Canon PowerShot S90 10MP Digital Camera with 3.8X Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3-Inch LCD (Old Model)

As a budding amateur photographer I have a dSLR and a few lenses, but even the body and one general purpose lens is too much to be lugging around in many situations, so a month or so back I started looking at super-compacts for those photo opportunities I was missing, something I could have on me at all times. My main criteria:* Truly portable. Jeans or shirt pocket.* Something that will survive there. Molded metal, not token pressed metal covers or plastic.* Extensive and easy to access manual adjustments.* Best image quality available for its class, especially low light - I hate using flash.* RAW capability.Canon haven't released a new S since 2005 I think (the venerable S80), but it is back with a vengeance and the S90 presses all the above buttons. It is also a much more attractive beast than the older ones IMO - all-black, sleek, very minimalist. The anodized aluminum casing looks to be close to 1mm thick all round and should stand up to quite a lot of abuse. The lens and control ring are plastic but suitably thick and sturdy. I am stunned by its image quality particularly in low light; it doesn't come close to cameras with larger sensors and lenses but it is impressive for a camera this size. The lens-mounted control ring is great. The camera has all the manual adjustments you could reasonably want using that ring, the rear wheel and the shortcut button, and it can be set to run almost invisibly, e.g. no flash, AF assist lamp or beeps, great for candid shots. The optical image stabilization is a major boon, and I can't overstate the importance of raw - the best shots often happen for me spontaneously in the worst conditions and even the best JPEG encoder will chew a quick noisy shot to pieces and limit recovery options.It does have a few downsides, mostly minor:* The control wheel on the back is too easy to jog. It's only caught me a couple of times (knocking it to ISO3200 in broad daylight, oops) and I've learned to work around it by changing my grip, but it could be addressed in firmware - wheel lock on the shortcut button please! For the next iteration I'd prefer another dial under the mode dial instead though.* The tiny lens has quite bad distortions and aberrations particularly at the wide end, but most of these can be dealt with in software. JPEGs are corrected well by the camera itself while RAWs are rightly left untouched. The included software will deal with RAWs but I use DxO/Lightroom, same flow as my SLR.* The anodized metal coating started to scratch off within a few days of life in my pocket. I kind of like this "lived-in" look though, makes it look old and even less conspicuous. :)* No HD video. This seems to be a must-have for some but wasn't an issue for me as I am primarily interested in stills. I don't think you can expect video worthy of HD out of something this small anyway - prosumer video cameras are way bigger and more expensive than this for a reason.* Zoom may not be long enough for some. Instead it's wide and fast which I prefer overall. I wouldn't mind if they dropped it back further to 2.5x or so to gain elsewhere. By the way, you won't get strong depth of field effects from a lens/sensor this size, despite what the promo literature may say. For closeups of small subjects it's noticeable, but you're not going to see much background blur on portraits, say. Like most fast lenses you also need to stop it down a bit to hit its sharpness "sweet spot", f/2 is rather soft at the edges.* The 3" screen is beautiful but I think it might be too big if anything - it does battery life no favors and makes it more vulnerable to damage. Mine also has slight backlight bleed along the top edge but this isn't noticeable most of the time. Shrinking the screen a little would free up rear space for extra controls.* Battery life is an annoyance, bank on no more than 100 shots. I probably won't get a spare, it's just another thing to be carrying around which rather defeats the purpose, so I do need to remember to feed the thing frequently. Also, I don't know what the designers were thinking but the battery gauge gives virtually no warning when the camera's about to die - as soon as it drops from full to two bars you have very few shots left. I hope this is something Canon can fix in firmware because right now the gauge is close to useless.Many of these are compromises made to get class-leading image quality out of a camera so small - all in all very impressed and no way could I give it fewer than 5 stars. It's been ready to pop out of my pocket constantly since I bought it.Canon made the right choice here and with the G11 backing off from the "megapixel race". If anything they could go even lower - I got plenty of great shots out of my old Nikon D40 which was "only" 6MP. Sensor resolution was never a big issue there, and it's even less so on super-compacts with their tiny compromised optics. I'm interested to see how other manufacturers respond to Canon's raising the bar with this camera. Its excellent Sony CCD will surely show up elsewhere soon. Nikon in particular don't seem to have seriously tackled this area of the market yet - never been very impressed by their compacts - I hope this will wake them up.

