For point-and-shooters, the Pro1 offers full auto mode, portrait mode, landscape mode, and night-scene mode (but no action mode), also easily selected by rotating the mode dial to the desired icon. The mode dial also has icons for panoramic stitch-assist mode (which facilitates turning a series of shots into one continuous panorama, in conjunction with the supplied PhotoStitch software), and movie mode (which lets you shoot surprisingly good-quality movie clips with sound at resolutions of 640x480, 320x240 or 160x120 pixels—use a high-speed CompactFlash card for movie recording, and format it in-camera). Flash The Pro1’s built-in pop-up electronic flash unit is effective out to around 16 feet at ISO 100, and covers the built-in lens’ widest focal length. Flash modes include auto (flash fires when needed), auto with red-eye reduction, flash on (flash fires for every shot regardless of light level), flash on with red-eye reduction, and flash off. In program, aperture-priority and stitch-assist modes, you can set slow-sync flash for better balance between flash-lit nearby subjects and darker backgrounds. When you press the AE-lock button while shooting with flash, the flash exposure will lock, too. You can also set ±2 stops of flash exposure compensation, and first- or second-curtain sync. The Pro1 has an excellent dynamic range, and will focus down to under 4 inches (much closer than was needed here). You can also mount an optional EX-series Canon speedlite flash unit in the camera’s hot-shoe to get more power. The Pro1 is compatible with MacroRing Lite MR-14EX and Macro Twin-Lite MT-24EX via an optional adapter. It also supports Canon’s E-TTL wireless off-camera flash system. Digital Features The Pro1 provides a variety of resolution and JPEG compression choices, along with RAW image capability. JPEG resolutions include L (8 megapixels, 3264x2448 pixels), M1 (4 megapixels, 2272x1704), M2 (2 megapixels, 1600x1200), M3 (0.8 megapixel, 1024x768) and S (0.3 megapixel, 640x480). With each, you can choose Superfine, Fine or Normal compression. L Superfine (highest-quality JPEG, which we used for most shooting) gives you about 100 images per 512MB CompactFlash card; S Fine gives you around 950 images per 512MB card. For optimum image quality, there’s also RAW mode, which gives you about 50 8-megapixel images per 512MB card. RAW images are not processed in-camera as JPEGs are, and compression is lossless, but as with all cameras that shoot RAW images, these require proprietary software (supplied with the camera) to open and adjust. The advantage of RAW images is image quality: not only are they better than JPEGs to begin with, but when you adjust them you are adjusting the original RAW data from the image sensor. When you adjust JPEGs, you are adjusting already-processed data, and image quality suffers. That said, the Pro1’s highest-quality JPEG images are excellent. Canon’s DIGIC (Digital Imaging Integrated Circuit) image processor provides speedy operation, good dynamic range and reduced image noise, while iSAPS (Intelligent Scene Analysis based on Photographic Space) scene-recognition technology analyzes such things as focal length, focus distance, scene brightness and more, and uses advanced algorithms with an internal database of thousands of different photos to improve autofocus, exposure and white-balance performance. For composing images, you can choose between the 100% coverage eye-level color electronic viewfinder (complete with built-in eyepiece correction from –5.5 to +1.5 diopters) and the 235,000-pixel 100% coverage 2-inch external color LCD monitor, which can be rotated for easy shooting at odd angles—even 180° for self-portraits. You can play back still images and movies on either monitor (when the external monitor is opened, the eye-level finder is switched off), magnifying still images up to 10X or displaying nine at a time when desired. Slide Show mode plays back all images on the CompactFlash card in the camera, or selected ones, automatically. You can also add up to 60 seconds of sound memos to still images during playback. The Pro1 is a great hiking companion, with its 28–200mm lens. According to the camera manual, the viewfinder and the LCD monitor use about the same amount of battery power. The camera uses the same rechargeable BP-511A as the EOS 10D digital SLRs we’ve used extensively, and it has a goodly capacity—the manual claims 420 shots per charge using either monitor. We shot as many as 157 images with our test Pro1 without the low-battery