Manual Control Options
The most manual controls are found in the “manual” mode, although it’s not really manual. It doesn’t allow the shutter speeds and apertures to be adjusted individually, but allows changes to the exposure compensation and white balance and ISO and such. It is more of a “program” mode than anything else. Thus, the Canon PowerShot TX1 isn’t built for manual control freaks but still allows for control typical of a Digital Elph.
Focus
Auto Focus
The Canon PowerShot TX1 is equipped with a Digic III image processor, which has face detection technology. When viewing the live preview on the 1.8-inch LCD screen, boxes appear around the faces of subjects. The boxes appear and disappear as people turn their faces because the camera can’t recognize jaw bones and ears, but the boxes grow larger and smaller as subjects move toward or away from the camera. These boxes indicate where the camera is metering from, so the exposure and focus is always optimized for the faces. When there is more than one face in a picture, the camera meters from the largest one. The face detection auto focus can be turned on and off in the recording menu, and it is automatically activated in the portrait scene mode. It works well and works fast.
The TX1’s through-the-lens auto focus system can focus as close as 0-3.9 inches in the super macro mode, which is pretty incredible for a 10x optical zoom lens. In the macro mode, the camera can focus from 3.9 inches to 1.6 ft. Normally, it can focus from 1.6 ft when the lens is zoomed out and 3.3 ft when zoomed in.
The auto focus mode can be set to single or continuous. Most cameras have these options, but the continuous auto focus mode is sometimes noisy. That is not true with the TX1; it works silently. This option, along with the auto focus assist beam, can be turned on in the recording menu.
The auto focus system works fairly quickly, although there is still about 0.3 seconds of shutter lag. This isn’t as slow as many compact models, and could be the result of being a pre-production model or in the strange lighting of a convention center or both. For the most part, though, subjects were crisp and focused. The optical image stabilization system helped in this endeavor too, keeping the picture stable to reduce blur.
Manual Focus
The Canon PowerShot TX1 doesn’t have a manual focus mode.
ISO
In the function menu, the TX1’s ISO sensitivity options can be found. There is a nice wide range from 80-1600 along with Auto and High ISO Auto choices. This selection can be found on other Digital Elphs, but the TX1 has a new ISO feature called Auto ISO Shift that can be found in the recording menu. When this is activated, the camera automatically bumps up the ISO when it senses any shaking. Thus, the High ISO Auto mode stays within its 800-1600 boundary while the Auto ISO Shift works with the optical image stabilization system to determine when a higher ISO setting is needed.
White Balance
The white balance modes can also be found in the function menu: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, and Custom. The list of presets is decent, but certainly not expansive. It could have included Shade or Flash too. More importantly, though, is the Custom mode which it does have. This allows users to tell the camera what is white under the current lighting conditions. This can be done easily using the joystick and the on-screen directions.
Exposure
The Canon PowerShot TX1 doesn’t provide manual exposure control over aperture and shutter speed individually, but allows adjustment over exposure compensation which encompasses both of those parameters. A +/- 2 scale with increments of 1/3 can be found. There is a live view with it in the function menu, so users will be able gauge how bright or dark the exposure is with the currently selected setting.
Metering
The metering mode can be changed when the mode dial is set to the “manual” position. The typical options are available: Evaluative, Center-weighted Average, and Spot. The Evaluative metering mode syncs with the face detection system when it is activated, and the spot mode is fixed to the center.
Shutter Speed
The TX1 also has a typical shutter speed range from 15-1/2500th of a second. Canon’s specs indicate that the noise reduction system kicks in at shutter speeds from 1.3-15 seconds. These can’t be manually adjusted though.
Aperture
The 10x optical zoom lens’ maximum apertures aren’t very impressive. The widest is f/3.5, which is about average for cheap long-zoom and very compact lenses. However, there are ultra-zoom cameras out there with wider f/2.8 apertures that let in more light. When the Canon lens is zoomed in, the aperture shrinks to f/5.6. The aperture cannot be manually adjusted on the TX1.
