Canon has finally announced the Canon PowerShot PICK PTZ camera in the USA. This is Canon’s little AI-powered camera that was initially shown off as a concept camera way back in 2018. We got to take a look at it for ourselves at The Photography Show that year and it was eventually announced three years later in February 2021 – but only in Japan. Now, though, it’s come to the USA.
The PowerShot PICK is named as such as it uses AI to intelligently try to figure out what it should record and when it picks something it thinks is worth recording, that’s what it does. As a PTZ camera, it features pan, tilt and zoom, with face-detection and tracking features to follow subjects it finds interesting and automatically moves and zooms to follow the action.
The camera was initially launched via crowdfunding in Japan and saw a pretty massive success. It’s since been released in other parts of the world, too. It’s sold in the UK as the Canon PowerShot PX since November 2021. It’s also been out in Australia for a little while, too. Now its popularity sees it coming to the USA.
It features a modest 12-megapixel sensor, with a 3x optical (and 4x digital) zoom with a 19-57mm full-frame equivalent field of view and shoots 1080p video at up to 60 frames per second. It has active tracking with facial recognition and auto-capture and runs off a built-in lithium-ion battery, allowing you to take and use it pretty much anywhere. Canon says you get about 2-5 hours of battery life depending on its shooting frequency (how often it detects interesting stuff) and charges back up over USB.
It’s a fun little camera, although it comes with quite the hefty $499 price tag. It’s a price tag that I think much of its target market would avoid in favour of just picking up a smartphone gimbal with app tracking features – features that pretty much all smartphone gimbals have these days – especially as this is only 1080p. It’s an interesting little camera, though.
The Canon PowerShot Pick is available to pre-order now for $499 in black or white and ships in late summer.
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