Pictures and Code

Reading the Canon Powershot S80 review on dpreview i was wondering if they finally build a good video mode into the S-series. I’ve been playing with the Canon S2 IS a lot and its video mode is really great. Using 5x1GB SD cards you got plenty of recording time and its still a lot smaller than some mini-DV cam corder. Comparing the video quality I must say i prefer the S2’s video to the mini-DV’s because streaming the DV video over the fire-wire port takes quite a lot of time and the final quality is not that crisp on todays HDTV screens.

Here (scroll down) you can find 2 sample videos of the Canon S80. That cam is really small and takes good 640×480 @ 30fps videos for my taste. Due to its heavy sharpening in the video mode and the good wide-angle lens you have some weird pattern effects in the video. On the S2 there was some video mode option for low sharpening which was noticeably less sharp but did a better job at wide-angle settings in cityscapes. I bet in one of their next models with more improving SD card speeds and controller speeds we will soon have some 720p (HDTV) @ 30 fps video mode on these little pocket cameras.