Mailbag - Camera as Field Recorder Question

I've written before about field recording and how to do it on the cheap (using things like Canon point and shoot cameras), but JL had a question regarding a specific camera.

Hey, I work at a college radio station and your site is great. I read your post about using your Canon PowerShot as a field recorder, and thought, "that's perfect!" I'm trying to get into the audio production field, doing some production work, and this would be much better than buying a cheap audio recorder! I have a Canon S1 IS, so I don't think mine has the stand alone sound recorder setting. I explored it and couldn't find it, but thought you could help. Mine has a video recorder, which also records audio, but that's a lot more tedious than I need. How do you get to this setting on your camera? Thanks for any help!

-JL

Hey JL.
The S1 was a nifty little camera, but as far as I know it didn't have a dedicated audio recording feature. Depending on what you need to record, you could use the memo function by going into playback, while viewing a picture pushing the microphone button, and then using the arrow and set keys to start the recording. I think the memo feature will give you  about 60 seconds of recording time, and should save the file as a standalone .WAV file on your memory card.
If you need to record longer you're correct that you'll need to record a movie, and then seperate the audio after the fact in a video editing program.

Thanks for the question!