Mixed Feelings

I was so excited at the prospect of my new camera arriving yesterday that I left work early and rushed home to play.

I hate to say it, but I'm disappointed, I really am. Gutted, actually. This picture here on the left, I took it with the macro mode - the camera is supposed to be able to focus at 1 cm, which it does. This pack of batteries was sat on my leg and as you can see I was able to get in close. What none of the reviews we read told me, however, was that the flash can't cope with the zoom lens, and if you zoom in on something you will most likely a bloody great big shadow from the lens on your photo, like in this second picture.


Colin took this picture of his Ibuprofen tablets on top of an (empty) tin of Quality Street last night - he took it from above, zoomed in, and as you can see there is a whopping great shadow at the bottom, caused by the lens. Now, bearing in mind the reviews I read on this camera were all from well respected websites, I am very surprised that none of them mentioned this at all. I am really pissed off, naturally - this isn't the sort of thing I would have expected from a Canon camera. I am in two minds whether to return the camera and get something else, but apart from this glitch, I really do like the camera. I love the on/off switching mechanism, I love the flip out lcd screen, and I like the other features of the camera. I wish I'd just gone for a bog-standard compact that didn't have millions of different modes, just point, focus, shoot, and been done with it. This has definitely taken the gloss off of my weekend.

My other option, I suppose, would be to give the camera to Colin and get something else for myself. But then that would feel like admitting defeat. The main selling point of this camera for me was the macro facility (and the 12 x optical zoom).

One very annoyed Canon customer here (in fact I might even e-mail them to complain).