Digital Trends

Canon Powershot TX1 April 10th, 2007 | by Jason Tomczak

Optical & Digital Zoom

One of the more important aspects of a camera/camcorder is the level of Optical Zoom. Though some camcorders come with 32X and higher optical zoom, the TX1 has a 10x optical zoom. Highly inquisitive people will ask, "Ten times what?" The TX1's optics are roughly equivalent to a 39mm lens when zoomed all the way out. 10x optical zoom increases the optical length to that of a 390mm lens.

The TX1 also has a digital zoom to augment the optical zoom with 1.5x and 1.9x and "standard" magnification. With 1.5x digital zoom, the range becomes roughly 58-585mm. With 1.9x digital zoom, the range is about 74-741mm. Standard zoom, which equates to about 40x zoom (40 x 39mm), brings the zoom capability to an ultra-crazy 39-1560mm. Good grief!

For those who don't already know, optical zoom takes advantage of the analog nature of lens glass thus rendering a near-perfect image, even when zoomed way in. Digital zoom uses complex mathematics and other voodoo magics to interpolate (guesstimate) how the image should look based on the maximum optical zoom the camera reaches before going into digital zoom mode. It's sort of like seeing a pretty girl from 100 yards away and guessing what she looks like up close based on the very distant features you can make out. You may be fairly close in your estimation, but it's absolute fact that you won't be able to see any of the fine details that accurately represent her visage and character.

The native 10X optical zoom on the TX1 is very good. The HD nature of the TX1 augments the quality of fully-zoomed images. (For frame of reference, I recently reviewed the Samsung SC-DC564 digital camcorder that had 26X optical zoom. The TX1 absolutely blows that camcorder's supposedly "superior" zoom out of the water.)

Audio Recording & Quality

The Powershot TX1 records high quality stereo audio. In every test that I performed, the TX1's audio recording matched or surpassed every other consumer-grade camcorder I've used in the past three years, some of which were easily double or triple the price. Being such a dramatically compact HD camera, the TX1 doesn't come with a jack for external audio sources (boom microphones, etc.). This would normally be a "negative," but the TX1 performs well enough to exonerate itself from this missing feature.

The TX1 will also record high quality audio without video. This means that it can be used as a voice-memo recorder; ideal for journalists doing research & interviews, for personal and business to-do lists, etc. Depending on the size of the SD card you use, the TX1 can record up to 120 minutes per recording. With a 4GB card like the one I'm using, I can record upwards of 25 hours of audio. Wow!

With the TX1, I can also take a photo and then make an audio recording describing the image. The TX1 allows me to "attach" or link the audio recording to the target image for easy organization and playback once the SD card contents are downloaded to my computer.

Included Software

The TX1 comes with a software CD compatible with both Mac and Windows systems. For the PC, there is Canon's ZoomBrowser EX 5.8, PhotoStitch 3.1, Camera TWAIN Driver 6.7, EOS Utility 1.1 and Quicktime 7 (though not QT Pro). The Mac software is slightly scaled back, mostly because the Mac already performs several of the necessary functions in the PC software. Mac users get Canon's Image Browser 5.8, PhotoStitch 3.1 and EOS Utility 1.1.

For Mac and Windows, the Canon software is easy to set up and even easier to use. Photos and videos can quickly be downloaded, browsed, archived, etc.