[Recovered Thread: 116984]

[Setter Dog]

I posted this on another forum so please bear with me if you frequent both forums:

I'm in the process of vacillating between the Canon S3 and the upcoming Olympus 550 UZ. My main goal is to have as much zoom as possible in a camera that takes very good videos also.

A compromise has occurred to me and I wonder if I'm missing something. If I buy the Canon S3 with 12x (36-432) zoom and add a 1.5X teleconverter, it looks like I would have more zoom than the Olympus 550UZ with the 18x (28-504) zoom.

I also am guessing that I could attach the TC for my trips to Yellowstone and just leave it attached. I've never used or seen a TC but am guessing the camera can be adjusted so the AF etc works normally.

Since videos are very important to me, the S3 with the TC would seem to get the nod unless there's something I'm missing. There are probably limitations to the TC thing that I haven't considered. All advice gratefully accepted.

[rongebriel]

If You can wait watch out for the latest from Sony. I already saw a new line-up of superzooms. H7 & H9, bothhave 15X optical zooms. The video quality is also good.

But if you wanna buy now, S3 is far better that 550 UZ interms of video and memory.

[Mitchell]

I actually used an S2 IS at Yellowstone with the teleconverter, and it worked extremely well. The video worked great, so I didn't need to carry along a separate video camera.

The main downside to using the TC is you have to remove it to take wide angle shots. If you zoom out too much, the barrel of the TC is visible.

The Olympus obviously wouldn't have this issue, but the video doesn't sound that great. The noise of the zoom can be heard and the image stabilization doesn't work.

[rongebriel]

More on S3 video performance, you could possibly use the digital zoom as an added feature after full exhaustion of the optical zoom. But I only tested it on the S2, it works great just like a real videocam,.

[jad123]

i have the canon s3is, with convertor, if you send me an email address can send some pictures i have taken with it, the problem i find, is that because i take pictures of what i like, from macro to full18x zoom, i am forever attaching and un attaching it, i was also told you have to keep altering the settings in the menu, as to wether it is on or off the camera, it does become monotonous(think that is how it is spealt) after a while, however i am happy with the results i get, however i have decided to look for another camera, with at least 4xzoom and an excellent macro to compensate for this, as i am fed up of having to attach the convertor every 5 minutes when i am out

hope this helps, alan

[hercules]

rongebriel wrote:

If You can wait watch out for the latest from Sony. I already saw a new line-up of superzooms. H7 & H9, bothhave 15X optical zooms. The video quality is also good.

But if you wanna buy now, S3 is far better that 550 UZ interms of video and memory.

I bet it's also better in image quality than the 550 UZ, i didn't like that review in dcresource. Even higher ISO was better in S3.