Paolo Gaspar

Mar 21

As defined by theurbandictionary.com, a Tool is:

A sad soul who is being taken advantage of without realizing it

I am that sad soul, and for years Canon has been taking advantage of me. I honestly don’t know what Canon does that makes their products superior (in my mind) enough that it necessitates the premium I pay over other similar products.

My First Canon

It all started five years ago when I about a Canon A60 (with a bundled 128mb memory card, it came up to about $450 CDN). It was a 2.0 megapixel camera which had everything that I needed. An affordable camera with a a lot of manual features. The only thing that disappointed me was the resolution as I originally wanted a 3.2 megapixel Nikon. The Nikon’s price point was more than I wanted to pay at the time, but I’m glad that I chose the Canon in the end.

My Second Canon

The A60 lasted about 10 months. During that time, it got dropped, water-logged, and generally abused (though I prefer to say that it was well used). Seeing how much abuse it was able to handle, I decided to buy another Canon; A Canon A80.

This baby had a swivel screen and 4.0 megapixel - WOW. I took that camera with me everywhere; concerts, Montreal, road trips, and even the Philippines … twice. I eventually also bought a Canon 20D for those extra special shots as well. The A80 and 20D complemented each other nicely.

The A80 has served me well for four years, but it is no longer not as nice as it used to be. The body literally has been coming apart. That was never too much of a problem because the pictures were still really good. It was only recently that the sensor started to give way and cause some strange pink’ing in high contrast shots. Then, it started giving me the dreaded E18 error. Its the digicam equivalent of going braindead.

My Newest Canon

With my upcoming trip to the Philippines and Japan, I’ve been looking for a good deal on a new camera; a Canon, of course. That deal came today when I went on Future Shop’s website and found a Canon A720is on sale for $50 off. I had always had this camera in my radar, but thought I would buy it in the states because of the price difference. This $50 discount practically put it at a break-even point so I decided to go for it. Added to the appeal was the $150 Future Shop gift card that Meg gave me for Christmas!

So I bought the A720is along with two 2gb SD cards for $40 and a cheap SD card reader.

Here is a picture of the old A80 and the new A720is. Note how the top of the A80 is totally missing the metal part. Also note how much larger the A720is’ screen is! The A80 had a 1.5″ screen. I think the A720is is a 2.5″ screen.

The Proof is in the Pudding

I dunno what that means, but whatever … the Image Stabilizaion works really well too! The two images below show that. The one on top is without IS and the one on the bottom is with IS. That was the only variable that was changed.