Olympus, Sony, and Nikon cameras lock-up for a while after taking a picture in RAW mode (this means the camera is not usable for up to 12 seconds after a RAW picture is taken).

Perhaps the closest competitor to the Powershot Pro1 is the Konica Minolta A2, but the A2 has an old lens design that lacks the resolution of the Powershot Pro1, and the A2 is much bigger, lacks the high resolution LCD screen on the Pro1, and has limited movement of its LCD screen. The A2 has a very high resolution viewfinder, but with a good LCD screen (like the Pro1), using a viewfinder is not preferable (for me at least). The A2 also has been noted in online reviews to have quality control problems.

Comparisons aside, some reviewers here have suggested that the Pro1 has "slow" autofocus and that the LCD screen freezes for a moment as the autofocus operates. The conclusion given is that the Pro1 is therefore difficult to use with moving subjects. The difficulty, however, is primarily with photographic technique rather than the camera's autofocus system. Because of the sensor size and lens design, the Pro1 has a large depth of field, meaning that subjects will appear in focus over a fairly large distance. Even at the telephoto end, the depth of field for a portrait (e.g. 100mm) at f/4.5 will be sufficient that you can pre-focus the lens and follow a moving subject easily. The shutter response is very very fast when the lens is already at its focus point. This is a standard technique often overlooked by people who never used a manual focus camera. And this technique is far better than relying on the autofocus system in any of the 8 megapixel cameras: none of them is faster than intelligent pre-focusing! The Pro1 makes this even easier by allowing the user to store a focus distance in the Custom1 and Custom2 settings.

This is a terrific camera. No camera is perfect, but the Pro1 makes the best compromises in its class.

And for those worried about image noise when looking at photos magnified on screen: this is eliminated from actual prints using any of several noise reduction software packages. Don't be afraid to use 400 speed on the Pro1, put the file through good noise reduction software, and print it. The result will still be very nice.

As a botanist/ecologist/photographer I do a great deal of plant photography. I have used Canon products for years and swear by them and rarely at them. The Pro1, though, leaves a lot to be desired for my purposes. The EOS 10D does far better even with lower resolution. The Pro1, for the purposes I need, is not very suitable. (See my review of the PowerShot S1 IS).
But as a photgrapher who has been published around the world, mostly medium and large format photographs, I think for most people the Pro1 would be a very good choice. It has excellent construction and the image quality is superb with very true color, much better than most. If you don't want to mess with RAW image processing, you can photograph using the Super high resolution Large (gives you a JPG image) and get excellent results that compare very favorably with RAW processing and none of the fiddling with RAW. The availability of a 28mm equivalent wide angle is also very nice and not all that common.
The sharpest aperature to use is f5.6 or f6.3. The images are just a hair softer at larger or smaller apertures. Even the digital zoom will produce a pretty decent image at 14x, but gets worse at maximum digital zoom. Usually digital zoom is pretty worthless, but when you start with 8 megapixels you can still end up with a suitable pixel count after all the digital footwork that goes on in the camera. But generally you are still further ahead shooting at maximum optical zoom (no digital) and cropping, if you don't mind some additional digital manipulation antics to improve things.
So, all in all, I highly recommend this camera to anyone who needs high resolution and compact size. It is a good buy. But for really good macro photography I recommend a digital SLR and a top notch macro lens. If you only do a little macro work and are not real fussy about having razor sharp images then this camera will do fine. Sometimes it would almost match the 10D, but not quite. For all other uses, the camera is great.