Gone Canon, kind of...

[KeithM]

... in the compact sense - a Powershot A710is.

I've been mulling over a new compact for a while, and got bored waiting for the Sigma DP1 to surface. For a full once over, see this Steves-Digicams (http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/a710.html) page... a small number of things appealed to me, amongst them:

- b&w record mode
- spot metering
- full manual control of aperture/shutter
- manual focus with distance scale
- LCD grid

but the real killer was that in manual mode, the LCD display is, for want of a better description, wysiwyg... the image you view on the LCD whilst composing and setting exposure is what you get ( see this page (http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/a710_pg3.html), about half-way down, for a demo ).

A couple of early test shots below, shot at 3mp resolution, b&w to start, then over to colour for greyscale in PSPX. It certainly seems to make a good small companion to my dSLRs.

I've always used Fujis in the past but I couldn't find anything that matched the available features in this Canon. It wasn't easy to sift through all the available cameras mind... it would seem that in the P&S world, all that matters is colour, megapixel count and lifestyle statement :(

Motorcycle appears courtesy of LouM. Gerald the Mouse appears courtesy of Tigger the Cat. The spider shot is a 100% crop out of the 3mp image.

Keith.

[lightwrangler]

Keith,

Beautiful! Canon makes good compacts (I have one too), but in reality it is your eye that makes the picture and you have a great eye.

Cheers,
Adrian

[GaryB]

Great results - does it take RAW?

[KeithM]

Hi both... I've played with it some more and it's not stopping me from getting the images I want ( which is just what any camera should do ) :)

I'm sticking with using the LCD display Adrian, and it's giving me a new way to see the compositions ( I've spent all my photographic life looking through a viewfinder ). It must be just like looking at the ground-glass focus screen of a TLR or similar... being able to move the camera around more freely, and watching the image with both eyes, seems to display the way objects are rendered into 2D in a more immediate way.

Doesn't have Raw Gary... although I've just seen word of the new cameras from Canon - one being the G9 which does have raw. Not seen any in-depth reviews/details yet but it would look to be a better choice of compact with near-dSLR features.

One more for fun... Tigger the Cat doing what he does best :D Indoor shot @iso200.

Keith.