Category Archives: Photography

Canon makes a huge range of lenses and they are coming out with three more to coincide with the arrival of the two new dSLRs they have just announced (see my last post).

The three new lenses are the EF 14 mm F2.8 L II USM, the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS, and the EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS.

But none of these is the one I would choose as my principal lens, at least not for a mid-telephoto zoom. I would choose a lens which is known to be sharp, has a constant aperture, and which also has image stabilization.

That lens is the Canon f4, 24-105mm ‘L’ series, .which retails at $1,000 more or less.

Canon is a big company – much bigger than Nikon, its only real competitor.

In past years Canon has been in the habit of releasing a lot of new cameras models all at one time, and this year it is the same.

There are a number of compacts – the PowerShot A650 IS, the PowerShot A720 IS, the Digital IXUS 860 IS, and the IXUS 960 IS / SD950 IS. All of them have more pixels than the models they supersede and all of them must therefore suffer from the problems that come with decreasing the size of the microlenses in the array – which is, as I have said before, a poorer signal to noise ratio.

So what is left? Well I won’t even talk about the EOS-1Ds Mark III at $4,500 because it makes me drool. So that leaves the two that do interest me in a practical way and those are the EOS 40D selling body only at $1,300 as of its release date of September 20th, and the Canon PowerShot G9, which has now got what the older G models had, which is the ability to produce RAW images.

As to whether the G9 is any good I will leave until someone posts some images, and I won’t risk buying one on the chance it is going to be good. But the EOS 40D is bound to be good – well it should be unless Canon has done something really crazy.Continue reading “A raft of new Canon cameras – which are interesting?”