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Written by Milan Ljubisavljevic
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Thursday, 20 August 2009 |
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Page 1 of 3   When you plan a vacation one of the major concerns is always a camera that will be needed to record all those memorable moment at the beach, mountain, desert etc. When it comes to cameras, choices are numerous these days, but there is always present a fear of damaging camera with water or dust. If accident occurs it is most likely that photos on memory card will be salvageable, but camera will be most likely ruined for the rest of vacation. Waterproof camera models are pretty scarce and expensive while other solution to this problem can be purchase of waterproof chassis for certain modes of cameras. Recently Olympus has introduced few interesting compact waterproof cameras and now Canon is joining that market with its PowerShot D10 model.
Unusually for cameras Canon PowerShot D10 easily draws attention and induces positive reactions. Design is a bit retro, so camera looks very similar to a mini sub with opening for lens that resembles to those round ship windows. Casing is rounded and colored in marine blue and silver color. Above lens is located flash while at the back can be found usual buttons in unusual layout for a camera from PowerShot series. Zoom can be set with two separate buttons instead of usual rocker button. Photo modes can be selected with only one button instead with, usually, multi-position wheel. These changes are made so the camera can be waterproof since rocker and wheel button are mechanisms that are not the best solutions for waterproof camera. Single buttons are much easier to implement and, what is also important, cheaper solution to the problem.
Canon used 1/2.3 inch CCD sensor with 12.1 megapixels. Because of its waterproof properties lens focal length is only 35-105mm with 3x optical zoom. Lens is located behind waterproof glass so there isn’t much space in casing for it to “spread its wings”. Optical stabilization is a must and there is support for recording photos in 16:9 ratio. Shutter speeds can be set in range from 15sec to 1500sec while aperture can be set in range from F2.8 up to F4.9. ISO values can be set from 80 to 1600 value. 2.5 inch display at the back has resolution of 230,000 pixels and it can even be used on bright and sunny day. Videos can be also recorded in VGA resolution in 30fps.
Autofocus is TTL with 9 points and supports recognition of up to 35 faces in one shot. According to this there is option that can trigger autofocus only when your face is located at certain location after timer is set. Besides usual autofocus there is also continuous and servo mode. Macro mod is also present and it can be used to focus at objects that are as close as 3cm.
Camera has 3 modes. Automatic, when camera takes full control and it is suited for beginners. “P” mode allows better control and user can set white balance, exposition compensation, ISO value and flash control. In third mode user can set camera for one of predefined scene modes. We suggest “P” mode since ISO value can be set manually and consequently avoid huge amount of color noise appear on the shot. Camera can be also set at Smart Auto mode when camera should recognize the scene type and set itself in one of 18 predefined modes. This can be very useful for absolute beginners.
All this is nice but extreme situations are where this camera shines. It is waterproof up to 10m deep and can operate safely at temperatures as low as -10 degrees Celsius. Since it can also survive fall from 1.2m we could say that this is one tough camera. This is first waterproof Canon camera in PowerShot series and as such it is welcomed novelty. Since this is camera that can take photos underwater there is specific mode for taking pictures under water. In that mode color saturation is increased so photos looks much more natural since some colors do disappear with increase of depth.
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