This was my first post in Mikoy's blog Slide and Tap.
Camera technology is keeping pace with the fast advancement in technology and is also following trends of the latest gadgets. It is evident in the latest entry level DSLR from Canon, the EOS 650D/T4i DSLR. Among it's features is an 18 Megapixel Hybrid CMOS sensor witha the power of Canon’s latest DIGIC 5 processor, a burst rate of 5 frames per second (on a xxxD body) plus a swivel screen that we’ve seen from it’s bigger and older brother, the 60D. Also, as a new standard to DSLRs, this camera can also shoot video. But other than those, EOS 650D sports a technology that is bound to be applied to this level of cameras sooner or later and that is a touch screen interface.
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Touch interface is now widely adapted to a lot of gadgets, most are on mobile phones, and it’s no surprise that they would try to incorporate it to DSLRs as well. Arguably, having this in a DSLR is either a good thing or probably just a gimmick to entice new customers. For me it’s a good thing since the small body of the xxxD line of Canon cameras have limited space in the back for buttons and this just makes use of that 3-inch screen well. Of course there are still buttons for those of us who still prefer a tactile response on their cameras. Changing settings or browsing through pictures with a simple touch of finger to the screen doesn’t seem much though since we’re all used to it by now so most people wouldn’t care if they have this in their camera. Even point and shoot cameras have adapted this for quite some time now.
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But there is one feature with this model that surprised me, even though I expected it to happen soon anyway, and that is Touch Shutter. What it does is it allows you point at any part of the image you see on your LCD screen in Live View and the camera focuses on that part and automatically takes a picture based from your settings. It’s the the next step from the Live View feature that was introduced to DSLRs 4-5 years ago. It’s a good feature and I actually like it because it is as close to a WYSWIG type of capturing a images we can get with this camera since the 650D has 95% viewfinder frame coverage, meaning there is this 5% that you can’t see in your viewfinder that might be a difference between having a foot or not in your frame. This feature also makes it easy for you to take overhead (hail mary) shots because with the swivel screen, you can just raise your camera, tilt the screen, and see where your camera is pointing then with touch shutter, pick the subject and the camera takes a picture or taking worm's-eyeview photos without the need to drop to your belly on the ground. It also means that you don’t need to press the shutter button when taking a shot. Composing with this feature is definitely a lot easier and I can imagine this to be very helpful to macro photography. Open Live View, turn on the touch shutter and select the focus then BOOM, you have a picture.
Since it’s a new feature, there is bound to be some things with it that needs ironing out. Kai from Digitalrev pointed (no pun intended) this out in their review of the 650D and Touch Shutter has shutter lag, something that shouldn’t exist on DSLRs. It means that it takes sometime for the camera to focus on the point you selected on the screen before it actually takes the picture, something you'll be familiar with if you've used old point and shoot cameras. Having said that, this feature won’t be useful to street photography unless you’re shooting still-stills, as seen on the video.
Canon 650D/T4i Hands-on Review by DigitalRev
But there is something more about the touch shutter that doesn’t really sit well with me even though I think that it’s a really convenient feature. Touch shutter takes away the feeling of looking at the viewfinder and pressing the shutter button while you’re face is planted on the back of your camera. I don’t know how other photographers feel about this simple gesture but it’s something I like when I use a DSLR, this is coming from a person that values the sound of a shutter in a camera. Call me old school, relative to this feature, but I like framing my images in the viewfinder and pressing the shutter button. It has a mechanical feeling to it when I take a picture from that perspective and it also feels that the camera is an extension of my body. Kai also pointed out in his video that it looks like Canon thinks of this feature as something that pro-photographers don’t really need that’s why Canon haven’t applied this to their high-end cameras. Or maybe Canon is making sure that Touch Shutter works perfectly before they add this features to the future 1Ds, 5Ds and 7Ds. Maybe it will become a standard feature and I'll get the hang of using Touch Shutter since I mentioned that it’s actually a convenient way to shoot sans the shutter lag, but there is still something inside me that prefer my face to pressed at the back of a black box with my eye on a prism in the viewfinder framing the world on small box and having to half press a button to focus then pressing it completely to capture the moment.
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