Canon PowerShot D20 review

Canon PowerShot D20 review

22nd October 2012

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Intro

The Canon PowerShot D20 is a robust waterproof camera designed for use of goods and services out of doors in the merciful of environmental conditions you'd hesitate to take off a conventional photographic camera. It's waterproof to a depth of 10 Metres, dustproof, shockproof and can be used in temperatures from -10 to 40 degrees Celsius.

The D20 is Canyon's second raincoat pattern coming a not inconsiderable three years after the original D10 which coincidentally remains in the PowerShot Bank line-astir. A wait of three years is a life-time in the digital camera international, so you'd be forgiven for thinking Canon had given informed the idea of waterproof cameras, only it's put much effort into the new mould. As well as root restyling, the D20 swaps the D10's 12.1 Megapixel CCD sensor for a CMOS one of the same resolution and increases the lens range to a 5x 28-140mm equivalent with Trenchant Image stabilisation. The blind size up increases from 2.5 to 3 inches with 460k pixel resolution. The D20's movie capabilities have been brought up to date with 1080p24 HD video. In conclusion, there's a built in GPS receiving system that not only enables you to tag images with position data, but as wel allows recording of a GPS log of your travels.

To test the PowerShot D20 I took it into the Atlantic Ocean surf dispatch the coast of Cornwall in the South West of the UK along with the Panasonic Lumix TS20 / FT20. The PowerShot D20 is a bigger, Sir Thomas More expensive model with superior waterproofing, a thirster rapid climb range and a shapely-in GPS. But do these features excuse the higher price tag, or would you be fortunate in the water with the less expensive and more compact Lumix TS20 / FT20? Read my full review to observe out.

Canon PowerShot D20 Conception and controls

With its rounded corners and Cuban sandwich styling, the earlier D10 was an unorthodox looking for camera but, to my head, perfectly designed for its purpose. The new PowerShot D20 is little artificial than its predecessor, but still not what you'd call conventional, with a tough buxom plastic shell and many other design elements which set information technology obscure form the rest of the PowerShot tramp.

Nigh obviously, there's no extending lens. Unco for an underwater camera, the older PowerShot D10 engaged a conventional lens enclosed within the waterproof casing. With the D20 Canon has opted for a 'folded' optics lens system design which is more compact. This makes the D20 quite lean and easier to tuck inside a wetsuit, but it's not by a blame sigh the smallest subaquatic compact around. At 112 x 70 x 28mm and weight 228g with barrage fire and carte it's substantially large and heavier than the Panasonic Lumix TS20 / FT20 which measures 101 x 58 x 19mm, and at 142g is almost half the weight.

Viewed from the front the D20 has a rectangular visibility with one side sculpted into a smooth curve. The two tone colour connive contrasts the matt plastic finish with a artificial metallic plate finished in a choice of silver, blue or yellow. The case is held together with highly visible sunken hex screws and the strap, as happening the D10 is engaged via a bayonet lug on the bottom right corner. IT all adds finished to a rugged look and feel that's in tune with the PowerShot D20's function.

The anterior panel curves smoothly into the top which is home base to the shutter release, on/forth button and the unusually placed playback clitoris. In that respect's zero zoom rocker roughly the shutter button as is the norm on PowerShot models – presumably an arrangement that's difficult to seal. As an alternative the zoom is activated by two buttons just above the thumb inking pad on the rear of the camera. To the right-minded of the pad is the dedicated movie record button and below it the familiar Canon four-way accountant with four separate curb pads in place of the disc surgery encircle system found on early PowerShot models. At length the carte clitoris is located at the bottom of the panel.

The D20's buttons are large and well-spaced, protrude from the bet on panel and react with a positive click when pushed. This is important with camera planned for utilize in demanding environments where you'rhenium often unable to view the television camera, your work force are parky or gauntleted and you have to operate the camera 1-handed piece using the other hand to hang on to something, be it a gravy boat, a forget me drug, or a rock face. The D20's buttons are really healthy designed therein respect with contrasting shapes to allow you to mark them by touch.

Behind a sealed door happening the right of the camera are mini HDMI and USB / A/V ports plus a Direct current-in socket which you can usage to power the camera with the nonobligatory AC adaptor, though obviously not in wet conditions. The one battery and card compartment along the base of operations is likewise fitted with a sealed door and secured with a take hold of. If this door is opened the camera powers down, but there's no warning to let you know if either of the doors isn't firmly closed.

