New digicam - Canon IXUS Powershot SD430 (under linux!)

Bought a new digicam after being withone for a year or two now.
Which is the Canon Powershot SD430, No idea what "Digital elph" means but it's on the manual cover. My previous camera was the canon powershot A10 (the very first of the powershot range).

Canon IXUS Wireless Powershot SD430 (hows that for a model number!), seems to work ok, will have a bit more of a play with it and see what i can discover, I've got no idea how to use the wireless interface for it, I plugged the USB adaptor into my laptop but i didnt register as much so who knows.
One thing that is immediately obvious with this camera is

• It's size - small, very tidy


• Good-enough lens quality


• Some smarts about organising files on the SDCARD, such as creating sub-directories by date


• Remarkably easy to navigate user interface


• Very quick to fire off to the next shot


• Very quick start-up time

under linux it shows up as

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04a9:3131 Canon, Inc.

However the Canon IXUS does not register as a generic SCSI device which is a bit of a pain, BUT do not fear, theres always gphoto2.

seven:/home/dgtlmoon/cc# gphoto2 -P
Downloading 'theme.dat' from folder '/special'...

Saving file as P1000019.JPG

etc etc.
The Canon does movie mode, which saves as an .AVI file but there seems to be a little bit of background noise, will have a few more attempts at it, also you cant chang the zoom status while filming!

interestingly enough, theres a group of hackers working on somethis called the LIXUS project which is all about getting a running linux kernel on the canon ixus which sounds like a lot of fun, looks like they've got a command prompt so far, not sure if it still takes photos!

An annoyance abuot the SD430 is the USB wireless adapator needs its own powersource (whats the point!) but i guess this is all pretty new kinda tech so needs to be ironed out. Turns out the wireless is 802b11

Video output (in .AVI format) is converted to MPEG locally with ffmpeg, which is in debian apt sources (im on testing atm), the camera done 30FPS @ 640x480, reduced it to 15FPS @ 300x320 and the output was around 163MB for 54 seconds worth of video, mpeg'ed that was converted to 9MB

ffmpeg -i MVI_0184.AVI -target pal-vcd charger.mpeg

the output results

dgtlmoon@seven:~/digicam$ ls -al charger.mpeg MVI_0184.AVI
-rw-r--r--  1 dgtlmoon dgtlmoon  9993200 2006-10-20 22:17 charger.mpeg
-rw-r--r--  1 root     root     16312502 2006-10-20 22:10 MVI_0184.AVI

So i couldnt resist, I uploaded my dodge charger (remote control) doing circle work on the kitchen floor to youtube..

general stats

Sensor
• 1/2.5" Type CCD
• 5.0 million effective pixels

Image sizes

• 2592 x 1944
• 2048 x 1536
• 1600 x 1200
• 640 x 480

Image processor

DIGIC II with iSAPS

Movie clips
• 640 x 480 @ 30 / 15 fps
• 320 x 240 @ 60 / 30 / 15 fps
• 160 x 120 @ 15 fps

• Up to 1 GB (640x480, 320x240, 30/15 fps)
• Up to 1 min (320x240, 60fps)
• Up to 3 mins (160x120)

File formats
• Still: JPEG (Exif 2.2)

• Movie: AVI (Moion JPEG and monoaural)
• Sound: WAV (monoaural)

Compression
levels
• Superfine

• Fine
• Normal

Lens
• 35 - 105 mm (3x optical zoom)
• F2.8 - F4.9

Digital zoom
Up to 4x

Focus

TTL

AF area modes
• 9-point AiAF
• 1-point AiAF (fixed)

AF assist lamp
Yes

Focus distance

Macro: 3 cm

Metering
• Evaluative
• Center-weighted average

• Spot (centre)

ISO sensitivity
• Auto
• ISO 50
• ISO 100

• ISO 200
• ISO 400

Exposure compensation
• +/- 2.0 EV
• 0.3 EV steps

Shutter speed
15 - 1/1500 sec

Noise reduction

Shutter speeds of 1.3 sec. and more operate with noise reduction

Shooting modes
• Auto
• Manual
• Digital Macro

• Portrait
• Night Snapshot
• Scene mode
• My Color (9 Settings)
• Stitch assist
• Movie

Scene modes
• Kids and pets
• Indoor
• Foliage
• Snow

• Beach
• Fireworks

White balance
• Auto
• Daylight

• Cloudy
• Tungsten
• Fluorescent
• Fluorescent H
• Custom

Self timer
• 2 or 10 secs
• Custom

Continuous shooting

2.1 fps until card is full

Image parameters
• Vivid
• Neutral
• Low Sharpening

• Sepia
• Black & White
• My Colors (9 settings)

Flash

• Built in
• Modes: Auto, on, off
• Red-eye reduction
• Slow sync speed
• Range: 0.5 m - 3.5 m (W) / 2.0 m (T)

External Flash
Canon High Power Flash HF-DC1

Viewfinder
Optical

LCD monitor
• 2.0" TFT LCD
• 118,000 pixels

Connectivity
• USB 2.0 High Speed (Mini-B, PTP)
• Wi-FI IEEE 802.11b • AV out

Direct print

•
Canon SELPHY Compact Photo Printers and PIXMA Printers supporting
PictBridge (ID Photo Print, Movie Print supported on SELPHY CP printers
only)
• PictBridge compatible printers

Storage
• SD card or MMC card
• 16 MB SD card supplied

Power
• Lithium-ion NB-4L rechargeable batt.
• Charger included

Weight (no batt)
130 g (4.6 oz)

Dimensions
99 x 54 x 22 mm (3.9 x 2.1 x 0.9 in)