During recent visit to UK, I bought myself Canon PowerShot S1 IS. I wanted it ever since I read the review on dpreview.com. They have said everything you need to know, much better than I could possibly say or test. It looks nice, like a “real” SLR camera, has 3Mpx which is just enough for an amateur like me, with two gems: 10x optical zoom and IS – Image Stabilizer.
However, the price in Serbia at that time was astronomical. The review says that you can find over the web in US for as low as $340, but here it was €600+, way above my limit for the first digital camera I’m going to buy.
When I left for the UK, I intentionally did not bring my Nikon compact SLR,to force myself to buy something. I first thought to buy it from one of the high-street sellers, like Jessops. Their price was £345 – still pretty much high, but somewhere in the league of current price in Serbia, which is around €420.
Luckily, a colleague from Finsoft UK told me to look on the Internet for much better deals. And there were really good deals: PriceRunner reveals online shops that sells it for around £250 – fabulous 1/3 off of the high-street price. I read the reviews for the several first listed shops and finally chose Digital First.
Being from Serbia, I first called to make sure they accept credit cards issued here. They said that it is fine, as long as I send them few scanned documents, like passport and driver’s license. No problem there.
I placed my order on Wednesday around noon and left my hotel as delivery address. DigitalFirst representative called me 15mins later, asking for the hotel’s phone number – probably wanted to check is it possible to make the delivery there.
Hotel confirmed and around 1pm I got email saying that everything is in order and that they only wait on me to send them the documents. I sent them and 2h later got the confirmation email that they have sent it out.
I payed extra £4 for AM delivery, since I planned to leave the hotel next morning. I was a bit worried will it arrive at proper time, but there was no need for it. Camera arrived at 10am, and I was happily trying it out.
Perfect timing indeed, as I went to Manchester that day. :) I’m now shooting everything I can, and you can expect that my Flickr page will have regular updates.
I’m very pleased how efficient DigitalFirst was – my warm recommendations for camera deals in UK.
So how do you like the IS S1?
Very, very much. It’s not perfect though (what is..) — focus can go berzerk in dim-light conditions (the image then looks like Gaussian Blur 50 in Photoshop). Setting ISO100 or ISO200 can give somewhat acceptable images in such conditions. I also tend to make darker but sharper images and then enhance them in Photoshop.
It’s a bit heavy to bring with you everyday, but when I need to shoot something, I’m pretty confident I can get decent pictures. I’m gonna post a lot of photos to Flickr over the weekend, so you can see the quality of the images (I used 1600x1200).