I'm a very amateur camera user. I understand the basic terms and settings (ISO, aperture, shutter speed, image stabilization, exposure) but I am impatient and like to get things set and just use the camera.I bought this camera because I wanted the ability to use the camera indoors in low light without a flash. Due to the relatively high price, my expectations were high.My cam was delivered just last week, and having used it at an event in a local bar the best word I can use to describe this camera is "magic". This camera takes in so much light it really seems like magic.The event I was documenting was in a very dimly lit room. The only lighting sources in the room were incandescent chandeliers dimmed as low as they would go.I set my iso to 1000 in aperture priority mode, f2.0 (this level is only available in the widest zoom), adjusted white balance for incandescent, and took some shots. Most of the shots used 1/6-second shutter speed, which was just fine due to the image stabilized lens. The IS performance is improved over my last Canon compact. I don't have steady hands, and I like to take quick sloppy shots. If the IS in this cam can handle my hands, a very-careful steady shooter could probably get away with 1/4 second. The resulting images were so bright and had such great color everyone that saw them was in awe. The resulting images appeared more bright and colorful than with a naked eye. Shooting with such high ISOs is like having night vision built into the camera. Noise levels were low enough and color was so good that I can easily print very nice 5x7s from this night.I took a few candid shots of people in motion at the bar, so I had to bump the ISO to 1600 to get a faster shutter speed (at ISO 1600 I got about 1/30sec in the dimly lit bar). At ISO 1600, color is still acceptable and very nice 4x6 prints, web postings, and email will be no problem. ISO 1600 on this cam is comparable to what most compact cams produce at ISO 400. I've never seen a compact cam take such great shots using high-ish ISO settings.I am just as happy with the results as when using my EOS 20D digital SLR. A critical professional may argue that this cam isn't as great as an SLR, but for normal-sized prints and digital sharing, this camera makes images that are as good as a consumer SLR.My last compact was a Canon SD800is. I love that camera, but images are mostly unusable above ISO400, due to muted color, and grain. The S90 goes two full ISO stops beyond what can be done with a typical $300 compact camera. Combine high-ISO performance with the f2.0 option and you can take great shots in 1/3 of the light required for most $300 compact cams.Adjusting camera settings is a dream. I am just as in control as I am with my EOS 20D SLR. I've used friends' canon rebel SLRs, and the controls on this compact are even better than them. Between the front ring, rear dial, and shortcut button, you have instant control of three camera functions without even really looking. All of the controls are customizable. If you've ever used other canon cameras in the past, you won't really even need to use the excellent printed manual (yes! a printed manual!).I've not taken enough shots with it to test whether the battery can actually deliver 200 from a charge, but 200 isn't really great battery performance and I bought a backup battery from an Amazon marketplace seller for longer outings (under $30 shipped).I also highly recommend the Canon compact leather case. This camera easily fits in any pocket, but I'm pretty sure that pocket lint and dust is what did in my last compact camera. The Canon compact leather case for the S90 mounts on your belt and offers light protection away from keys and pocket lint.The body is comparable in size to Canon elphs. My SD800 elph is 1/2in shorter, but the height and thickness is identical (not counting the lens ring, which makes the overall thickness of the S90 slightly thicker). I posted comparison pics between the SD800 and the S90 in the gallery.The rear display is really sharp and is viewable outdoors. I haven't bought a new camera in over three years and the display blew me away compared to my other cameras. I really can't compare the display to newer cams.Simply judging by the way it feels in the hand, the build quality is just average.The only real performance weakness is continuous shooting. Continuous shooting is really really slow.If you want a compact and think you'll ever want to photograph dimly lit subjects without a flash, this is THE camera to own. The price is 40% higher, but it takes in 300% more light. Unless you're shooting a lot of action, this cam is probably a better choice for people considering consumer-level SLRs like the Canon rebel line.I can't imagine anyone regretting buying this camera. It beats other compact pocket sized cameras by a wide margin.