Critiques of a camera (Intova IC-600)
My digital camera recently ceased to function properly. * Unfortunately, it did so right before my trip to Cancun (I leave on Monday). Amazon had a 6 MP camera with waterproof housing on sale for $108. I figured I'd take a chance on it for my vacation. It arrived yesterday. I sent it back this morning. Read on for my thoughts on the Intova IC-600 camera.
I had never heard of Intova, and was hoping to be pleasantly surprised. I wasn't expecting much; I got even less.
I never got to test the waterproof housing. The camera on its own was unusable, in my opinion. Totally unacceptable.
With the internal flash turned off, it would work OK. The problem was when the flash was enabled. First of all, zoom features, etc. were disabled while the flash was charging. You could only zoom, autofocus, or take a picture when the flash was completely charged. Though, that's annoying-and could have been eliminated with a different software architecture on the camera-the problem was exacerbated by the fact that the flash wouldn't stay charged for more than ~5 sec at a time. It probably took at least 20 seconds for the flash to recharge each time. The autofocus feature took longer than the amount of time the flash was charged.
After a few cycles of charge + zoom/compose + charge + zoom/compose, you're finally ready to take the picture, but by the time the autofocus has figured out what it needs to do, the flash starts recharging, the autofocus calculations are invalidated, and you have to do it again, and again, and again...
Because of the mostly positive reviews on Amazon, I suspect that I received a defective camera. The problem was likely a short that caused the capacitor that charged the flash to discharge. However, the fact that the flash charging took priority over everything else seemed ridiculous. Why does the software need to dedicate all resources to charging the flash and prevent the user from even zoom while its charging? It doesn't. All it needs to do is close a switch, and let it go for a while (or forever). Likely, the software needs to periodically check to see if the flash has completely charged, but that doesn't take 100% of CPU cycles: a timer or analog comparator can do that when necessary, or just some good old-fashioned cooperative multitasking.
*So, what's wrong with my PowerShot S500? Everything works fine except pictures turn out pinkish/purplish over most of the picture. Since I already own a waterproof housing for it, I've thought about buying another one. A search on ebay finds other S500s with the exact same problem as mine being sold for parts which makes me think the sensors may just be reaching the end of their lives, and it would only be a waste of money to buy another one. Disappointing.
I had never heard of Intova, and was hoping to be pleasantly surprised. I wasn't expecting much; I got even less.
I never got to test the waterproof housing. The camera on its own was unusable, in my opinion. Totally unacceptable.
With the internal flash turned off, it would work OK. The problem was when the flash was enabled. First of all, zoom features, etc. were disabled while the flash was charging. You could only zoom, autofocus, or take a picture when the flash was completely charged. Though, that's annoying-and could have been eliminated with a different software architecture on the camera-the problem was exacerbated by the fact that the flash wouldn't stay charged for more than ~5 sec at a time. It probably took at least 20 seconds for the flash to recharge each time. The autofocus feature took longer than the amount of time the flash was charged.
After a few cycles of charge + zoom/compose + charge + zoom/compose, you're finally ready to take the picture, but by the time the autofocus has figured out what it needs to do, the flash starts recharging, the autofocus calculations are invalidated, and you have to do it again, and again, and again...
Because of the mostly positive reviews on Amazon, I suspect that I received a defective camera. The problem was likely a short that caused the capacitor that charged the flash to discharge. However, the fact that the flash charging took priority over everything else seemed ridiculous. Why does the software need to dedicate all resources to charging the flash and prevent the user from even zoom while its charging? It doesn't. All it needs to do is close a switch, and let it go for a while (or forever). Likely, the software needs to periodically check to see if the flash has completely charged, but that doesn't take 100% of CPU cycles: a timer or analog comparator can do that when necessary, or just some good old-fashioned cooperative multitasking.
*So, what's wrong with my PowerShot S500? Everything works fine except pictures turn out pinkish/purplish over most of the picture. Since I already own a waterproof housing for it, I've thought about buying another one. A search on ebay finds other S500s with the exact same problem as mine being sold for parts which makes me think the sensors may just be reaching the end of their lives, and it would only be a waste of money to buy another one. Disappointing.