The PowerShot D20's 3 inch LCD screen has a resolution of 460k pixels and a 4:3 aspect ratio which way the silver screen country is filled when composing and playing back full closure images. When shooting HD video the view is alphabetic character-boxed with black parallel bars top and bottom. The screen provides a good view for both composing shots and playing them back. It has a ample viewing tilt some horizontally and vertically; level with the television camera held at coat of arms length, you suffer a good view of things. The brightness level is changeable only, American Samoa with all screens that North Korean won't help you much in blazing sunlight where a certain amount of guesswork is inevitable.

The PowerShot D20's built-in winkle is settled just to the powerful of the lens more or less in the transcend middle of the anterior panel. It has a supreme range of 3 metres at the wide angle lens mount with Auto, manual on/off, and Slow synchro settings. In the petit mal epilepsy of a template number I'd assume that 3 measure figure is at a relatively high ISO sensitivity setting only if you need more flash world power there's the option of fitting Canon's HF-DC1 or HF-DC2 external flash units.

Canon PowerShot D20 lens and stabilization

The PowerShot D20 Has a 5x physical science zoom with an equivalent range of 28-140mm. Whereas the D10 used a conventional extending lens within its waterproof casing, the D20 has a 'folded optics' construction – the lighting path is reflected within the genus Lens system to grant a shorter physical way for the light to travel and thus a slimmer body. Folded optics have been popular with other manufacturers both for rainproof and different models, but this is a first for Canyon.

The rate has multiplied from the 3x of the D10, extending at both ends to provide a multipurpose 28mm wide angle and a moderate telephoto to assistant you sustain a wee closer to the action. It exceeds the 4x range of the Lumix TS20 / FT20, but with less of a wide tip view and a importantly longer telephoto.

Canon PowerShot D20 insurance coverage wide		Canon PowerShot D20 coverage tele

5-25mm at 5mm (28mm equivalent)		5-25mm at 25mm (140mm same)

For activeness in the water and in other needy environments where framing pot be a dispute I remember this is a good range to operate with. The demands of sealing a waterproof camera mean you Don River't visualize them with zoom ranges longer than this. The Olympus Tough TG-820 iHS, Nikon COOLPIX AW100 and Cyber-shot TX200V all sport 5x zooms with folded optics. Some other consequence of the folded optical path is that maximum apertures aren't that bright. The PowerShot D20 has a maximum aperture of f3.9 – 4.8, but with its backwards illuminated CMOS sensor and Intelligent IS stabilisation, it notwithstandin aquits itself well in low light conditions.

I tested the D20's Intelligent IS by zooming it to its maximum 140mm setting and taking a series of shots in deterioration light at progressively slower shutter speeds. As you can see from the crops, the Powershot D20 can eliminate tv camera handshaking at shutter speeds dejected to 1/25th of a second – more than two stops slower than the 140th that the photographers rule of thumb suggests is safe at a focal length of 140mm and a little better than Canon's quoted two stops figure. If you're wondering wherefore the D20's stabilization performance is so pocket-size compared with strange models in the PowerShot range with Intelligent IS, again, it's the folded design of the lens.

Canon PowerShot D20 Intelligent IS Off/Continuous

100% crop, 5-25mm at 25mm, 100 ISO 1/25, IS Forth.		100% crop, 5-25mm at 25mm, 100 ISO 1/25, IS Consecutive.

Canon PowerShot D20 shooting modes

The PowerShot D20 is au fond a point-and-scud compact and as such lacks any manual or semi-auto exposure modes. Auto mode uses the Digic 4 processor's scene detection algorithm to watch the best exposure. It deeds away disjunctive scenes into those that either do or don't contain people, and determines whether there's whatever subject movement in front analysing the lighting conditions. The Digic 4 can tell if the subject is backlit, spotlit, if there is depressed sky in the set up and if you'Ra shooting a sunset. IT fire likewise find out if you're shooting in the dark and whether you stimulate the photographic camera attached to a tripod. Lastly it keeps track of focus as well as photo so can tell if you're lining up a large shot. Put all that jointly and you have a system that capable of recognising 32 different scene types.

Switch to Program auto mode and you mislay the scene detecting, but benefit a bit more than control over some settings. You can manually set the ISO sensitivity and Caucasian balance, choose from one of three metering modes and align exposure compensation by up to plus or minus 2EV.

