Canon SX50 Specs (1 Viewer)

[crazyfingers]

Yesterday while out I happened upon one of the oddities of this camera. I had notices it a long time ago but just happened to take some demo shots.

At very high zoom with the 2x teleconverter on the camera for some reason will focus in on something close but zoom in more and it can not focus but continue to zoom in more and it can focus again.

These are all with the 2x teleconverter on and I am about 4 feet from the toad maybe about an 5-6 cm long

From left to right most to least zoomed

185.5mm
143.5 mm
94.4mm
75.5 mm
58.3mm

 

[pshute]

Yes, I do use RAW format because it gives me that extra versatility if needing to recover shadows/highlights etc.

What do you mean by "extra versatility", gihe? Do you have any examples of it?

 

[gihe]

What do you mean by "extra versatility", gihe? Do you have any examples of it?

Here's a good article on the benefits of shooting in RAW.
http://photographyconcentrate.com/10-reasons-why-you-should-be-shooting-raw/

 

[John-W]

As you can see fron the attached, I am no photographer, but I get lot of shots with a dark image lacking detail.
Any tips would be appreciated.

 

[crazyfingers]

As you can see fron the attached, I am no photographer, but I get lot of shots with a dark image lacking detail.
Any tips would be appreciated.

Sometimes the light is just wrong. But 20 seconds of adjusting in FastStone generated some better detail.

 

[GrahameNZ]

John-W,
Use the exposure compensation function.
Have a look at the jog wheel dial on the back of the camera.
Press it towards the top, the icon showing the + and - symbols in a black white square.
You will see a new bar appear at the bottom of the screen.
You can adjust whether the camera under or over exposes by pushing the jog wheel towards 3 o clock (over, +), or 9 o clock (under, -).
In the images you show probably +2/3 of over exposure would work ok.
If you were shooting a big white bird ie Great Egret you could well need to go to -2 to retain detail and not blow out the highlights (overexpose)
If you want to understand how your camera metering works have a Google for exposure compensation.
It's not a difficult thing to understand once you get the basic idea in your head.
Pretty much every image you take requires some form of exposure compensation.
Once you get used to the dial it's quick to change the value.
When I go walk abouts it's the first thing I set on the camera and then change from there as the situation changes.
You learn by instinct what you need to set as a base, if a bright sunny day I usually go to -2/3 as a start point but if I see a bird sitting on a branch against the sky it's quick to go to +2/3 etc.
A dull day it starts at 0 or maybe +1/3.
I gather Florida light is pretty harsh, you will learn to love shooting this way.
Yes CF way works but is clunky, start with a properly exposed image and then adjust from there.
You can never recover from blown highlights or underexposed areas.
Especially with these small sensor super zoom cams.
Happy shootin

 

[John-W]

Sometimes the light is just wrong. But 20 seconds of adjusting in FastStone generated some better detail.

Nice, which setting did you use?

 

[John-W]

John-W,
Use the exposure compensation function.
Have a look at the jog wheel dial on the back of the camera.
Press it towards the top, the icon showing the + and - symbols in a black white square.
You will see a new bar appear at the bottom of the screen.
You can adjust whether the camera under or over exposes by pushing the jog wheel towards 3 o clock (over, +), or 9 o clock (under, -).
In the images you show probably +2/3 of over exposure would work ok.
If you were shooting a big white bird ie Great Egret you could well need to go to -2 to retain detail and not blow out the highlights (overexpose)
If you want to understand how your camera metering works have a Google for exposure compensation.
It's not a difficult thing to understand once you get the basic idea in your head.
Pretty much every image you take requires some form of exposure compensation.
Once you get used to the dial it's quick to change the value.
When I go walk abouts it's the first thing I set on the camera and then change from there as the situation changes.
You learn by instinct what you need to set as a base, if a bright sunny day I usually go to -2/3 as a start point but if I see a bird sitting on a branch against the sky it's quick to go to +2/3 etc.
A dull day it starts at 0 or maybe +1/3.
I gather Florida light is pretty harsh, you will learn to love shooting this way.
Yes CF way works but is clunky, start with a properly exposed image and then adjust from there.
You can never recover from blown highlights or underexposed areas.
Especially with these small sensor super zoom cams.
Happy shootin

That is incredibly helpful, Grahame, explained in layman's terms and message understood.
Will do some trying-out tomorrow.
Thanks for taking the trouble.B

 

[crazyfingers]

Nice, which setting did you use?

