Canon S5 IS

Manufacturer: Canon

Suggested Retail Price: $399

System Requirements: Basically any computer with a USB drive will do item 2

Specifications: 8.0 Megpaixels (1/2.5 inch CCD) 12x Optical zoom Super Macro for intense close-ups 2.5 inch LCD hinged viewfinder Max Aperture: f/2.7 (W) - f/3.5 (T) Shutter Speed: 15 - 1/3200 sec ISO: Auto, High Auto, 80 - 1600 Separate Exposure/Flash Exposure compensations Continuous shooting up to 1.5 fps SD/SDHC Card for storage (also accepts MultiMedia Cards) Up to 3,264 x 2,448 pixels (Large) 3,264 x 1,832 pixels in Widescreen Up to 640,480 (30 fps) video recording Can record up to 1 straight hour of video with stereo sound USB 2.0 connection AV out port Batteries: 4 AA batteries (NiMH or Lithium recommended) Weight (without batteries): 15.9 oz (450 g)

Review Date: Jan 19, 2008

The S5 IS is the next generation of enthusiasts cameras from Canon. Just a step below a digital SLR, and just a step above point and shoot, this camera gives the operator a ton of control in a fairly compact body. If you think you're ready to ditch the point and shoot, and upgrade to something with a bit more power (but aren't ready to shell out SLR prices), then I would suggest seriously taking a look at this camera.

Set up:

There are various levels of setup to go through with this camera. First is to of course install the batteries and memory card (I recommend purchasing a large, high speed card for optimal performance). Next, when you turn the camera on, all you really need to do is set the time, and you are ready to start shooting. However, I recommend taking a look at the manual, and doing some initial setup in the menus to get the camera into a state you like. Next, install the included software. While this isn't necessary, there are some really cool features included that I will talk about later. Also, for Intel users, Canon has some updates on their website to turn those programs into Universal Binaries. That's it, you are ready to explore the world through the eyes of your camera.

Usage:

This camera has so many features and settings, it's hard to lump into one section on usage. Therefore, I'm going to break it up into multiple subsections dealing with only a few aspects of the camera at a time.

Menus/buttons/LCD

The Canon S5 IS is a nearly professional level camera, which means it has more settings than I could possibly hope to describe in a review. In fact, I'm not even going to try, that's what the manual is for. Instead, I will just highlight some of the nicer features of the camera. First, the LCD screen. The 2.5 inch screen has over 200,000 pixels in it, giving you a very nice view of what you are shooting, or what you just shot. The screen flips out and rotates, so you can take pictures from weird angles without being a contortionist. Plus, the viewfinder is electronic, so all the data you see in the LCD can be seen in the viewfinder, allowing you to conserve batteries if you wish. However, I'm not too concerned about battery life. I have had the same set of lithium batteries in there for over 400 shots (plus all the playback and messing around time), and the camera shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Canon uses that LCD real estate very well by providing easy to use menus to control every aspect of your camera. The menus are laid out for Record, Playback, Setup, and My Camera settings. Each of these is very simple to navigate, something that not every camera does well. The Record and Playback menus contain everything you need to customize the camera for those two modes. The Setup menu is common to both modes, and contains things like audio or memory card formatting. The My Camera area lets you make the camera your own. You can select a start image and various operating sounds.

Separate from the menus is the functions. The functions provide you access to white balance, exposure bracketing, flash exposure compensation, file size/compression, etc. for making sure you get the best shot possible. As soon as you change one of the settings under the functions menu, the display will change to reflect what your image will look like. While this isn't always 100% accurate, it gives you a good sense of what kind of photo you will be taking.

Everything that isn't under the functions button can be accessed from the wide array of buttons on the camera. These include manual focus, macro/super macro mode, continuous shooting, self timer, ISO, flash, exposure compensation, and a shortcut key that can be set to one of 8 different settings. At first, having these settings available from dedicated buttons was a bit confusing. For instance, it took me quite a while to figure out where the exposure compensation was located. But once I got used to the buttons, it made operating the camera quite a bit easier, and I can't imagine not having them.

Shooting modes

Just like there are a ton of menus and settings which you can use to customize your photo taking experience as much as you like, there are also a large number of shooting modes which can make taking photographs easier, let you be creative, or just give you complete control. First, you have what Canon dubs the Creative Zone. P, Tv, Av, M, and C give you a wide variety of control over white balance, exposure, flash strength, colors, and more, which allows you to compose the exact image you want (with practice). Each of these modes allows you a different amount of control, with P being the lowest and C being the highest.

Then, there are a few individual modes. Auto mode tries to figure out everything for you. If you don't have time to really think about the shot you are taking, Auto mode will produces acceptable shots, but not the best. Next is Portrait mode, used when taking pictures of people, it softens the subject to give a cleaner look. Landscape mode sets the camera to take beautiful images of the mountains, rolling hills, or a nice cityscape. Night snapshot makes it easier to take a picture of someone at night, with the correct filler flash and everything that goes along with it. Sports mode sets the camera to a state to take pictures as fast as possible. If you are taking high action shots, yo will likely want to be taking them in this mode. Stitch Assist mode helps with panoramic photography. You can choose between left to right (or right to left), top to bottom (or bottom to top), or a mode that is new to me, a clockwise square. The last one is really cool because it allows you to compose a picture much larger than before, giving those who look at your photos a real sense of the entire scene.

