Sturdy Canon takes digitals a step forward
Few digital cameras make you feel you are holding a well-made piece of equipment that can take rough handling. The Canon PowerShot Pro 70 feels like it could take a few knocks and keep shooting.
The contents of the box containing the PowerShot Pro is almost more impressive than the camera. Digitals are notorious for being battery-hungry and can cost a packet for rechargeable batteries and AC adaptors. The Pro 70 comes with an AC adaptor as do some other digitals, but no other camera I have tested has come with two NiMH rechargeable batteries. They provided a reasonably high capacity and the included charger has a built-in discharger, so there is no risk of ruining your batteries by charging them when they are only half-depleted.
On board, the PowerShot has a fairly impressive array of features. The 28-70mm (35mm equivalent) glass aspherical lens was reasonably sharp and offered an electrically driven zoom mechanism operated by a switch near the lens end.
The camera has a small microphone so you can attach voice notes to images, and a built-in screen at the rear which can be faced forward for self-portraits or folded with the screen inward to protect it when not in use. The camera also has some fairly basic exposure setting options and a standard SLR flash shoe which allows use of conventional Canon EX series flash units.
The 15-megabyte CompactFlash memory card was enough for almost 200 images at the lowest-quality setting and about 40 at the second-highest - and the Pro 70 has dual memory slots, doubling the storage space without having to swap cards.
Canon says the highest-quality setting, RAW, uses no compression and captures images at the full 4.5-megabyte resolution. This allows for only seven images per 15-meg card, but generally, the fewer images per megabyte, the higher the quality when the image is downloaded to computer.
The camera was easy to use and felt comfortable in my hand. There were two small complaints. As the camera is not an SLR, the viewfinder does not go black when you shoot a picture and the shutter is almost impossible to hear if you are not in a quiet room.
Secondly, the main power switch, a large dial on the top left of the camera, has no safety catch. As the camera sat in my bag, it switched on. The batteries were half-dead before I fired a frame.
The Pro 70 comes with connection kits for both Windows and Macintosh computers. Connection was a simple matter, and the software used to browse images was easy to use, but required Photoshop or some other piece of software using Photoshop plug-ins.
It was interesting to see those shot in RAW mode. The images in the RAW and high-quality mode were good, with RAW showing less compression noise and a sharper picture.
The quality on the lower settings also was reasonable, but on the lowest setting do not try anything beyond e-mailing snapshots to friends.
Overall, the Pro 70 is a well-made, well-equipped camera which can make digital images a step - but not a leap - above other models. It probably will be available next month at dealers, but no price has been announced. Expect to pay under $10,000.
PROS AND CONS Product: Canon PowerShot Pro 70 digital camera Features: 28-70 zoom, 15 MB CompactFlash card, microphone, accepts conventional SLR flashes Price: under $10,000 on release next month Pros: rugged build, long battery life Cons: quiet shutter, no safety catch for on-switch