Canon SX1 IS: Still Camera + HD Video Recorder
Since early Summer 2001 I've been searching for a very good digital
camera that also shot decent video. My first digital camera was
the Olympus C700UZ, which was a pretty decent camera for the time,
but shot only 320 x 240 pixels, 15 fps video. So I still needed
a camcorder. In 2005, I replaced it with a Canon S2 IS, which was a
nice upgrade for still photos, and a huge step up in video quality.
It shot standard NTSC video with very good quality stereo sound,
and could zoom while shooting video. Finally in May 2009, I got a Canon
PowerShot SX1 IS, which is a very nice still camera that also shoots
1080p HD video with very good quality stereo sound. Not only that, it
has an awesome zoom range of 28-560mm (35mm equivalent) that you can use
in video mode! The zoom mechanism is virtually silent, but the rocker
switch that controls the zoom makes a somewhat obnoxious ticking sound
that's quite noticible in quiet environments. Still, it's very close
to the ideal all-in-one camera / camcorder that I've been looking for
all these years.
The following .MOV files are directly from the camera. I didn't have
a video editor yet that would process them. I've subsequently tried Sony
Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack, which edits these files just fine.
I'm still struggling with the Vegas UI, though. It's rather different
from Pinnacle Studio 11 Ultimate, which I've used several times.
Relatively recent Mac's can play these .MOV files OK with modest
hardware and a very recent version (at least 7.6?) of Apple's QuickTime player.
I had some difficulty finding a program that works well with Windows
XP or Vista. QuickTime 7.6.2 will play them, but not very smoothly,
even with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad CPU, 3GB RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce
8500. Likewise with XnView.
VLC should be able to
play them, but I've had poor results with it for these files. I just
discovered Splash BETA
3, which plays the videos perfectly on the above described PC, even
in full screen mode, although the Splash UI leaves a bit to be desired.
Playback stutters slightly when in full screen mode on my wife's Athlon
64 X2 Dual Core 520+ 2.60GHz CPU, 3GB RAM, and ATI Radeon X1250, but
plays smoothly in normal mode.
I expect to add a few more samples here from time to time. They're
smooth as silk when played directly from the camera on my HDTV, or by
Splash BETA 3 on a sufficiently robust PC.
The Samples
It's best to save these to your computer and play them locally,
rather than trying to play then directly on-line. On a PC running
Mozilla in Windows, right-click the desired video and select "Save
Link As...". If using Internet Explorer, right-click the desired
video and select "Save Target As...". I'm sure there's a
similar process for Mac users, which I'll be learning soon.
Some months ago, my wife gave her sister and brother-in-law a suet feeder.
They recently reported that they have been enjoying all the birds it's
attracted, including a pair of pileated woodpeckers. We visited them to
check out the birds. Here is a 24 second 178MB sample that I recorded
from their kitchen, through the window.
Here is a 24 second 123MB sample that I recorded in my back yard, of
a hummingbird's tongue lapping up sugar water from one of our feeders.
As you can see, it loses focus and takes a few seconds to regain focus.
I was about 8 feet from the feeder. The constant drone is the air
conditioner several yards to the left. The clicking noise immediately
before and after zooms is the rocker lever that controls the zoom.
Here is a 49 second 253MB sample that I recorded in my back yard, of
a couple hummingbirds feeding and doing aerial assaults against each other.
I was about 8 feet from the feeder. The constant drone is the air
conditioner several yards to the left. The clicking noise immediately
before and after zooms is the rocker lever that controls the zoom.
Here is a 20 and a half minutes 1.18GB 1080p 30fps video of Dayton Ohio's
2009 Independence Day fireworks show that I recorded with the SX1 IS,
then edited with Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack and saved
as a 1440x1080p (I couldn't find a 1920x1080p option) WMV at 8,196kbps.
This video consists of a few still photos, followed by two video segments.
The SX1 IS, like most (all?) digital cameras that shoot video to memory
cards, has a 4GB file size limitation. Presumably that's because
camera cards are formatted as FAT32, which has a 4GB file size limit.
Due to this limit, HD videos shot by the SX1 IS can only be about 12
to 15 minutes long, depending on the scene being shot. Very detailed
scenes would have a shorter time limit since they wouldn't compress as
much as scenes with less detail - just as well focused photos produce
larger files than poorly focused photos of the same scene. So, at 13
minutes plus, the camera stopped recording and I had to restart it a few
seconds later. Can you see this "gap" at about 13:45 in the
video? In this case, it's not very obvious at all, but you wouldn't want
that to happen in the middle of shooting a wedding!
The first time I tried recording fireworks, I noticed that the sound
was odd. Eventually I realised that the camera's automatic volume
control was quickly limiting the recording volume after a sound burst,
then gradually raising the volume. For this recording, I turned off the
camera's automatic volume control and set the manual volume to about
5 clicks above minimum. That worked much better, but it could
have been set even higher.
Note: If you're using Cable, this file should download in
about half an an hour. If you're using DSL, it might be more like four and
a half hours. If you're still using dial-up, you're going to need the
patience of a saint! ;-)
To create the thumbnails for these video samples, I played them
full-screen on my PC and used the Print Screen button to do a frame
capture. In its current state, Splash doesn't have any way to advance or
back up frame by frame, so getting the image I want is largely a matter
of luck. QuickTime appears to have that function but I haven't
managed to get it to work. Maybe it only works in the Pro version?
I then imported the clipboard into an image editor, changed the resolution
to 72dpi and height to 270 pixels (1/4 of 1080p) and saved it as a JPG.
I'm hoping to figure out a somewhat less complex method.
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Last updated
Tuesday, 11-Aug-2009 17:45:04 PDT