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Canon Powershot S70

By: Dave Etchells

With the same wide angle lens as its predecessor, the S70 boosts resolution with its 7.1 megapixel sensor, but holds the line on image noise.

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Page 10:Image Storage & Interface

Review First Posted: 9/30/2004

Image Storage and Interface

The Canon S70 uses CompactFlash memory cards for image storage, accommodating both Type I and II card sizes. This means that the camera should also be able to store images to a Hitachi MicroDrive for increased storage capacity, although I did not test the camera with one. A 32MB CompactFlash Type I memory card is supplied with the camera. Entire CompactFlash cards cannot be write-protected, however, the S70's Play menu allows you to write-protect individual image files, protecting them from accidental erasure, unless the card is formatted.

Still images can be saved at one of five resolutions (3,072 x 2,304; 2,592 x 1,944; 2,048 x 1,536; 1,600 x 1,200; 640 x 480 pixels), while movie images are recorded at 320 x 240 or 160 x 120 pixels. Still images also have three JPEG compression levels available: Superfine, Fine, and Normal, plus a RAW setting that records the image straight from the CCD, with no further processing. RAW images require the Canon ZoomBrowser or ImageBrowser software for processing on a computer. The benefit of the RAW data file format is that it compresses the image file without any loss of image quality.

A full complement of interface software comes with the S70, as does a USB cable for speedy connection to a PC or Macintosh computer. Downloading files to my Sony desktop running Windows XP (Pentium IV, 2.4 GHz), I clocked the S70 at 513 KBytes/second. This is moderately fast for cameras with USB v1.1 interfaces, but a good bit slower than most USB v2.0-equipped models. Still, it's fast enough that you shouldn't need an external card reader. (Cameras with slow USB v1.1 interfaces run as low as 300 KB/s, cameras with fast v1.1 interfaces run as high as 600 KB/s. Cameras with USB v2.0 interfaces run as fast as several megabytes/second.)

Following are the approximate resolution / quality and compression ratios for a 32MB card (compression numbers are based on my own computations):

Image Capacity vs
Resolution/Quality
32 MB Memory Card
RAW Fine Normal
Basic
3072 x 2304 Images
(Avg size)

4
7.4 MB

10
3.1 MB
16
2.0 MB
33
946 KB
Approx.
Compression
- 7:1 11:1 23:1
2592 x 1944 Images
(Avg size)
- 12
2.6 MB
22
1.5 MB
43
734 KB
Approx.
Compression
- 6:1 10:1 20:1
2048 x 1536 Images
(Avg size)
- 19
1.7 MB
34
929 KB
67
473KB
Approx.
Compression
- 6:1 10:1 20:1
1600 x 1200 Images
(Avg size)
- 30
607 KB
54
344 KB
103
197 KB
Approx.
Compression
- 6:1 10:1
19:1
640 x 480
Images
(Avg size)
- 115
278 KB
178
179 KB
280
114 KB
Approx.
Compression
- 3:1 5:1
8:1

 


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