AlexHopmann.com

I’ve had the new Canon TX1 out of its box for all of an hour now so this is a very quick set of first impressions. When people see it their first reaction is that its a video camera. Its interesting that this form factor looks like video camera first and people are surprised that its a capable still-photo camera too.

First a couple of reactions about the form factor. This is a little bit of a disappointment. Because the camera is so small you only have room for about two fingers to hold it under the lens. The power button is in a weird spot on the side and much worse the trigger is in a weird spot on the top. To shoot still photos I need to hold it with what feels like a very unnatural grip. For shooting movies the controls feel a bit better since the record button is on the back right where your thumb would be and so is the wide angle/telephoto toggle.

Overall still photo quality seems good. Low light seems a bit better than my previous camera (Canon SD550) although still far from even acceptable. There is a special indoor mode that helped a bit more too. The test photos I took were much better in terms of reduced bluring- the image stabalization seems to be working really well (or maybe that is some placebo effect). I did have a problem using the zoom indoors with it not focusing correctly.

There is a new super-macro mode that lets you focus from 0-10cm. I took a couple of test shots with this and it is pretty damn awesome. Should be great for some of the flower and food photos that I like to take.

I shot a couple of test movies and the results looked pretty great. I bought a 8GB flash card for $60 from NewEgg but its the slow kind so in the HD mode I can only shoot about 30 seconds before it quits. Unlike the old camera it at least gives you a nice display of how close you are getting to running out of buffer.
At maximum quality settings I can get a bit more than 27 minutes of HD video onto one flash card and the bandwidth is high enough that as far as I can tell Windows Media Player couldn’t keep up with the 30fps on my laptop (Core Duo 2ghz). At least so far I tend to not shoot video for more than small clips so the size shouldn’t be an issue, although I do wonder if 32GB SDHC cards will be out soon.

I just got a notice from Amazon that they shipped my Canon TX1 today. I’ll be reporting back tomorrow on my experiences with it in the flesh…

When I first placed my order for my Canon TX1 on Amazon they listed the release date as March 31st. About a week later that changed to May 31st and the wait is really gnawing at me. Dell lists the camera as shipping in 1-2 weeks but I’ve seen them be totally full of it on those estimates before. There are some online forums where some people suggested that it would start shipping next week, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

I ordered 2 spare batteries for $20 each from some online cheap battery place and a slow 8GB memory card for $60. I figure with 8GB of memory I’ll usually be running out of batteries long before I run out of storage space. The I calculated that I probably need memory that runs at about 4MB/second to shoot continuous video so I’ll probably have to get another faster memory card later, but they aren’t out yet (and look like they will be 4x the price of the existing memory cards). I’m also a little skeptical about whether the cheap batteries are any good- its one of those things where they cost 1/3 the price of the official ones, and they might be crap or they might be 100% the same item with just different printing on the label. I’ll post back here once I found out how it all works.