Canon PowerShot Pro70 - 90s tech vs. eCarShow

Imagine it’s 1998. On the radio, Cher has just finished singing Believe, and now your favorite brand-new hit, Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel 65, starts playing. But just as you start to vibe, your brand-new Nokia 5110 starts ringing, interrupting the moment. You reach over to grab it and notice the latest issue of your favorite car magazine, opened to a review of the shocking new Audi TT. Your eyes drift to your desk, where your old, plain white computer sits. You can’t help but wonder how the newly revealed, bright green iMac G3 would look in its place. You don’t know it yet, but that semi-transparent little machine is about to change everything for Apple.

You are a professional photographer working for a local newspaper. It takes you only a few seconds to change the film in your Canon EOS-1N. But after each working day, you need to go to the lab. Developing and scanning of the films takes ages, but there is no other option. Digital cameras are already available, but the best they can be used for are classified ads and insurance documentation. Fortunately, your colleague writing about the newest tech trends tells you about the PowerShot Pro70 – Canon’s first digital camera for professional photographers.

Let’s now fast-forward to 2025 and the pretty quiet square in front of Stockholmsmässan. Despite the organizers’ claims that eCarExpo is the biggest electric car show in Europe, it’s clear that EVs don’t draw massive crowds. I didn’t come here to look at EVs. I came here to step into the shoes of a photojournalist from 1998 and see just how much I can squeeze out of one of the earliest digital cameras for photographers.

The Canon PowerShot Pro70 featured a 1.68-megapixel CCD sensor, a built-in 28–70mm equivalent zoom lens, and CompactFlash card support for storage. The Pro70 was considered advanced and versatile. Its main selling point was its compatibility with professional speedlights. It was something unheard-of In digital photography back then. Just like 2:3 frame ratio. Almost all early digital cameras utilised computer screen derived 3:4 format.

I’m used to photographing at crowded events. I look for an interesting subject, frame the shot, pre-focus, and wait for just the right gap in the sea of people between me and what I want to capture. Monks’ patience definitely helps — but so does a camera that reacts fast when the moment finally comes. Unfortunately, the Pro70 can’t be counted as one.

When the right moment to release the shutter finally comes, I press the release button, and nothing happens. Only after two seconds do some sounds start to come from the camera. Autofocus is working. Better late than never. Unfortunately, a few seconds already elapsed and the situation, which was supposed to be photographed, is already gone. At this point, I would like to abandon the procedure, but the camera promised to take the photo and will deliver it… sooner or later.

Canon Pro70 works in Program exposure automation mode. There is Aperture Priority mode available, but the aperture number is selected in camera menu. Very weird. Built-in microphone allows to record short sound notes to photos. No one can explain why there is “Video” label next to LCD button. This camera doesn't record videos.

The torment doesn’t stop when the photo is taken. Oh, no. You hoped that now you'd be able to take another one? Give up hope! Now it’s time to store the unfortunate image. And despite the fact that the image has only 1.68 megapixels and weighs around 200 KB, saving it takes another few seconds. No need to add that while the camera is occupied with dealing with its memory, it won’t react to any input from its user.

You may often find an opinion that analog photography will slow you down and teach you to think more and better predict how the situation in front of the lens will develop. It’s only partially true because film cameras can be very fast. A Decent manual analog camera won’t stop an experienced photographer from taking action photos in challenging environments. Take a look at my photos of dragsters and classic car racing for proof. To take the ultimate lesson in predicting, patience, and planning your photos, use a digital camera from the last two or three years of the previous millennium.

One of the standout, revolutionary features of the Pro70 was the ability to shoot in RAW format. Looking back today, it’s fascinating to read the original review of this camera published on DPReview on December 25, 1998. The article includes a full explanation of what RAW is, along with its potential benefits and challenges. Back then, RAW editing was a real challenge for computers. The process was not only slow, but also there were no tools for batch processing available. Of course, those issues are long gone today. Still, shooting in RAW with this camera doesn’t really make sense. First, saving a single RAW image to the memory card takes over a minute! Second, the images often have odd color shifts—something already pointed out in that vintage review and still visible in current version of Lightroom. The final nail in the coffin? RAW files don’t offer any noticeable improvement in image quality over what one can get from Fine JPEG.

