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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jonathan Green" data-source="post: 1508837" data-attributes="member: 34252">Canon SX1 IS: The perfect birder's notebookLast weekend my wife and I took our new SX1 for an early-summer day trip to the San Jacinto Wildlife Area. We had debated for some time between much higher power and expensive photo equipment and the now readily available much less expensive super-zoom point & shoot cameras. When we finally decided that our goal was not to make great art but rather to have an easy record and confirmation of our observations, we decided to go with the Canon SX1. The camera proved to be an easy and compact way to record our day. A few years ago it would be hard to image that packed into a device lighter than our binoculars would be a camera with the easy equivalent of a 1000mm lens, continuous shooting, and HD video and audio recording.  This small miracle comes with some deficits in resolution and sharpness. Don’t expect fine book or gallery size image quality. But it is always more than adequate for both field identification and small images on your computer or the web. As many people have pointed out the noise level above 80 ISO is quite high and the general image quality is somewhat less than the earlier SX10. But the advantages for the birder outweigh the disadvantages: continuous 4 fps shooting, the 2 to 2.3 TC factor with little loss over the 20x optical quality. And HD video recording.We have simplified our field kit to the camera itself: An 8GB SDHC class 6 card (class 6 is needed for the speed of the video), several sets of Duracell 2650mAh rechargeable batteries (these give about 400 3648x2736 images and last the longest of any batteries I’ve tested). And  very light-weight 2.6 pound $29 video tripod with a quick release head. For the best resolution and sharpness use ISO 80 and the Large Superfine setting. Hand-holding the 1000mm equivalent is actually possible with the built in Image Stabilization package. But don’t assume miracles. When possible I mount the camera on the tripod. Setting speed and aperture takes some getting used to as sometimes multiple menus are involved. But once you get the handle, the button pushing is quite fast and can all be accomplished with the camera held to the eye as can the instant transition from still to video. The electronic viewfinder is pretty rough. One has to shoot trusting the auto focus, understating that the photo will be much sharper than appears through the viewfinder. On the other hand the swing out LCD screen is fairly sharp and bright enough to be used easily in daylight. Automatic focus works well, even for birds in flight. At this point RAW can only be processed with Canon software, which is fairly primitive but the Adobe plugin should be out in the future.The pictures below all are handheld at 2 or 2.3xTC. And here are three videos which are actually much sharper than seen here:<a href="http://www.birdforum.tv/action/viewvideo/1539/Yellow_headed_blackbird/?ref=Jonathan" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.tv/action/viewvideo/1539/Yellow_headed_blackbird/?ref=Jonathan</a> Green<a href="http://www.birdforum.tv/action/viewvideo/1536/Meadowlark/?ref=Jonathan" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.tv/action/viewvideo/1536/Meadowlark/?ref=Jonathan</a> Green<a href="http://www.birdforum.tv/action/viewvideo/1535/Dusk_at_San_Jacinto_Wildlife_Area/?ref=Jonathan" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.tv/action/viewvideo/1535/Dusk_at_San_Jacinto_Wildlife_Area/?ref=Jonathan</a> GreenI’m very happy with the package and sure I will get better as I keep shooting.</blockquote>

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