Judo Chop!
Recently, I had the good fortune to travel to Germany for, of all things, a Tae Kwon Do festival. What on earth do you do at a Tae Kwon Do festival, you ask? There were the grueling, 3-hour long seminars conducted by Grand-Master Kwon. There was also the main event, during which I, a mere green belt, sat in a very comfortable seat while 600 black belts from around the world jumped, kicked, sparred, and sent their fists through cinder blocks. As if that wasn't cool enough, I got it on film.
The sleek Canon Optura S1 makes traveling so much fun.
Getting the festival on film may not sound special, but for me, whose last use of a filming device was when I was nine — the camera nearly outweighing me two to one — this was a minor victory. At just over four inches long, two inches wide, and almost a pound in weight, Canon's Optura S1 is indeed a minor miracle of modern physics. Really, how did they get 2.2 megapixels of resolution and a full array of features packed into a box the same size as a can of soda?
The battery just slips right into the side of the camcorder, and — voila! — where'd it go?
Design ingenuity
Well, I'll tell you. Most camcorders, including other Canon Mini DV cams, slap their battery packs on the back of the camera and place their function buttons on the side, or on the inside of the flip-out screen. The protruding battery adds considerable length to the camera, and throws off the weight balance as well. What Canon has done is streamline the battery and fit it right into the middle of the camera, behind the flip-out screen. They've moved the buttons which would have been there to the back. This all just makes so much sense: the battery's no longer an obvious attachment; its placement keeps the camera's weight in balance; and the buttons are now in a place where the thumb has easy access to them. The battery life is incredibly long, too. On a week-long trip, I only recharged the battery once, and that was four days in.
My wallet dwarfs the S1, but both fit neatly into the camera bag.
The advantage of the S1's tiny size? It was so small that I carried it everywhere, no matter whether I thought I was going to use it or not. It just stowed so neatly in my little camera bag, which doubled as my purse for the trip. (As a side note, my wallet takes up more room in the bag than the camcorder.) Indeed, the fact that I could fit my camera, wallet, and other small sundries in the "camera bag," an item normally made to fit snugly around an average camcorder, should tell you just how compact this Canon is. I also got the added benefit of being a very discreet tourist, since I wasn't sporting some gawky backpack that stored the camcorder, nor was it dangling round my neck. This happy circumstance left my mind free to worry about more important matters, like…did I remember my passport?
Really see what you're filming
The Optura S1 has a 2½" color TFT screen — large for its size, I thought — which will brighten for outdoor use at the touch of one button. This was especially helpful on those bright European mornings when I was trying to film Munich from the top of a tower and the sun was at my back. But even if the extra screen brightness didn't help, I could still see through the viewfinder, which has a nifty feature that allows you to adjust its focus to suit your own eyesight. This little upgrade, called the diopter adjustment, might seem like small beans to some, but for one who typically wears glasses (and we all know you have to take off your glasses to see through a viewfinder properly), this feature was a huge help. I simply pulled the viewfinder out or pushed it in to get the right focus for my prescription, like using an old-fashioned telescope.
Swivel and zoom
Another great feature of the S1 is the 10X optical zoom, which is a great deal farther than the normal 3X or 4X zoom. At one stage, I was in a crowded, standing-room-only gym, at the very back. Naturally, I couldn't see what was going on in the middle of the room, so I just swiveled the screen so it was parallel to the floor, extended my arm upwards, and zoomed in. You can also digitally zoom up to 200X. Obviously, it would be advised to use a tripod if you plan to zoom in that close, as even the image stabilizer can't help you master the shakes at that level of zoom. The resolution quality is also more degraded at 200X digital zoom, since at that point the camcorder is just making the pixels larger, rather than the picture. However, the resolution at 40X digital zoom, the mid-level zoom setting, is still good.
