Hello and welcome to my review of the Canon Power shot Zoom.
This is the big video channel and I make YouTube videos about making videos.
Stay tuned because in this video I'm going to cover what's in the box, what's not
included, and you need to buy, the terrible thing that happened.
Basic operations, how I set my device up, how good the images are, who this is for?
What's in the box?
In the box, you get the unit a wrist strap and a USB C charging cable.
Oh, and some Manuals.
What's not included and you need to buy .The unit will need a USB C charging
adapter as it requires at least 18W to charge.
Most USB adapters a 5W or 10W this means that your standard USB Chargers and power
banks are unlikely to work and you'll need to buy one specifically unless you already
had a power adapter for a really modern smartphone.
The official Canon charger costs £120, but you can get away with a ten pound USB C
charger from somewhere like Amazon, so you'll need to spend at least another £10.
I spent another £30 as I purchased a USB C power bank alongside the wall charger. The
terrible thing that happened while I was out testing the PowerShot Zoom for this
review, I dropped on a gravel pathway and broke the front glass element.
By this point I'd already purchased
additional power accessories so I wasn't best pleased.
So the front glass is broken and small
bits of glass are falling off unbelievably.
The device is still usable, but you do see
some minor issues in the image and some softness and white areas.
However, it still works as a viewing
devices still works as a monocular and it still takes images and pictures.
It's just not brilliant. I'm in the process of having it repaired
by Canon and perhaps I'll do a video on that in the future.
Basic operation, Turn the device on and the Zoom is already at 100mm.
You look through the EVF.
Pressing the Zoom button moves the Zoom to 400mm from 100mm.
Another press does a digital crop of the 400mm to 800mm.
Pressing the photo button takes a photo.
Pressing the video button starts and stops recording of a video.
There's no way to set things like ISO
aperture or shutter speed, so I set the exposure compensation to minus a third to
slightly underexposed the image and just get more pleasing image.
I experimented and found setting it to
minus a third or minus two thirds of a stop did give a better image.
How I set my device up First off, I set the diopter to match my vision.
There's five buttons so doing anything in the menu is going to be tricky.
However, it wasn't too bad using the photo or video button to move up and down in the
menus and use the Zoom button as a select button.
As a default.
The device will be in continuous auto
focus and will film with 30 frames per second.
Images are taken in JPG and there's no way to change that.
I changed the focus to single point autofocus as I found this quicker
and that does mean there isn't any hunting around, but it does mean you have to hard
press the photo button with the central AF points.
I set the framework 25 frames per second after setting the zone from NTSC to PAL.
Using the button to set the date and time is a hassle.
But you are going to only do this once.
I tried out continuous drive mode but
found that I ended up taking too many images.
The problem is that you don't get a beep or a sound once an image is taken,
you just get a little faint white border in the EVF and you can easily miss that.
I also paired the device to my smartphone using the Canon Camera Connect app.
I didn't put the wrist strap on, which
perhaps I should have hindsight is a wonderful thing.
How good are the images?
Before we go into image quality, I want
say that I don't think that this is a camera.
This is something very different.
The device is a stabilised digital
monocular also takes simple stills and video.
This isn't a sports camera or wildlife camera but this is a fun device.
You'll note that I keep referring to it in this video as a device
rather than a camera because I think of it as a device rather than a camera.
So here's a selection of videos and stills that I took before
I broke the lens. The images and videos are fine for the way I'd use this device.
I won't be entering the images into any
serious photography competitions, but they're fine for showing to people what I
did or what I saw or documenting what happened or something that I saw.
They're fine for that.
Are the images any good?
You'd have to decide if they're right for you.
For a walking around device that's pocketable i do think they're fine.
You can see some examples of the images
and videos that I took after the lens broke.
I did plan to compare the device to a bridge camera and a different monocular,
but it seems wrong to do the comparison at the moment with a broken lens.
So who is this device for?
It's a really difficult one to answer.
Perhaps it's easier to say who this isn't for.
As you can pair it to a smartphone,
multiple people could watch on a screen at the same time as you use the device.
So it has uses its sporting events or
concerts or places you go with your family.
However, the image quality through the EVF
isn't very good in low light, and if you were in a low light environment, you be
better in an optical monocular for viewing things in low light.
This is not for serious Wildlife Photographer,
but it may be suitable for a plane spotter or a train spotter or someone who just
wants to see things rather than take pictures.
What I liked about it was that it was light.
It fits in your pocket and it's really quick to use.
I think this is suitable for a parent watching their child at a sports match.
But I don't think it's suitable for recording your childs school production
due to the low light problems and the short battery life.
And of course, you might not want to spend the additional money getting a suitable
power bank to keep it topped up while you're out.
I have wildlife in my garden and I like to spot things on walks and family day trips.
I think this is who the devices is for, people like me.
The person who wants to use it to spot things infrequently when they're out and
about and have it there for as and when they need it.
The ability to take a video or an image is just a nice bonus.
It is not the device itself.
The point that the device is really to
view things far away with the ability to take a video or a still as a bonus.