Finally, there is the Scene mode. This mode has a lot of sub modes, each one suited to taking pictures in a certain situation. Plus it has two very unique modes which gives the photographer the chance to take some really cool shots. Here is a list of the available scenes:

• Night scene - Very similar to the above mentioned Night Portrait mode, where it's easier to take pictures of subjects at night.
• Indoor - Useful when the light conditions are fairly low, and the only light source is tungsten or fluorescent lighting.
• Foliage - For both green and autumn colors, brings out the true colors of nature.
• Snow - Removes blue tinging often seen with snow photography, and makes sure the subject isn't too dark.
• Beach - Makes sure subjects aren't too dark when in locations where the sand or water is highly reflective.
• Fireworks - Self explanatory mode that really does a great job with taking fireworks photographs.
• Aquarium - Provides the ability to easily take pictures of underwater wildlife in an indoor aquarium.
• Color Swap - If you ever wanted to see what you car looked like with a different paint job, this mode can help you do it. I found it's hard to make work properly, but when it does, it's pretty cool.
• Color Accent - My favorite setting, you pick a single color you want to stand out, and the rest of the colors becomes black and white. This even works in movies!

Zoom/macro

One of the major selling points to this camera is the 12x Optical zoom. In fact, that is one of the reasons I purchased the camera. Having the ability to zoom in on something (especially wildlife or sporting events), really gives you a much better sense of the photograph's subject. One thing I really enjoy about the way zoom is handled on this camera is there are two speeds. Pressing the dial all the way will fast zoom, which seems to full zoom in about a second. Pressing it only half way slowly zooms, which is whisper quiet and gives great control. Of course, at a large zoom, all camera movements are magnified, so if you don't have good lighting conditions, you will certainly need a tripod. The main drawback of being at max zoom is the camera can have a hard time focusing. I have reverted to manual focus many times, because it just cannot get the auto-focus to find the correct focus. I guess this is probably due to my movements more than anything.

On the opposite spectrum, we have Macro photography. Almost all cameras these days offer this mode, where you can take close-ups from a few inches away. However, the Canon S5 IS has a Super Macro mode, which takes macro to the next level. In this mode, the minimum distance you can have an object from the lens is 0.0 inches! That's right, the object can be touching the lens and it will still focus correctly. I have used this mode to capture some photos that I wouldn't have been able to do with many of the cameras out there. I really enjoy this feature as it lets me see the world from a totally different perspective.

Image quality

The best way to describe image quality is to see it for yourself. That is why I created an album on Google's Picasa which is basically just a handful of photos I have taken over the past few weeks, and descriptions of settings on some of them. Note you can download full sized images if you want to see the quality of the picture that has not been shrunken down.

Overall, I think the image quality is extremely good. What I like most is the Image Stabilization feature, and how it has turned some photos that I have taken from being a blurry mess to something that is crystal clear. While image stabilization won't perform miracles, it does allow me to shoot handheld in some situations that would normally require a tripod. The only thing I wish I could improve with the image quality is having a larger maximum aperture. This would allow me to be more creative will smaller depth of field photos, and would really come in handy for those low light situations where shutter speed needs to be decreased. But, I guess that is why people pay the big bucks for SLRs.

Playback

Normally, playback on a digital camera is an afterthought. After all, the whole reason to use a digital camera is so you can play back the images while still in the camera, and delete those you don't like. But Canon took playback a bit further with the S5 IS. Of course, you can view your pictures and movies (with stereo sound), but there is a bunch more. For instance, the slideshow feature lets you choose which pictures you want to see, and view them in a neat slideshow. Combine that with the TV out port, and you have a great way to how off pictures to friends and family.

Furthermore, you can view images 9 at a time, to do some comparison between them, or jump around either by category or sets of 10 or 100. When you are viewing a single image, you can zoom in and pan around, to make sure everything looks right. There is also a detail mode that will give you a lot of information on the picture, as well as tell you which parts of it may have been overexposed. This is very handy when you are trying to determine which picture had the correct exposure settings.

Beyond the normal playback functions, there are also a few editing functions. I was very surprised to learn that you can actually edit your movies straight from the camera. This really only involves cutting out pieces you don't like, but it could still come in handy to save space on the memory card. For images, you can perform a red-eye correction function on the image before downloading it to your computer. I attempted to try this out, but I couldn't get any red eye photos, so I'm not sure how well this works. Finally, you can also add My Colors effects and sound memos to your pictures to add an extra level of creativity.

