It looks like Canon are jumping right back at Nikon, after Nikon launched it’s cheapest VR lens to date the 55-200mm to AF-S DX VR 55-200MM F/4-5.6G IF-ED.

Canon has pushed it a bit further with 55-250mm! Combined with the 18-55mm that gives a great kit package from 18-250mm Image Stabilised!

Canon seem to have designed a new, cheaper and much simpler IS system to allow budget users the luxury of IS lenses.

The EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS is a lightweight general-purpose zoom lens that is ideal for handheld photography in a wide range of lighting conditions. Offering high optical quality, the lens has an 11 element, 9 group construction, including one aspherical element for crisp corner-to-corner detail. The lens maintains a closest focusing distance of just 25cm throughout the zoom range, giving photographs the flexibility to frame up close when needed.

Compact and lightweight, the EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS offers the longest zoom range in the EF-S series to date. The 88-400mm equivalent focal length opens up new framing possibilities for owners of EF-S mount cameras shooting wildlife, sports and travel photography. Optical quality is assured through a UD element, which minimises chromatic aberrations that could otherwise cause reduced contrast and colour fringing.

Good moves by Canon!

This is a pretty neat site to learn about Nikon’s anti-shake technology built into some of it’s lenses (known as VR or Vibration Reduction).

Thankfully it’s no longer in just a few high-end lenses, it’s now also available in the much more affordable Nikon AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED and the Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED lenses.

The site explains various thing such as what causes blurred images, how VR works, what it’s capabilities are and how it can help you to get clear pictures.

You can find the site here: Nikon Vibration Reduction

Well as I’ve mentioned this one a few times here it is! The first review, I’m really tempted by this camera as I’m a great lover of the Canon Powershot A series for their full manual controls.

I almost bought the A700 for my mom but the 6x optical zoom without any kind of stabiliser isn’t all that useful, finally a A710 with image stabiliser and a very resonable 7.1 megapixels.

The A700 was already an excellent camera, I’m really happy to see a Powershot A series with a stabiliser!

I’ve been looking for a good compact camera to use for food shots and as a backup for my SLR just in case the battery goes flat or it’s too bulky to use (sometimes shopping malls stop you from taking pictures if you are using a SLR but not if you are using a compact).

It also uses AA batteries which is good for travelling and it means my old rechargeable AA from my Powershot A70 won’t be wasted!

ISO performance is clean up to ISO200, at 400 above it’ll only be good for a mid-size print, I thought with the new Digic II processor this might not be a problem, but I guess it’s just basic physics, you can only do so much with a tiny sensor.

The PowerShot A710 IS takes an already excellent camera — the A700 — and adds some one really useful feature (image stabilization) and one not-so-useful feature (more pixels). Despite going up from 6 to 7 Megapixels, the A710’s photo quality remained very good, with noise levels that are perhaps lowered than on its predecessor. When you look at the whole package — from the photo quality to the image stabilizer to the manual controls — you’ll see that the A710 offers a lot of camera for your $400.

Full review here.

I’ll be waiting for some reviews from other sites and I shall go and try it out when it hits KL.