Cool Gadgets and Things ...

After a lot of hesitation I got Canon S90. I was looking to get DSLR and Canon 500D was on my list. I looked for Nikons as well, even so I still have two Canon lenses and nice big flash. My old Canon 10D was stolen and I did not replaced it right away. I used my trusty all weather Olympus 1030 that replaced 720 I had for years. I had Panasonic TZ5 for a year: it has nice X12 wide lens with 720p video, but some how I was not 100% happy with it. As any P&S camera it was not providing a consistent quality. Also noise redaction even at base ISO made images look cartoonish. So I was looking for a better camera, but could not find it for a while.

I like DSLR a lot. My Canon 10D was a lot of fun. It was fast and images were silk smooth. Nice bokeh and all these cool pro-looking things. I saw that modern DSLR provide even more speed and quality. The main issue is that they are big. Rebels are light compare to say Canon 7D, but still a bulky camera. Even before I was often leaving my Cannon 10D at home and taking Olympus 720 SW in my pocket. It went with me to the snow hills and hiking and under rain. I even soaked it in beer. While images sucked, quality wise, I was still getting a lot of shots, enough to remember people, places and fun. But.. quality and slow speed keep me not fully happy.

The main reason I moved from my first P&S Canon Elf to 10D was to make pictures of kids. Over these years I missed a lot of good shots to P&S luck of abilities. P&S normally do not provide a way to control shutter speed, so even if you managed to focus and get ready in time, moving kids will smudge: hard to stop motion and even "sport" mode never provided enough "frieze" while decreasing quality dramatically.

While I love a good, arty shoots, my primary objective is snap life around me to aid my memory. That mean I need a small and capable camera. For some strange reason, despite years or R&D we do not have such a camera yet. But we getting closer.

Meet the Canon S90.

While this camera cost more than usual P&S, Amazon still got the lowest price and many others match it, so it is probably the market price ( $399 as of today)

I got this case

and while it pricey, I like it.

You do not need a big card: this camera is only 10Mp and no HD video, but I got 16G. Note that 4G is more than enough and you can get it free if you like to jump on the deal:

"Free 4 GB SD Memory Card

For a limited time, purchase this or other qualifying Canon PowerShot digital cameras and get a free Kingston 4 GB SD memory card with combined purchase from Amazon.com. Simply add both qualifying products to your Shopping Cart, and we'll apply the discount at checkout. Offer good while supplies last. Applies only to purchases of products sold by Amazon.com and does not apply to products sold by third-party merchants and other sellers through the Amazon.com site. See details."

There are some add on for S90, that I skipped:

While some people like it, I found out that camera is too small and light and I can handle it with ends of my fingers, so grip may be a bit overkill.

You can always get it latter if you like so.

Now, what I think about camera after using it in real life for a couple of weeks.

It is a ver nice camera. Best P&S I ever had. It is not DSLR. But there is nothing today I know of that approaches it.

What I like about camera?

First, you can make shoots in low light. Like inside your house and WITHOUT FLASH! How cool is that? Your pictures come to life and you can see a beauty of natural lights and colors. Camera defaults to this in Automatic mode and in most situations if you keep lens on 28mm it will no pop flush. Super cool!

Second, flash works nice when you need to lighten up faces. It is popup type, so can get in your way, but you can get used to it. I did.

Camera is reasonably fast, especially when you prefocus, but do not expect flash re-charge time to allow you to do continues shooting. Even without flash, you can get about 1 fps or less. I want more than that, but, well, it is usable.

Camera have a lot of modes and what is most important, manual control, with all the same modes as DSLR. This is actually super cool and useful. While automatic mode works good, there are situations you want freeze the motion. You can do it in Tv mode and set your shutter speed.

I also use landscape mode and EV adjustments. Works great.

There are some bokeh if you put camera close to subject and have background far away :-) You can even do close up portraits this way. It is much more pronounced in macro: almost like DSLR. :-)

Canon S90 do produce noise and while it can shoot up to crazy ISO and do night shoots, you will see grain. Still, it is under control and looks more like film grain : mostly mono chrome, and less "color" speckles. It looks nice on screen and a bit less during printing. But it is still OK and best in class for P&S.

Also, noise redaction ( I use defaults) is not as aggressive as other cameras, meaning, you can see hairs! This is really nice. Most other P&S smudge it to mess. I believe foliage will behave just a nice, but I did not shoot much of trees so far.

What most important, images looks good. There are some kind of "life" in them. I like the way images looks: there are depth and some kind of "light". They look like "life snapshots".

Still Pros: Best quality for P&S thank to 2.0 lens and bigger sensor. All manual modes and very smart automatic. Have more cool modes than you may ever need: even "face triggered" self timer and "blink" warning. Have raw if you like to fiddle. Can shoot indoor without flash. Very cool! Small and light. Good image details even with high ISO. Noise is controlled and looks like grain not speckles. You can see hairs on photo, not brown mess. Image have "depth". Have two programable control rings. In general very responsive camera.

Still Cons: Slow flash re-charge. Slow continues mode. Can not yet match even low end DSLR in quality and shooting speed and cost about the same as DSLR ( D40 or Low end Rebel XS from Canon). Lens is only X 3.8 compare to Panasonic super zoom X12 that is nice, but not 2.0 of course. Not weather proof.

I hope that S90 will be replaced with even better model in the future, but I am surely enjoy using it for next 1-2 years.

As much as I want DSLR quality, I can not imagine lagging it with me again, while enjoying active live with kids.

I also wish S90 would be weather proof like my Olympus, but hay...

Video: Not HD, but I like quality better then Panasonic's ( it was grainy). Also, microphone, while mono, is much better and capture higher end well, so sound is not muted. I wish it be HD, but, it is kind of OK.

Video Pros: It is VGA, 30fps and image quality is good. Mono sound is decent.

Video Cons: No auto focus during video. No optical zoom (digital zoom suck). It does auto exposure, but focus is frozen. It is not HD, not even 720p. So, I can say, SHAME ON CANON. Video suck, compare even to cheaper cameras.

While some people say it is technological issue (bigger and sensitive sensor, that is some how "slow") I feel this is a marketing BS. I wish Canon go extra mile and provide 720p vide WITH focus and zoom. My old Panasonic did it easily and effortlessly. If 100$ camera can do it today, a 400$ one should do it.

After all, the idea about S90 is small but high quality P&S, so ripping it off a decent video is a shame. Luck of autofocus is a real bammer, more than HD: if your kids move around, you should match the distance or they will blur. Just a shame on Canon.

Bottom line: Canon S90 is great camera. Despite it obvious drawbacks, it is the best P&S we have today.

With good light and low ISO settings still image quality approaches DSLR. Macro mode looks really good.

In low light and high ISO, images still good and usable (while not as good as DSLR's with it bigger sensor).

Has full DSLR control and raw mode. Lens is bright (2.0) and wide (28mm) and zoom range 3.8 is OK.

Lens is IS, and while it has barrel distortion, it is automatically corrected in JPEG. Canon s/w provide correction for

RAW files in s/w. It is not as snappy as DSLR, but it has shatter speed control, so if you

plan ahead you can shoot moving targets but you will have to wait for 1 sec or so for you next shoot. Best of all,

it fits your pocket and you cary it with you and use discreetly without scaring people with balk and huge lens of DSLR.

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I *Love* Canon S90!