FastStone is some freeware I use. Just go to the "Adjust Lighting" and pushed slider for Shadows and Highlights to the right.

 

[John-W]

Thanks.

 

[GrahameNZ]

John.
Happy to hopefully helped you understand what your cam meter is telling you.
The 18% grey which your and all cam meters give you as a "correct" exposure is the start point.
Understand that and you start to control light.
I'll have one of these with you B

 

[HermitIbis]

Here's a good article on the benefits of shooting in RAW.
http://photographyconcentrate.com/10-reasons-why-you-should-be-shooting-raw/

By the way, one of the reasons for my suspicion that you were using RAW was the fourth photo in your post #2051. Such a bird-blue-sky photo typically gives me a headache as it causes CA (chromatic aberration), feathers with purple edges. I've read that it is relatively straightforward to repair CA in RAW, while starting from a JPEG with Photoshop isn't nearly as good in this respect.

I add three recent photos of mine, plus two older ones. The fifth is nothing special, but I like the fact that the camera in AUTO mode is able to handle sunsets. (I guess every modern camera can.)

 

[HermitIbis]

Bearded Reedlings (Tits) are my latest favourites. Plus crow harrassing buzzard II.

 

[Stephen Prower]

Fixing CA in Canon SX50 Jpegs

I've read that it is relatively straightforward to repair CA in RAW, while starting from a JPEG with Photoshop isn't nearly as good in this respect.

HermitIbis

Gimp has a plug-in that supplies a 'quick & dirty' fix for Chromatic Aberration in Jpegs. It is Purple Fringe by Darla. I use the default settings for my SX50 Jpegs except that I move the Blue setting right over to 100%.

I have also tried Gimp's two default Select by Colour features to reduce over intense blue skies -- or fix tricky CA. So far the result of intense blue reduction does not look quite natural to me. Fixing tricky CA (by Select & then eg Desaturate) does work, but takes up a bit of time.

[For RAW, Canon's free DPP Converter offers CA correction as one of its editing features, but I have not so far managed to get it to work. So after I have converted to Jpeg, I then as above use Gimp.]


Stephen

 

[Stephen Prower]

Correcting White Balance in SX50 Jpegs

I'm still experimenting with Picassa 3, Irfanview and Faststone Image Viewer for which one I like the most for basic brightness/contrast, crop, resize and a little sharpening. I don't think I'd do much more than that very often.

Crazyfingers:

Did you ever also, as I canvassed in reply to you at the time, try free Canon DPP's feature for correcting White Balance in Jpegs? FastStone doesn't offer the feature, and I find the feature in IrfanView much less convenient to use.

By comparison with IrfanView you preview changes as you make them full screen (not on a Thumbnail). And if you have a batch of photos all needing the same correction, you can:
* Correct one of the photos
* Copy the correction to Clipboard
* Paste the correction to all of the other photos in the batch
* Batch Convert & Save the corrected photos (Adding a distinguishing suffix to the Filename).

I add a warning: It's difficult to work out how to save altered Jpegs safely in Canon DPP. I still go in fear of Saving over, and therefore as I suppose, overwriting, my original Jpegs. [In fact, I believe even then Canon stores somewhere the information that it needs to Undo the changes that I have made, but I haven't yet made time to investigate this.].

My method of saving corrected Jpegs is therefore. as above, to Convert & Save to a different Filename, and then smartly Exit!


