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A new 50mm lens on the horizon?
Over the last few days I have received a lot of hints that a new EF 50mm lens is coming down the pipeline. There are even reports of people shooting with the new lens and that it may have appeared on an updated Canon price list (I would love to see the price list). The retail price is said to be $849 on an “EF 50 f/1.4 II”.

We recently reported that an IS version of the focal length exists in prototype form. It’s pretty normal to have multiple versions of a lens.

There’s always a risk with price lists and typos, and we have seen a lens appear on a price list before it was announced. The announcement came 6 months later, so this may not be an imminent thing. The good news is that there is a lot of chatter about the focal length going around.

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No, you're not holding it wrong -- in fact, with Canon's new PowerShot N, any and every orientation is correct, thanks to a unique square design with key controls mounted around the center-positioned lens. In this case, a picture (of the camera body) tells far more than a thousand words -- this radical build is a bit tricky to explain, but we'll do our best. The idea here is that there's no one top or bottom, left or right side to the camera. Instead, those positions change based on how you've opted to orient the point-and-shoot. At 1.1 inches deep, the camera is very thin, yet it still packs an 8x 28mm f/3-5.9 lens. There's two rings around the barrel, with the first serving as a zoom toggle and the second used as a shutter release. The 2.8-inch, 461k-dot capacitive touchscreen is fixed at a slight angle, making it possible to take overhead and lower-angle shots simply by rotating the entire camera. There's a 12-megapixel CMOS sensor with a DIGIC 5 processor and an ISO range of 80-6400. It can snap 1080p video at 24 frames per second or 720p at 32 fps, and includes a bright LED that serves as an AF-assist lamp, a flash /and/ a video light.

Canon opted to use microSD cards here, due to the camera's small size, along with a rechargeable battery that can be replenished through the USB connector -- a new Eco mode will enable an up to 30-percent boost in battery life, with the display powering down after eight seconds, then waking up when the built-in gyro sensor detects movement. There's WiFi connectivity with a dedicated Mobile Device Connect button, for direct access to an ad-hoc sharing mode. You'll also find a few software additions, including a Creative Shot mode that duplicates the image you just captured and applies "Intelligent Scene Analysis," cropping the frame and adjusting color and brightness without overwriting the original file. The PowerShot N is set to ship in April for $300, and will be available in both black and white. Canon also plans to release a handful of accessories, including a few unique concepts for wearing the camera around your neck, playing off of the model's compact form-factor and light weight.

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Canon Powershot N first impressions
By Andy Westlake | Published Jan 7, 2013 | Product Reviews & Previews
Understanding the Canon PowerShot N


The tiny PowerShot N, with its either-way-up design, tilting touchscreen and round-lens shutter and zoom controls, is one of the most interesting cameras to turn up at CES 2013.
Of all the myriad of compact cameras announced at the CES trade show in Las Vegas at the start of 2013, the Canon PowerShot N is sure to be one of the most interesting. Not because of its photographic feature set or appeal to enthusiasts - at heart it's a fully-automated point-and-shoot - but because of its unique design and overall philosophy, and what this says about the way mass-market photography is going.

It's no great secret that the conventional point-and-shoot camera market appears to be in terminal decline. The ever-increasing capability of smartphone cameras means that they're more than good enough for the vast majority of casual users, while their internet connectivity makes it easy to share pictures with the rest of the world the moment they're taken. Throw in the current popularity of Instagram, with its emphasis on the use of 'artistic' image processing filters and community sharing, and it's little wonder that people are deserting the pocket camera in droves. Why carry a small camera when you're taking your phone anyway, and it does what you want better?

Because of this, the traditional camera manufacturers are having to rethink their approach. It's clear that compact cameras have to offer some compelling advantage over smartphones to persuade buyers to part with their money. This has generally meant zoom lens range or features, as in superzoom 'bridge' cameras or high-end enthusiast compacts, both of which have continued to do relatively well. But with the Powershot N, Canon has gambled on something very different - creativity and fun.

So what's the PowerShot N all about?