Movies

I have never been a huge fan of still photo cameras having the ability to also shoot movies. I can see a convenience for some times, but mostly, the quality is too low to really rely upon. While this camera does offer a fairly nice set of specs for movie shooting (up to 640x480 at 30 frames per second), and up to 1 hour of continuous video with a large enough memory card, the movies I have shot with it were still well below what you would get with a digital camcorder. However, there are some nice features to movie shooting with this camera. For one, it offers stereo sound recording, which is very uncommon among cameras. Also, you can zoom while shooting movies, image stabilization is enabled to reduce shakiness, and you can even take full quality photographs without interrupting the recording.  I think there is still a long way to go before I would use this feature regularly, but it is nice to have a good set of movie recording features available if needed.

Software

The software that comes with this camera includes a photo browser, a camera controller, and panoramic photo stitching. While I haven't really used the photo browser at all (iPhoto works well for me), the other two are pretty cool. I have used Canon's PhotoStitch software in the past, and really not much has changed. If you have taken some images in the stitch assist mode, then you can import them into this application, and merge them together to make a super sized image. The whole process is fairly quick and painless, but the software doesn't always have to do a good job. You need to do a very good job of taking pictures that will stitch together nicely before this software will create stunning panoramics.

The camera controlling software, on the other hand, is extremely cool. I didn't install it at first, but later found out what it could do, and I couldn't get it onto my Mac fast enough. Some of the cool things it allows you to do include changing the My Camera images and sounds or remotely controlling the camera from your computer. As I mentioned earlier, you can customize the camera with different startup images and various sounds, so it more reflects who you are. But the built in options really aren't that great. But don't fret, just launch up this program and you can choose from any of the images and sounds provided by Canon (includes party, wedding, sports, space, and much more), or you can create your own and upload it to your camera. I created a startup image of one of me and my fiance's engagement pictures; it adds a nice personal touch to the camera.

The other cool feature is the ability to remotely control your camera. Using a single window, you are able to do anything in with the camera through your computer. This could be really cool if you have desktop sharing setup, so you could take pictures of home from at work, for example. But even cooler is that there are some features available via this mode that aren't in the camera itself. One such feature is the intravalometer (time lapse photography). You can setup your computer to take pictures at various intervals, then later combine them together into a super cool time lapse movie. It would have been cool if they would have added such a feature to the camera itself, but as long as I can do it via the computer, I'm happy.

Accessories

The Canon S5 IS accepts a wide variety of accessories, much more than a standard point and shoot camera. The three most common are: tele-converter lenses, wide angle lens, and a higher power flash. The lens converters fit over the normal lens to either gives extra optical zoom power, are reduce the overall zoom to provider a larger field of view. I haven't tried these yet, but I'm considering the 1.5x tele-converter lens which would turn the overall zoom power into 18x! Aside from lenses, there is a flash hot shoe, which gives you the option to add on high power flashes to drastically increase your flash range and effect.

Problems:

The two main problems this camera has are fairly minor, and very easy to live with. The first is that the lens cap is very loose, and can fall off easily. This is because Canon designed it so that if you turn on the camera with the lens cap on, it will automatically pop off. However, this makes it easy to pop off when you put the camera in your bag. I have just learned to be careful, and I don't see the cap come off too often.

The other main issue is that the memory card is under the same cover as the batteries. So if you are like me, and have a memory card that plugs into your computer via its own USB port (or you prefer to use a card reader), then you will be dealing with this cover quite often. This would be a big deal if the cover was easy to close, but instead I find myself fighting with it quite often. This aspect is a real bummer.

Besides those two issues, most bad pictures taken by this camera are due to user error. Either I didn't set the shutter/aperture correctly, I didn't compensate for exposure correctly, I used incorrect flash strength, my white balance wasn't set correctly, or one of a hundred other settings I didn't have right. But these things come with experience, so go out and play with your camera as much as possible. If you can, take some pictures using different settings every day for the first few weeks. That's really the only way you will learn how your camera performs under various conditions.

Conclusion:

This camera is absolutely spectacular. You cannot ask for much more at this price point. Ultra 12x optical zoom, super macro, a multitude of settings, and most of all great photos. Once you learn how the different settings control the picture quality, you are free to become as creative as you want.  The camera has definitely given me a new look at the world of photography.

Pros	Cons
12x Optical zoom Super Macro lets your lens touch the object while still focusing Many settings to let you get a great shot, or just be creative Ultra-cool color accent mode even works in movies Very quiet operation except when zooming fast Excellent picture to picture performance (even with flash) Compression level in Fine mode is very low Quick access buttons for many features Image stabilization eliminates the need for a tripod in some situations Stereo sound recording for movies In camera movie editing and red eye correction Grid lines available to help you with the infamous "Rule of Thirds" Live histogram helps you with correct exposures Different shooting modes help you with some hard to shoot situations Face detection mode and the ability to move the auto focus frame is really cool Ability to attach more powerful flash and different lenses/filters Some of the features of the included software are really nice	Too large to take everywhere Lens cap is fairly loose Memory card is in the same compartment as the batteries Small sensor makes the images slightly less sharp than they could be ISO 400 and above produces a lot of noise Sometimes it takes a while for the camera to focus when at full zoom
9.5/10 stars