Stephen

 

[Stephen Prower]

Canon SX60 takes advantage of UHS-1 Standard memory cards

While I am posting, I have just noticed on the Canon UK website:

http://www.canon.co.uk/support/cons...0_hs.aspx?type=faq&faqdetailid=tcm:14-1091288

that, unlike the Canon SX50, the Canon SX60 can take advantage of UHS-1 Standard memory cards.

Someone must have mentioned this on the web, possibly indeed in the present thread (or the Canon SX60 thread), but I post in case other SX50 users, like me, may not have picked it up.

Any feature of the Canon SX60 that speeds up the operation of the Canon SX50 must be welcome!


Stephen

 

[HermitIbis]

Gimp has a plug-in that supplies a 'quick & dirty' fix for Chromatic Aberration in Jpegs. It is Purple Fringe by Darla. I use the default settings for my SX50 Jpegs except that I move the Blue setting right over to 100%.

I have also tried Gimp's two default Select by Colour features to reduce over intense blue skies -- or fix tricky CA. So far the result of intense blue reduction does not look quite natural to me. Fixing tricky CA (by Select & then eg Desaturate) does work, but takes up a bit of time.

Many thanks for the hint, Stephen. I've downloaded Gimp and the plug-in and tried to repair the CA in a photo of a Black kite (a species I rarely see, so the shot is dear to me), the "Purple Fringe" plug-in indeed seems to work. And the "Select by Colour" feature in Gimp is impressive - it may be very effective in certain cases. However, Photoshop has a superior "Magic Wand" to select areas, I am also much more familiar with PS. Anyway, I have to invest more time in Gimp to see what it can do. Many features...

Starting from the first photo (out of camera, much cropped), my quick tests produced photo 2 (mainly with Photoshop) and photo 3 (mainly Gimp, but finished with Photoshop). If someone can handle the CA better, I'd love to see his/her result.

... unlike the Canon SX50, the Canon SX60 can take advantage of UHS-1 Standard memory cards.

Yes, an interesting feature of the SX60, and you are right, I had mentioned in reply #1965 "... that the Powershot SX60 is fit ... for UHS-1-plus. Using faster storage cards could be a great advantage over the SX50 and also over the P900. I am using an 80 Mbit/s card on my SX50, but do not note a faster performance in comparison to standard 'class 10' cards."

Since there wasn't a reaction from SX60 owners, I am still unsure whether the feature makes a big difference in practice.

 

[Stephen Prower]

HermitIbis

A. Gimp

Gimp is the opposite of FastStone: Horribly unintuitive to someone coming new to photo-editing.

So far therefore I use it only for features that other free programs lack, such as Perspective correction, or Chromatic aberration or Intense blue sky correction.

Note Purple fringe applies a mask, so if you go on from Purple fringe to manually correct CA, you must Undo the changes that Purple fringe has made first.

Thank you for posting the test results! And inviting the names of other possible programs for the job of correcting CA.


B. The search for speed

I believe we share the preoccupation!

It was annoying to find that the new features offered by UHS-1 Standard Memory cards are not implemented on the Canon SX50.



Stephen

 

[gihe]

By the way, one of the reasons for my suspicion that you were using RAW was the fourth photo in your post #2051. Such a bird-blue-sky photo typically gives me a headache as it causes CA (chromatic aberration), feathers with purple edges. I've read that it is relatively straightforward to repair CA in RAW, while starting from a JPEG with Photoshop isn't nearly as good in this respect.

Yes there was a bit of CA in that shot, especially around the antenna, but it was only really obvious if zoomed in and a couple of clicks in Lightroom sorted it out.
However, I'm not sure if there's any advantage to having RAW in this case as the method for getting rid of CA is based on colour-sampling the purple fringe and this would presumably be the same in JPEG?

 

[Roy Harvey]

Hi there,
Have just taken delivery of an SX60, this is in fact a replacement as I sent the first one back when the viewing screen stopped working within 24 hrs, Frustratingly, the viewing screen on the replacement has also stopped working when in all modes other than C1 and C2.
When this happened I was fiddling around with various buttons to see what they did so wonder if I have somehow isolated the viewing screen.
Would be grateful for some advice.

Thanks

Roy