In essence, the PowerShot N is best seen as a smartphone companion for the Instagram generation. With its flip-up touchscreen, and unconventional zoom and shutter controls that work equally well when the camera is held upside-down, it's designed to encourage shooting at unusual angles. It has built-in Wi-Fi for uploading images to social media, either by direct connection to a hot-spot, or via a smartphone or tablet. It's also very small and easy to slip into a pocket when going out. But perhaps most tellingly its all-new 'Creative Shot' mode, which takes the concept of creative processing filters further than we've ever seen before, is turned on by default. Canon's marketing tagline is 'Creativity with a Twist', and it's very apt.

Obviously the PowerShot N has to offer something smartphones don't, and that's provided by its 28-224mm equivalent 8x optical zoom lens and 12MP 1/2.3"-type sensor (~6.2 x 4.6mm), that's larger than those used in most phones. In combination with the Digic 5 processor, this promises better image quality and much greater compositional flexibility than you'll get from a phone camera.

Body and Design


The PowerShot N is an unusual design to say the least, as emphasized by these front and rear views. The back of the camera has no buttons, just a tilting capacitive touchscreen that's the primary interface, just like a smartphone. There are three small buttons on the sides - the power switch, playback button, and a dedicated button to connect to your phone by Wi-Fi - and a little switch to select between normal shooting and 'Creative Shot' mode. There's nothing on the top plate at all, not even a shutter release. The front of the camera is dominated by the 8x zoom lens, and the two silver rings encircling it turn out to be the zoom controller and shutter button. There's a little LED flash on the top right of the camera too.


The slimline ring close to the body is a fairly conventional zoom controller - press one way to zoom in, the other to zoom out. The thicker ring is the shutter release, and despite its decidedly unconventional design it offers the usual action - half press down to focus, full press to take a picture. What's unique about the PowerShot N is that this design is symmetrical - the shutter button offers exactly the same action when pressed from the underside of the camera. It may look like a crazy idea, but it really does work.
When you first pick up the N, this design is slightly bewildering - without the familiar position of the shutter button, it's not immediately clear how to hold it and take pictures. But after a couple of minutes playing with it, everything really makes sense - this is a design that works remarkably well, allowing you to shoot at unusual angles using just one hand (of course a wrist strap will make sense too). It's definitely a camera you have to handle to appreciate.

Creative Shot mode

Creative Shot is an all-new mode that takes the concept of creative filters beyond anything we've seen before. Rather than simply applying a series of filters directly to your original shots, it starts by taking a series of bracketed exposures, which according to Canon can include either exposure or focus bracketing. It then not only adds processing filters, but can also select different crops, and even at times rotate the image before cropping (this appears to apply mainly to faces). It'll select five filters out of a broad range, so you never know exactly what you're going to get - there's an element of Lomography here. Thankfully the camera always saves your original too.

The examples below (kindly provided to us by Canon EU) give some idea of how this works. The camera's produced five variants on the original image, applying different filters to the bracketed exposures, and in three cases selecting different square crops. It's definitely interesting, even if it may not necessarily be to every purist's taste.


Original shot Filtered version 1

Filtered version 2 Filtered version 3

Filtered version 4 Filtered version 5
Summary and First Impressions

When digital cameras first arrived on the scene, the freedom from the constraints of film camera layout resulted in lots of design experimentation. The articulated screens on Canon's own G-series, like Nikon's classic twist-body Coolpixes, encouraged shooting from different angles. But after a few years everything settled back down again, and if you walk into a camera shop now, most of the compacts on the shelf will look little different in basic design to film cameras such as Canon's classic APS film Ixus II. Inertia can be a powerful thing.

The PowerShot N reminds us again that cameras don't necessarily have to follow these conventional lines, and alternative designs can work really well. It may look like it shouldn't work, but it genuinely does. Whether it truly offers something sufficiently interesting to attract buyers who've been having fun with Instagram on their smartphone, but wouldn't call themselves 'photographers', remains to be seen. But it's certainly refreshing to see Canon trying something a little different.

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