Canon SD940IS - how I video'd Japan

I want to just take a little break from my Japan posts to talk about this little champ:

It's the Canon SD940IS, and it's the camera I used both to take the videos you saw in this post, as well as all of the videos we shot for our store blog while in Japan, including brand introductions from some pretty famous celebrities in the Japanese fashion world.

We bought it just before leaving specifically for this purpose, but thinking it'd be kind of a poor-man's solution to the problem of shooting high quality video.  It's a 12.1 megapixel camera that shoots HD video (720p), but it's got a tiny little pocket-cam sensor.  And it's a tiny camera - about the length and width of a credit card, and about a half inch thick.  Any smaller and I'd probably have a hard time even using it.  So we weren't expecting professional results.

But we damn near got it.  I didn't trust the memory card I'd bought (which I discovered post-purchase has a ridiculous failure rate) so my brother-in-law lent us his Panasonic 1080p HD camcorder - not really a professional piece of equipment, but very similar to one that we were given to shoot a segment for Japanese television with a few months ago.  We ended up shooting all of our brand introduction videos twice, once using the SD940IS and again with the HD camcorder, and guess which videos we ended up using?

In every case, the SD940IS videos looked more vivid and better exposed.  The camcorder videos were all very dark in the foreground, and overly bright in the background.  (Using the camcorder's built-in light just made everything look unnatural, like using on-camera flash in still photography.)  The sound quality was better from the SD940IS too.  True, the camcorder was 1080p and would have looked clearer on a large screen, but overall it would have taken me a lot of work to get the camcorder videos to look as good as those that came straight out of the SD940IS.

The image stabilization worked great too - I found it very easy to get that SteadiCam look just by standing still and holding the camera as steady as I could.  Take a look at any of the videos here - I know the subject matter is not exactly mainstream, and the videos are resized and re-compressed for streaming, but you can easily see the effect of the stabilization in all of them.  I used no special effort - just regular handholding at a normal distance (using the LCD screen to frame).

YouTube recompresses even its HD videos, so if you want to see an original video out of the camera that's similar to one from my previous post here, you can download one temporarily here.  It's about 60MB.

As someone who grew up in the era when camcorders first hit the market, it's pretty amazing to think that a tiny little pocket camera like this can now take video that easily bests video from pro cameras 20 years ago, and that would probably be good enough for news program field reports even today.

I actually had to consciously try to convince myself to keep shooting, because I'm so used to pocket cams only taking 2 minutes of low quality video.  I found myself shutting it off unconsciously after 30 seconds or so, even though on an 8GB memory card, this thing will shoot 45 minutes of HD video.  (True, you do then have an 8GB file... and that adds up fast.)  The files it spits out are standard h.264 QuickTime files, so you can play them with QuickTime or edit them in pretty much any modern video editor.  (The camcorder we borrowed created Windows Media files, which worked fine for me too, but aren't really cross-platform.)

It also takes some pretty good pictures, including about half the ones you see in, again, this post (same post as the videos).  No, it's nowhere near the image quality level of my trusty old Rebel XT, but unless you blow things up to 1:1, you'll never notice.  Lens is good, sensor's good for a camera of this class, image processor is really good.  And it's very fast.

No complaints and highly recommended.  Very surprised and happy with the quality of this little camera.  Someday, all video's going to be shot on cameras like this.  (Or phones.)

By the way, we did stick out like a sore thumb using a black pocket camera in Japan. No one there uses black cameras. It's like wearing white sneakers in New York - it instantly brands you a tourist. Cameras there are silver, pink, purple, blue, or any other shade of neon or pastel color - never dull black.

Sigma 18-50 2.8-4.5 DC OS lens hands-on

7/28 UPDATE: For those who haven't been following, the original lens I did this test with was replaced as defective (it clearly wasn't working right some of the time). I took a few new test shots over the past weekend with the new lens and while it may just be wishful thinking on my part, I do think it's slightly better optically. The overall conclusions below still hold, as do the general design conclusions I reached, but I think my new lens is just a slightly better example than the old one even beyond simply working correctly :)

I'll post the new shots in a few days - sorry, you'll have to check back one more time.

Anyway, the original post continues below.

------------------------------------------

I just wanted to post something quick about this, because I know a lot of people (including myself) have been waiting for this lens, and I just happened to find it here in Japan, at one particular Yodobashi Camera, available only in a Canon mount. It was right at $300 (29,800 yen).

I haven't had a chance to do any exhaustive tests so far but generally I'm really happy with it as an upgrade to my old Rebel XT kit lens.