The D20 lacks a mode telephone dial, to switching modes you press the top push button on the quatern-way controller and select from a menu. As you'd expect on a waterproof model, the prototypal option after Auto and Political platform is Underwater, followed away Snow. The next menu set back displays a hoagie-menu with a far selection of scene modes including Ache Shutter, which uses human face detect to aerate the shutter, Hand-held NightScene low promiscuous stacking mode, and the Creative effect filters.

Original effects include Fish-center, Little, Fiddle Camera, Monochrome, Super Colourful, Poster Burden, Colouring material Accent and Colour Swap filters. Most of them can be used for film shooting as substantially as stills and undergo additional settings that are accessed away pressing the display button. Monochrome, e.g. has three tone options – B/W, Blue and Sepia – and the Miniature effects allows you to adapt the place and size of the focus zone in both crosswise and vertical orientations.

Canon PowerShot D20 movie modes

In big step up from the basic movie capability of its predecessor, the PowerShot D20 now offers full HD movie recording with 1080p answer at 24 frames per bit. Video is encoded using the H264 codec at an average bit rate of 33Mbps and saved in a QuickTime wrapping with a .mov extension in the same folder Eastern Samoa standing images. In that location's besides a 720p30 mode As well as 'standard' VGA 640 x 480 solving pick.

I've already mentioned that you can utilisation the Creative effect filters for movie shooting and the PowerShot D20 offers some separate very clever and creative video options that order information technology ahead of the competition for action video sequences. First base, at that place's a Superintendent Slow Motion Movie mode which records 640 x 480 video at 120fps or 320 x 240 at 240fps. Both these modes playback at 30fps resulting in action that's slowed down by 4x or 8x respectively. The PowerShot D20 also includes Canon's innovative Movie digest mode that buffers a a couple of seconds of video prior to each tranquillize shot you take then compiles them totally into a moving picture.

The D20 is equipped with a mono mic settled on the front control board and has a software wind filter. The zoom can equal used during recording and operates at a slower f number with no centrifugal make noise.

Canon PowerShot D20 sample TV 1: outdoors, sunny, handheld pan

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The quality of the D20's 1080p24 mode is very good. There's a slightly audible click from the zoom on its inward travel, but the AF doesn't wander and the stabilisation does a good farm out of ironing come out of the closet wobbles at the supreme 140mm zoom range.

Canyon PowerShot D20 sampling video 2: outdoors, sunny, tripod pan with optical zoom

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Stabilisation was disabled for this tripod-affixed shot. The D20 does a good job with the exposure in difficult conditons and the CMOS sensor copes advantageously with the bright reflections. The AF is again tilt level and the zoom motor is inaudible, though the quality of the audio changes while zooming which suggests Canon may be employing an audio filter to supress the zoom racket.

Canyon PowerShot D20 sample video 3: indoors, low-well-lighted, hand-held pan

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The D20's mono mic does a god job with the audio connected this interior low-incandescent panning shot. The exposure and AF also cope all right, but there's a high level of visible noise in this curtail.

Canyon PowerShot D20

handling

The PowerShot D20 is ready to snap in a swift 1.5 seconds later on shift it on. Handling is is much critical factor for 'knockabout' cameras, as photography is but a more difficult thing to do when you're in the water, on skis, Beaver State in extreme weather conditions. Same its predecessor, the D10, it's been designed with this in mind and the big buttons, clear labelling and simple menus wholly help. As with wholly cameras that use an internal electron lens mechanism decorated on the circus tent left corner, you need to atomic number 4 diligent to keep your fingers out of the way, simply it's a mistake you rapidly memorise to avoid making.

And that isn't the only problem you need to look retired for with the lens. In the pee IT's all to easy for small droplets to form on the tras surface, making autofocus well-nig unrealistic and marring the shot in any case – you can see examples of this in the first row of images beneath. To live fair, this happened just as much with the Panasonic Lumix TS20 / FT20 and, blackball about classify of water-repellant finish, it's hard to see what manufacturers could DO about it. It's something you need to be perpetually on the lookout for though.

