While video capabilities on DSLR’s has been really awesome, Canon has taken things one step further with their new C300. This is a dedicated video camera that takes SLR lenses. Canon is trying to enter into the lower professional market now occupied by RED.

More information about the camera can be found from their announcements:
Canon EOS C300
Canon unveils Cinema EOS C300 interchangeable-lens video camera

Canon C300, A $20,000 SLR-Style Movie Camera
Canon C300: A Digital Killer Cam for the Hollywood Set

And a great tongue-in-cheek video that shows off it’s various capabilities is below:

Canon EOS C300 = Awesome from Jonathan Yi on Vimeo.

Digital Photography Review has posted their collection of sample pictures from the upcoming S95. While not worth the upgrade for a current S90 owner, those in the market for the LX5 should give it due consideration. The ISO 800 pictures look great, while the 1250+ higher ISO pictures are pretty noisy. Check out the S90 at 800 ISO and the S95 at 800 ISO.

This category has been dominated by one camera for the past few years, the Panasonic Lumix LX3. Within the past few months, the Canon S90 and Samsung TL500 both try to steal market share away from the Lumix. All cameras are compact with fast, bright lenses – feature starting aperature sizes of f1.8 or f2.0. However, all the lenses have a different focal length. The incumbant LUMIX with a 24-60mm (f1.8-2.8), the Canon with 28-105mm (f2.0-4.9) and Samsung with a very wide 24-72mm (f1.8-2.4).

I plotted these on a graph to compare the type of coverage at each focal length It becomes quickly apparent that the Samsung offers the brightest lens at all focal lengths (lower f-stop is brighter). Canon offers the most zoom and the 3 year old LUMIX soldiering on.

If the Samsung does use the same sensor as the S90 as rumored, pairing it with such a bright, wide lens will really be fun to use. The Samsung will definitely be able to capture the most light in dark situations. The Canon will provide the most zoom. Once the Samsung hits the streets look for many sites to do comparisons of the low-light performance of both cameras.

Much like the DSLR guide earlier, Gizmodo published an article stating the best point and shoot cameras. Given that I love Canon’s new S90 and the thin Sony, I tend to agree with their recommendations:

• Best for lowlight: Canon S90
• Best value: Samsung HZ15W
• Best video: Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7
• Best small size: Sony TX1
• Best weatherproof: Pentax Optio W80

With the strong Canadian dollar, it’s very tempting to buy camera equipment from the USA. However, there’s a big disadvantage when it comes to Nikon by doing so. Nikon does not honor warranties from equipment bought outside Canada. You would have to get it serviced in the USA. A summary of the different warranty programs is on this site.

Gizmodo just published a buying guide for DSLR’s. They recommended four different cameras in four different price points. They were brand-agnostic, picking the best camera regardless of whether you were in the Nikon Camp or Canon Camp (sorry Olympus and Sony).

I agree with all their picks, the Nikon D3000, Canon T1i, Nikon D90 and Canon 7D do beat out their peers in their respective price points.

The S90 is a camera everyone has been waiting for Canon to create for quite some time. Small, compact and fitted with a bright f2.0 lens, it competes with the Panasonic Lumix LX3 and it’s Leica brethren. With it’s 28-105mm lens (f2.0-4.9), it offers a wider telephoto range than the LX3 but not as bright. Stil, the differences should be minimal and it seems to be about $100 cheaper than the LX3.

A unique control is affixed to the base of the lens. A control ring that can be turned to change various settings on the camera, depending on what mode is selected. It harkens back to the days where you used the ring on a lens to set the aperture.

No Canadian pricing was announced. It should be in stores in late September.

The LA Times broke news today that the most popular camera on Flickr is the iPhone. And yes, the Flickr stats do support this, but I’m not really inclined to believe it. If you read the article from the Times, the most important line is at the very end:

“…the iPhone now includes two models whereas other manufacturers separate out their models, which could explain the inflated numbers.”

The iPhone stats are actually stats of all three models of the iPhone – the original, the 3G and the 3Gs. However camera manufacturers differentiate their cameras by model; Nikon’s D70, D70s, D80 and D90 are all different even though they are in the same “family” like the iPhones.

If the data was mined for some better info, I think we would find that while the iPhone is popular, no single model would beat out a single model of some of the SLR or point-and-shoot cameras.

I’ve often tried to picture how the image stabilization optics work inside a camera lens. Both Nikon and Canon offer this technology in many of their lenses. Even compact cameras now come bundled with this feature more often than not. The camera compensates for movement of the camera in an attempt to capture a better image. This works well in low light situations where the camera increases the time the shutter is open to let in more light.

This video at Gizmodo shows how the electro-mechanices of a Canon lens with image stabilization works.

Digital Photography Review (dpreview) rated the high end compact cameras and the Panasonic LX3 came out on top. It doesn’t have the most megapixels or the most zoom, but it has the best features that photographers want: a bright, sharp f2.0 lens, a wide angle lens, and lots of control over manual features of the camera. This gave it an edge to be the leader in all three categories that they used: Outdoors/daylight, Low light/High ISO and performance/Flash.