This is Canon’s Instagram camera. That’s right – this little point and shoot is designed to work with your smartphone, connecting via Wi-Fi and even pre-processing some of your pictures for you.
The Powershot N is a neat little gadget. It’s square, for one, and can be used in any orientation you like thanks to the round-the-lens zoom ring and the flip-out screen. But the real gimmick is that it works with smartphones.
We’ll have to test things out to see if they’re as easy as Canon claims (wireless connectivity has a habit of flaking out just when you need it most), but the camera sounds like an ideal phone companion. A partner app will connect to the camera, and will tag the photos with the phone’s own GPS data, as well as allowing direct upload to Facebook, YouTube and the like, right from the camera.
Specs-wise it is just fine, with a 12MP sensor, a maximum ISO of 6400, a 28-224mm equivalent lens (an 8X zoom).
But who will buy it? I like that Canon is trying, but the kind of person who’d buy a cute point and shoot like this is the kind of person who already ditched their camera for their phone’s camera. Canon should be putting this connectivity into its mirrorless cameras and SLRs, cameras which are genuinely and clearly better than even the iPhone’s great camera.
Source: Digital Photography Review
