Shot this one last summer, and “rediscovered” it while house cleaning my 2011 photo library.

Hilltop on the Denali Highway

Inspired by late November sunshine over a holiday weekend, I took the Canon S100 to a popular photographers’ perch of the Seattle skyline with the hopes of capturing a golden sunset. Alas, the sky turned gray as I set up the tripod, so I grabbed the opportunity to give the S100 a workout with the different special effects and HDR capability. A little ‘getting-to-know-you’ session, so to speak, and we had a great time.

Capture with the built-in HDR capability. Captures JPG only, not RAW. Notice the ghosting of the cars. I'm unlikely to use this effect much, as I get better results shooting RAW and handle HDR with post-processing.

Single image HDR: capture via RAW, converted to TIF, processed with Photomatix.

Captured with built in nostalgic effect

Captured with built-in fish-eye effect. Could be useful in different situations.

Captured with built-in minature effect. I like this a lot, good for amplifying objects in the middle of a shot.

Captured with built-in toy camera effect. Interesting, seems like something that could be reproducible with post-processing.

Captured with built-in super vivid effect. Another one that seems like something that could be reproducible with post-processing.

Captured with built-in color accent effect. Handy to have in the right circumstances.

Captured with RAW, converted to TIF, grunge effect by Photomatix. My favorite of this series.

The Canon S100 is a nice little ‘cusper’ camera, filling the niche between your phone camera and a DSLR. It’s small enough to be an everyday carry, slipping easily in a jacket pocket or motorcycle suit. The more you carry a camera around, the more likely that you’ll take more pictures. And a DSLR doesn’t always make for a convienent appendage.

Size comparison: Samsung Focus and the Canon S100

Just as importantly for me, I can turn it on and shoot it left handed while I’m doing something else – riding a motorcycle, driving a car, or holding an over-achieving dog on a leash. The S100 is not a substitute for an action camera like the GoPro HD or Contour – it’s too refined to be out in wet weather, and I doubt it’s resiliency if dropped from a 4 foot elevation.

It's not the size that matters, it's the output: GoPro and Canon S100

The S100 is designed to be an everyday companion when you want to quickly pull it out, quickly do a RAW or HD video capture, and tuck it away unnoticed. Such as grabbing a foodie shot at a restaurant or capturing a pepper spray incident at an unruly crowd rally. The 24-120 lens has a wide enough coverage for most mid-range uses, with a handy supplementary fish-eye setting for JPG captures. By comparison, the GoPro excels as an all weather video capture recorder, despite it’s algebriac menu settings.

Here’s a short 1 minute video sampler with the GoPro HD and S100 set at 1080, where I clamped both cameras on a stick and followed our over-achieving dog up a trail.

 
Still captures

Shot with my left hand while riding

Got any sheep to herd?

What it doesn’t do

• Interval shots, which means it’s not a camera for KAP (kite aerial photography) or automated capturing long sequences like a highway ride.
• RAW captures with special effects, such as fish eye
• Perform in wet weather, like the GoPro
• Also MIA: native RAW support within Windows, Photomatix, and Lightroom, as the camera is too new (unless I’m doing something wrong with the Canon codec install). Need to use the Canon photo editing tools to convert RAW to TIF or JPG until Microsoft and Adobe release updated drivers.

Hands on

• The front rubber grip helps, particularly when operating with gloved hands
• Customized self timer is useful (say, fire off 3 shots at 15 seconds instead of standard one shot after 2 or 10 seconds)
• One touch flash control is handy, regardless of other settings.
• Battery life goes quick for 200 shots/video captures.
• I like the fish eye effect.

Unlikely to use…

• Built-in HDR, which requires a tripod. There will come a day when this is just built into all cameras, we’re not there yet. I’ll just capture RAW instead and handle HDR via post processing.
• All those special built-in filters…does anyone really use sepia or B&W on the hardware end?

Haven’t yet played with…

• GPS functionality
• Neutral density filter

 
Bottom line
I’m not sending this one back to the retailer, the Canon S100 is a keeper.

Hung a GoPro upside down with a lanyard around my neck. 650 captures, most of them a blurry mess. A good one survived…

Rainy morning commute

After shooting the Blue Angels in a mid-afternoon light for so many years, I thought I would try something a little different: I camped in front of Boeing Field to view of take-off and landing, and processed my favorite pix with Photomatix in single shot mode.

Blue Angels in formation

Blue Angels with HDR processing

For comparison, below is the same shot as above converted to JPEG from Lightroom using LR’s built-in editing. (Adjustments made: slight boosts in exposure, blacks, sat, sharpening, and noise reduction.)

Blue Angels with standard processing

Of course, this could also be a testament to my post-processing LR skills, which I’m always looking to build up.

More Blue Angel shots, including some favorites over the past few years, are up in this gallery.

I just became a HDR convert. Holy cow. Let’s see what you think…

BEFORE

Mountain range east of Mt St Helens - single RAW capture. Colors are flat, and there is little depth to the picture.

AFTER

Mountain range east of Mt St Helens - after HDR post processing with Photomatix and Photoshop. Notice the colors and overall vibrancy.

What a difference using a single RAW capture. Higher fidelity and more even exposure is typically achieved with 3-5 RAW shots spanning across exposure settings like (+2, +1, 0, -1, -2) or (+2, 0 , -2). Multiple exposure execution would have taken care of the blown highlights in the clouds, which were too far gone to compensate in Photomatix or Photoshop. Very impressive processing.

Photomatix is now on my recommend list.