By default, the camera starts with the rear monitor turned off. Maybe that’s good for the battery life, but that’s also challenging the patience of the photographer. Switch the camera on and wait a few seconds until it’s ready to go. Then press the LCD/Video button and wait. But is there anything to wait for? You’ll only find it after a few seconds. The camera gives no indication if it acknowledged user input. The LCD button needs to be pressed in a certain sequence with the half-pressed shutter button. It’s not easy to get this sequence right, and if you were unlucky, your wait won’t be rewarded. Patience is the key to success! Press the LCD button again too early, and you may just see the monitor going on and immediately off. This type of annoying behavior is common for digital cameras from this period. Nikon Coolpix 900 shares the same drawbacks in this department.

I started off by talking about the challenges of using this camera—but does it have any upsides? Actually, yes. Firstly, it’s the first digital camera that really feels like a proper Canon. Anyone familiar with the brand will recognize a few classic control elements here and there. It’s a big step up from what Canon had offered before: one awkward camera that felt more like it came from the printer department, and another, slightly better one that was basically a Panasonic compact with a Canon badge stuck on it. The Pro70 mostly runs in full autoexposition mode. There is an aperture priority setting, but using it is... let’s just say, a bit odd—you select the f-number from a menu on the rear screen.

Maybe it's time for a little change of topic and a few words about the cars presented at the event. Given my usual position on electric vehicles, this would normally be a very short paragraph. But one exhibitor did catch my eye. A man from Söderköping is building a museum dedicated to vintage electric vehicles. What a great idea! The opening is planned soon, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on how it develops. At his stand at the eCarShow, there were cars on display that proved people used to take a much more sensible approach to electric vehicles in the past. Tiny, lightweight, and perfectly suited to the traffic in crowded cities. Nothing like the monstrosities present on the stands of modern manufacturers.

I managed to find a few cars that left a positive impression on me. The VW ID. GTI Concept is compact and looks surprisingly light — quite unusual for a modern EV. I also spent some time appreciating the exterior and interior design of the new Mazda 6e. Polestar’s lineup does not disappoint either. Unfortunately, I had mixed feelings about the Renault 5. When I saw first photos and reviews of this car, I thought that it may be the first EV I could really like. It’s a good-looking car on the outside, and even more impressive inside, thanks to all the clever design touches and thoughtful details. But in person, it turns out to be much bigger than it seemed in photos — and it looks so heavy!

But let’s get back to the camera. It’s time to answer the big question: despite its very low resolution and outdated tech, are the photos it takes actually usable for anything? And does it really deserve the “Pro” label? Before we jump to the obvious conclusion—that the image quality of the Pro70 falls way short of today’s standards—let’s take a moment to think about what computers and the internet looked like in 1998. CRT monitors with a resolution of 800x600 were the norm at home, and if you had 1024x768, you were basically living the high life. So, while 1536x1024 image resolution might sound tiny by today’s standards, back then it actually went well beyond what most monitors could show. And let’s not forget what internet access was like: connecting through a noisy dial-up modem at 56kB was just how it worked. If you were lucky, you had a “permanent” connection—but even that wasn’t much faster, and every megabyte of data came at a price. Taking all that into account, the image quality delivered by the Canon was more than enough for the web back then—and totally usable for print in newspapers too.

I wanted to review the photos on a period-correct monitor. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any CRT available. I compared photos from the PowerShot, with the ones from a modern camera on a monitor of an Apple Powerbook 1400cs, which was sold from 1996 to 1998. The differences are obviously visible, but the viewing experience is not much different. The poor quality passive matrix of the Powerbook did some favors to the older camera, so I also tried a bit newer Asus Travelmate from the early 2000s. Here, photos from Canon also left very little to complain about.

I was pleasantly surprised by the image quality from the Canon PowerShot Pro70. It handled some really tricky lighting conditions with ease. The dynamic range is solid, noise is barely noticeable, and automatic white balance did a decent job too. 1.68 Mpix sensor was delivering images in more than enough resolution for late 90s media. You can see the results for yourself in the photos included in this article. Technical parameters of the Canon Powershot Pro70 may look laughable from today’s perspective, but the camera was capable of delivering usable photos. Definitely not suitable for action, but was a powerful tool in the hands of the late 90s photojournalist.