indicator appearing. Images can be stored on Type I or II CompactFlash cards or Microdrives. Higher-speed cards are recommended when shooting movies. The Pro1 is DPOF-compliant, so you can record on the CompactFlash card which images you want printed, and how many prints of each image, then take the card to a participating photo labs and have the prints made. You can also print directly from camera to a Canon Direct Photo Printer at home, by plugging the camera directly into the computer, or inserting the CompactFlash card into the printer’s card slot. The Pro1 is also PictBridge compliant, and so can be used with non-Canon PictBridge printers. Of course, you can also print your photos on a home printer from Photoshop or other image-editing programs. You can set ISO equivalents of 50, 100, 200 and 400. Image quality is excellent at 50, very good at 100, and grainy but functional at ISO 400. (The noise in ISO 400 images looks like the grain of fast film, not like typical digicam noise.) There are nine white-balance settings: Auto (we found this worked well in most situations), daylight, cloudy, tungsten, warm-white/cool-white fluorescent, daylight fluorescent, flash, and two custom settings, with which you aim the camera at a neutral object in the lighting to be used to set the white balance. There are also seven photo-effect settings: Off (no effects applied), vivid (bold contrast and color), neutral (neutral contrast and color), low sharpening (for softened outlines), sepia, B/W (black-and-white image), and custom (in which you set the contrast, sharpness and color saturation). You can also choose between standard sRGB or wide-gamut Adobe RGB color spaces. An intervalometer function automatically shoots 2–100 images at intervals of 1–60 minutes. The ND Filter function reduces brightness by three stops, handy when you want to shoot with the optional Macro flashes or at a slow shutter speed for blur-effect images. The Pro1 comes with Canon’s ImageBrowser (for Macintosh) and ZoomBrowser (for Windows) software for handling and converting RAW images and operating the camera from the computer, PhotoStitch software (Mac and Windows) for creating seamless panoramas from several individual images, and ArcSoft PhotoStudio and Videoimpression (Mac and Windows) image- and movie-editing software. Detail from black doggie through sunglare on plastic —all was recorded. In Use The PowerShot Pro1’s tiny size makes it easy to carry around with you, which in turn makes it easy to get those shots you miss because you didn’t have a camera. And its true wide-to-tele zoom allows you to handle a wide variety of subject matter. At lower ISO settings, image quality is excellent. The 8-megapixel images are crisp, and you can blow up a section of an image and still have very good image quality. Contrast is a little on the soft side, great for the contrasty scenes but requiring some Photoshop tweaking (or selecting Vivid photo-effect mode) if you like gaudy colors. As noted, at ISO 400, noise is evident but not horrible—it looks more like fast-film grain than typical digicam noise. Autofocusing capabilities are good for normal shooting, but if you’re looking to do serious action photography, you’d be much better off with the EOS Digital Rebel, which is in the same price ballpark. Manual focusing is surprisingly easy with the “traditional” lens focusing ring and good electronic viewfinder image. The L-series 28–200mm lens is excellent, with good flare resistance (we also like the fact that the camera comes with a lens hood—we wish costly lenses for SLR cameras all did that). The camera also comes with an adapter for 58mm screw-in filters. An optional Tele-converter TC-DC58A (which requires the optional Conversion Lens Adapter LA-DC58C for mounting to the Pro1) extends the maximum focal length to 300mm (but may cause vignetting at shorter focal lengths). There’s also a Close-up Lens 500D that attaches via the LA-DC58C and allows focusing down to one foot at the 200mm focal length. We also enjoyed shooting movie clips with the Pro1. The 640x480-pixel movies actually looked surprisingly good on-screen, sharper and smoother than we remember our previous experiences with still-camera movie clips. List price for the PowerShot Pro1 is $999.99. For more info, go to Canon's website at www.usa.canon.com. If you’re in the market for an all-in-one digicam that’s easy to take anywhere, capable of handling a wide range of subject matter and able to produce super image quality, this one’s well worth a look.