Sunday, January 13, 2013

Canon N, a compact for the connected age

Can Canon save the point and shoot?, article.

We see innovative compact cameras from smaller companies such as Fujifilm, but not often from Canon, they are usually more evolutionary in character. But here's a fresh one, the Canon Powershot N. I rather like it, nice looks and it has a tilt-screen. It is a pure "smart phone era" camera, designed to work with your Android phone or iPhone (or tablets, though I think they should have cell connection).
(Compared to the camera already in phones, it has better low-light-capability, it has zoom (a long one), and 12 MP.) It should come in April at around $300.

It's funny to compare it to the Fuji X20, two brand new compact-ish cameras, but they couldn't be more different.


5 comments:

emptyspaces said...

Just got a look at this one at CES. It's a really cool design, and unlike the other "connected" P&S cams I saw, truly pocketable. Once the price comes down a bit it becomes an attractive option.

I was doing a lot of tweeting during spare time at the show, and found myself wishing I had better photos to work with from time to time. This camera could have helped with that.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yeah, I wonder when phones will be up to doing indoors pics well. Most have an *awfully* small sensor.

I don't think $300 is a bad price for this cam, if the lens is good.

Bruce said...

It's great to see Canon doing something different. Fuji goes for the old folks with their designs, Samsung and Nikon partially replicate an Android phone in their cameras.

Canon says why bother duplicating the phone when we can let the user's own phone do the work. They give the user three things their phone camera lacks in the smallest possible package: zoom range, tilt LCD, larger sensor.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Indeed, Bruce.

Others have mailed who think it's over-priced. OK, I can see that viewpoint, but it's a new kind of camera, they are always priced a bit on the high side, it's one of the ways the companies pay for the development.
If it's a big hit, the price was justified and they will surely keep it for a while.

The first good digital video camera in the nineties went dramatically *up* in price when (Panasonic?) found out that pros were using it in droves.

Bruce said...

$300 is a lot, but the specs are pretty good. ƒ3.0 to ƒ5.9 is not bad at all for such a long zoom lens.

Unless they sell a ton of these right away, the price should go down to $250 or less by next Christmas. That is the only time that matters as far as sales volume is concerned.

I think this price is just to test the market and harvest a little extra money from those who just can't wait.