Pros:

* Built like a tank, at least for a consumer-level lens (looks almost exactly like their 18-50 f/2.8 EX lens, minus the gold stripe)
* Image stabilization works really well
* Non-rotating front element
* No lens extension during zoom - all movement is internal
* Hypersonic motor is very quiet (though not silent, nor all that fast)
* Includes a hood

Cons:

* Actually slightly less sharp in the corners than my kit lens (though I've been told I had an exceptional copy of the old Canon 18-55 non-IS)
* Corner sharpness is noticeably lower than center sharpness
* Heavy

These were taken in my backyard and have not been retouched at all. So some of the exposures are not exactly right, white balance might be a bit off, etc. I did not want to damage the purity of the images as the lens saw them. The shots were all taken on a tripod, using a delayed exposure (completely hands-off), using AF. I also took shots using MF but didn't do any better on a consistent basis - I will say the comparisons themselves were the same (the "winner" at any given aperture did not change based on whether I used AF or MF). The Canon lens used as a comparison is the 18-55 non-IS kit lens, which might have some slight differences to the IS version beyond the obvious, but they perform similarly in the tests I've seen. But you can keep that in mind, at least.

My thoughts on what the shots show are below.

Clicking the thumbnails will take you to that image on Photobucket, where you can view them at 100% full size (just click anywhere on the image once it opens in Photobucket). I know, kind of clunky to compare shots, but that's why God invented tabbed browsing :)

Sigma @ 18mm f/5.6:


Canon @ 18mm f/5.6


Sigma @ 50mm f/5.6


Canon @ 55mm f/5.6


Sigma @ 18mm f/8


Canon @ 18mm f/8


Sigma @ 50mm f/8


Canon @ 55mm f/8


Sigma @ 18mm f/11


Canon @ 18mm f/11


Sigma @ 50mm f/11


Canon @ 55mm f/11


Sigma @ 50mm f/8


Canon @ 55mm f/8


Now, the stuff I know a lot of you guys are waiting for - a couple of wide open aperture shots. Clearly the Sigma lens is not as sharp there, but my thoughts on that after the photos.

Sigma @ 18mm f/2.8


Sigma @ 18mm f/2.8


Sigma @ 18mm f/3.5


The interesting thing is how much sharper the Sigma lens is at f/3.5 than f/2.8. It's almost like they designed the lens for 3.5 and then just widened it to give it better specs, even though the lens is obviously not happy about it. (I'm not sure if that's really possible.)

One thing I will say is that you would obviously only be using f/2.8 in low light handheld situations, which this really was not. In low light when shooting handheld, you're going to be a lot more satisfied with "acceptable sharpness", especially from a consumer level lens. With a lens that has no OS and can only open up to f/3.5, you will have a hard time shooting handheld even acceptably in low light. With this lens, the f/2.8 coupled with the OS gives you the ability to shoot in very low light without unnecessary blur from camera shake, although you will not get "tack sharp" images out of it no matter what you do at that aperture.

Sigma @ 50mm f/4.5


Compare to the similar shot above. Again, it is noticeably softer at 4.5 at this end of the zoom than at f/8 or f/11, which is really its sweet spot.

Generally I am really happy with this lens, and if you look at the overall lens market, I think Sigma did what they needed to do here. This is not an EX lens designed to compete with Sigma's own 18-50 f/2.8. It is designed more to fill a hole just above Canon's cheap 18-55mm kit lens, and it costs about $100 more. The optical quality of the two lenses is about equivalent - the Sigma may be slightly sharper in the center at certain apertures, the Canon better in the corners.

For that extra $100, though, you are getting much better build quality, an included lens hood, a non-telescoping zoom, a non-rotating front element, and (from what I've read, at least), more capable image stabilization. You're also getting a wider aperture, though whether or not that's really useful given the performance is up to you (though I know I will be happy to have it when I need it). I personally think all of that is easily worth the extra cost over the Canon lens.

The other major difference between the Canon and Sigma lenses are that the Canon seems to be at its best at f/5.6, whereas the Sigma is at its best at f/8 or f/11. A lot of people will find the Canon sweet spot to be more useful in more situations, and I don't disagree with that. It's kind of odd - and my one real criticism of the Sigma lens - that its specs suggest it is designed for low light, but it's really happiest in bright light. Still, that isn't unusual for Sigma, who often seem to design their lenses this way.

Summing up, I can highly recommend this lens given the price, but you shouldn't be expecting EX (and certainly not Canon L class!) performance. It is what it is - a better quality alternative to Canon's 18-55 IS.