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Canon PowerShot S90 Review 10MP Digital Camera

Posted by supreme On March - 24 - 2010

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The Canon PowerShot S90 is equipped with some of the best controls on a compact camera for manual and semimanual shooting modes. The S90 has a textbook Canon box-and-circle design. The S90’s finer design points revolve around the excellent wide-angle f2-4.9 lens and its manual and semimanual shooting controls.

There is a new Control Ring around the lens that can be assigned to handle changes to aperture, shutter speed, focus, zoom, white balance, exposure compensation, or ISO. A button on top lets us speedily change what it controls. The ring rotates with firm, pleasing clicks so it’s easy to select settings accurately. The Control Dial around the directional pad on back works in tandem with the Control Ring to change settings quickly. In Scene mode, tha control dial changes the scene type we’re using. It moves much too freely and can result in accidental changes. The combination of the two rings can make swifter changes than other compact cameras.

The small flash on top of the body automatically pops up and retracts when turned on and off. The S90 is compatible with Canon’s add-on HF-DC1 flash unit. There are mini-HDMI and USB/AV outputs under covers on the right camera’s right side.

Key specifications	Canon PowerShot S90
Price (MSRP)	$429.99
Dimensions (WHD)	3.9×2.3×1.2 inches
Weight (with battery and media)	7 ounces
Megapixels, image sensor size, type	10 megapixels, 1/1.7-inch CCD
LCD size, resolution/viewfinder	3-inch LCD, 461K dots/None
Lens (zoom, aperture, focal length)	3.8x, f2-4.9, 28-105mm (35mm equivalent)
File format (still/video)	JPEG, CR2 (raw)/H.264 (.MOV)
Highest resolution size (still/video)	3,648×2,736 pixels / 640×480 at 30fps
Image stabilization type	Optical and digital
Battery type, rated life	Lithium ion rechargeable, 220 shots
Storage media	SD, SDHC, MMC, MMCplus, HC MMCplus

General shooting options	Canon PowerShot S90
ISO sensitivity (full resolution)	Auto, 80, 100, 125, 160, 200, 250, 320, 400, 500, 640, 800, 1,000, 1,250, 1,600, 2,000, 2,500, 3,200
White balance	Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Flash, Underwater, Custom
Recording modes	Auto, Program, Aperture priority, Shutter priority, Manual, Scene, Movie, Low Light
Focus modes	Face AF, Normal AF, Manual, Macro AF
Metering modes	Evaluative, Center-weighted average, Spot
Color effects	Vivid, Vivid Blue, Vivid Green, Vivid Red, Neutral, Sepia, Black & White, Positive Film, Lighter Skin Tone, Darker Skin Tone, Custom
Burst mode shot limit (full resolution)	Unlimited continuous

The S90 offers not more than 25 shooting modes. The bulk of these are specialty scene modes, 17 in all and none of them are out of the ordinary for PowerShot models. The Auto mode quite Canon’s reliable scene-recognizing Smart Auto feature. The Low Light mode drops the resolution to 1,824×1,368 pixels (2.5 megapixels), but allows for a sensitivity of ISO 12,800. A VGA-quality movie mode is on the dial as well, not good for HD fans. The optical zoom can’t be used while recording.

Other shooting modes that can be used such as Program AE, Shutter priority, Aperture priority, Manual, and Custom. The custom mode lets us assign a frequently used set of shooting options and settings to the C position on the mode dial. To go with it, we can register up to five commonly used menu items to a My Menu tab in the main-menu system.

Exposure bracketing and focus bracketing options will take one photo at a manual focus position and then one each at preset positions nearer and farther; manual white balance correction; and raw or raw plus JPEG capture. There are 45 shutter speeds from 15 seconds to 1/1,600 of a second and 14 aperture values, f2 through f8. We also get a selectable range of 17 ISOs between ISO 80 and ISO 3,200.

From powered off to first shot is 1.8 seconds and it’s the same from shot-to-shot when shooting in high-quality JPEG, shooting raw the time extends to 3.4 seconds. Continuous shooting and saving in JPEG is about 1 frame per second. It takes 0.5 second to focus and capture in bright conditions, 0.6 second in low-light conditions.

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The S90’s photo quality is good enough for a compact camera. The photos have minimal noise. Its colors are also consistent through to ISO 1,600 so usable photos at small print sizes are possible. The lens is sharp and consistent from edge to edge. There’s a small amount of barrel distortion at the camera’s widest 28mm-equivalent position. The zoom is short on this camera–3.8x–so there was no reason to expect to find any pincushion distortion and there wasn’t any. What was visible was some chromatic aberration that was a below average amount in high-contrast situations if we print of 8×10 inches or larger. Its color quality was excellent for little compact. The exposure and white balance were good enough even with highlight clipping.

Moto for the PowerShot S90 is “the perfect everyday camera for people who are serious about great photography.” The lens, controls, and shooting options make it a fine choice for enthusiasts. The S90’s photo quality is on par with the best PowerShots. It’s performance makes it best suited for portraits, landscapes, and the like; but not for fast moving subjects.