Canon Powershot S90 – For shutter bug freaks
Canon Powershot S90 – For shutter bug freaks – Canon Powershot S90 will do fine for you are not expecting dSLR like performance. We liked its photo quality which is hard to find in such compact bodies.
Canon PowerShot S90 is designed for photography enthusiasts and it comes at a premium. The camera gives tons of features though; you won’t find such good semimanual and manual shooting modes. The photo quality and lens are stellar. Performance however, is a bit let down, especially when you compare it with a dSLR.
Design: Canon Powershot S90 has a box and circle design. The body of the camera is flat and there is nothing on there to grip the device. The casing is made up of black metal which doesn’t make it any easier to hold.
Photo quality: While making this Canon Powershot S90 review, we found the photo quality is quite impressive considering this is a compact camera. But just like most cameras, the photo quality dips when you go beyond ISO 400. The fine details start to get softer here. On the bright side, there is minimal noise on the photos and the noise suppression doesn’t destroy all the details till ISO 3200. Canon says that the low light performance has been improved for this camera and we found that to be true in our tests. Small prints are possible up to ISO 1600 which is really good.
Performance: This is the weakest part of the Canon Powershot S90 but certainly not a deal breaker. It is just that our expectations grew a bit when we saw the features of the camera. It takes 1.8 seconds for the camera to wake up and get ready for first shot. Shot-to-shot times in high quality JPEG format is the same but shooting raw further extends it to 3.4 seconds. Shutter lag is 0.5 second in bright lights and in dim light conditions, it is 0.6 second.
Features: There are 25 shooting modes on the Canon Powershot S90 which mainly consists of specialty scene modes. Auto mode is Canon’s scene recognizer Smart Auto feature. There is a movie mode too but it is just VGA quality which will be a turn of for HD fans. You also cannot use optical zoom while recording. Some shooting modes give you more to control like Shutter priority, Program AE, Custom, Manual and Aperture priority.
Pros:
1. Good control system for semimanual, manual shooting.
2. The wide angle f2 lens is fantastic.
3. Photo quality in dim light conditions is impressive.
Cons:
1. Performance could have been better
2. Optical zoom cannot be used
3. HD movie mode is absent
4. Lacks optical viewfinder
5. Design is miscued