A considerably as being water-cogent evidence to a depth of 10 metres, the D20 is shock-proof. According to Canon information technology's capable of withstanding knocks and drops up to 1.5 metres. Though it's plain preferable not to knock the camera about if you can fend off information technology, a certain amount of rough treatment is inevitable when you're in and around water and I can affirm that the D20 is capable of withstanding the sort of treatment Canyon says it is, having doubly dropped it from about exactly that tiptop onto the ground in a car park. I didn't do information technology on purpose (honest, Canon), on both occassions I unzipped and removed the top half of my wetsuit, forgetting the camera was tucked inside, under my arm.

The D20 is also freeze-impervious, you can use it in conditions down to -10 degrees C I didn't get it anywhere near that cold, but I do know from experience of using other cameras in freezing temperatures that the biggest problem (aprt from cold hands) is battery life. The D20's CIPA rating is a respectable 280 shots with the GPS turned off. This figure wish have been measured at or near room temperature and will foreshorten well as conditions get colder. I've already mentioned the thumping buttons on the D20, the fact that they, on with most of the tv camera are plastic is also a bonus in very cold conditions. With a take down thermal conductivity than metal, plastic is a lot more comfortable to hold and touch sensation in freezing conditions.

I didn't try using the D20 with gloves connected, but I did spent rather a second of time in the water with it. The biggest factor for handling in and under the water is the camera's size up, which works both for and against it. The big buttons are loose to operate and the 3 inch screen makes framing up shots comparatively easy, though, inevitably, if you're existence buffetted around by waves there's going to cost some guesswork involved. The screen is actually much easier to visualize under the water than happening or out of information technology and if you're snorkelling with a mask you'll glucinium pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is to compose photos than open air in bright sunlight.

The D20's size makes it quite a rough to handle when you're non taking pictures, or trying to amaze into put over in the water. You can swim with the Panasonic Lumix TS20 / FT20 tucked into the palm of your hand, simply it's not nearly then easy with the D20. It's supplied with a lanyard style wrist electric cord with a toggle to adjust it tight close to your wrist and while that reduces the risk of you losing it, it doesn't really help keep it out of the agency when you're not victimisation it. I found the best solution was to keep it tucked in my wesuit, take it out, slip the trounc over my wrist and tighten it before taking shots, and then returning it to the safe of my wetsuit. If you do make out to release the D20 in the water it doesn't be adrift, sol you really need to dungeon hold of it in the least times. There's an appurtenant kit that includes a neoprene pouch and a ice-cream float that might help you locate the D20 if you inadvertently let go of it in the water. And you may cerebrate information technology singular for a body of water-proof model, simply Canyon likewise produces a WP-DC45 water-proof housing for the D20 which will get you down to a depth of 40 metres.

The D20 has Face detect AF which works likewise as on other powerShots in 'pattern' circumstances, but isn't so effective in the water and when subjects are self-propelled fast. When it can't detect faces it defaults to Canyon's very effective nine area AF and in that respect are as wel Centre and trailing AF options.

Canyon compacts aren't renowned for their fast continuous shot capabilities and the D20 is no exception. With a full resolution swiftness of 1.9fps actions sequences are more or less impossible. I proven the D20's continuous shot with a freshly formatted speed class 10 SD card and it really managed a little better than the quoted speed, but regular 2.2 frames per second isn't passing to help you capture fast action. Let's face it, a lot of what this photographic camera will constitute used for is action shots – surfing, snowboarding, kayaking and the like-minded – but also the kids sledging and in the syndicate – then the lack of a decent busted mode is a bit of a disappointment.

But while IT lacks a instantaneous burst shot mode, the PowerShot D20 is equipped with a GPS pass catcher enabling automatic location tagging of images. The D20 also records a track log which you tail end employ with you own software, operating theatre websites the likes of everytrail, to map your route. Generally, in the wide open spaces of Cornwall the GPS performed fortunate, though it didn't ever pick skyward a signal indoors and its performance was inconsistent in proximity to close buildings. Its EL reporting was also a bit off, it tagged unitary of my shots, understood unfixed on the surface of the Ocean Sea off the Cornwall coast, at 196ft below sea take down.

The D20 has a 12.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor measurement 1 / 2.3in with a maximum icon size of 4000 x 3000 pixels. Images are stored as JPEG files compressed to acquire file sizes of 2 to 4MB. The ISO sensitivity ranges from 100 to 3200 ISO.

To picture how the calibre of the PowerShot D20 measures-up in practice, take a calculate at my Canon D20 prize and Canon D20 noise results pages, pasture my Canon D20 sample images, or skip to the give chase and head right for my verdict.

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