Hi, My name is Mark, I live in Lancahire, My interests are Landscape, & Macro photgraphy, music & Co...
Hi, My name is Mark, I live in Lancahire, My interests are Landscape, & Macro photgraphy, music & Computers. I hope my reviews will be helpful. my reviews are also on Dooyoo & Amazon uk, now all under the same name, Thanks for looking & rating. :)
Member since:03.03.2009
Reviews:14
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Introduction
This is a review of the ‘Canon Powershot S5 is’ which was Canon’s top of the range bridge camera until the recent introduction of the ‘Powershot SX10 is & SX1 is’ models.
I wanted a new camera to replace my old Sony 3.3mp camera, which although well specified and took good pictures, suffered from severe shutter lag, as all early digital cameras did, making the taking of moving subjects almost impossible, plus there was no manual settings to override the camera, not being sure whether I wanted to go back to using a large SLR type camera at the time, I went for this Canon bridge camera instead, at the time it was newly released, and it seemed to offer most of the benefits of a DSLR camera but in a smaller package.
What is a bridge camera?
The bridge camera or ‘super-zoom’ as they are sometimes known as, is a camera that falls somewhere in-between a compact, and a DSLR camera, and has some features in common with both, hence the term ‘bridge’ they generally have better image quality and are more versatile than compact cameras, but don’t quite come up to DSLR image quality and versatility.
Overview
The ‘Canon Powershot S5 is’ has a 12xzoom lens with a good macro facility and plenty of picture taking modes including manual mode, making it very versatile in use. It has an 8mp sensor, which is enough for the majority of pictures, in appearance it looks more like a small DSLR than a compact, and has many features in common with them, plus some unique features not found on other cameras, it also has a movie mode with stereo sound recording, you can even record sound only on this camera, and use it to add sound clips to your pictures for use in a slideshow, the 2.5” LCD screen is unique for a stills camera being adjustable and is more like the ones found on video cameras.
What is in the box?
· Canon Powershot S5 is camera · Lens cap · Neck strap · AA alkaline batteries X4 · Memory card (32mb) · Interface cable (USB from camera to PC) · Stereo video cable · Canon digital camera solutions disk · Basic camera user guide (quick start manual) · Advanced camera user guide (full manual) · Direct print user guide · Software starter guide · System map · Warranty card · Canon customer support guide.
The Lens.
This camera has a built in 12x optical zoom lens, which is not interchangeable, however there are two additional converter lenses optionally available, one telephoto and the other wide-angle to extend the range of the camera lens, I do not have either of these as they are expensive and of limited use so I cannot review these, however, my past experience with converter lenses has been that adding extra elements in the form of a converter lens lowers the quality of the image when used in conjunction with the main lens.
The zoom range of this lens is 6–72mm
(which is the 35mm equivalent of a 36-432mm lens), which means that you have a range from moderate wide-angle to quite a powerful telephoto, it has a maximum aperture of f/2.7-3.5, which is not bad for a lens of this type, it is wide enough to allow the use of a reasonably fast shutter speeds in normal daylight situations, zooming is done by a lever situated in front of the shutter release button.
The quality of this lens is pretty good, with barrel and pincushion distortion being well controlled, sharpness is good throughout most of the zoom range, the image becoming softer at the longer settings, especially at infinity, so distant objects brought closer with the zoom at maximum will not be as sharp as they could be, chromatic aberrations are present in very high contrast subjects as you would expect for a lens of this range, but it is very slight and hardly noticeable at all even when enlarged.
Where this lens really excels, is in its macro settings with pictures being sharp and very detailed, normal macro is available at all focal lengths and will give you a pretty good close-up, when set to super macro the lens automatically sets itself to its widest focal length, and it has an amazing zero cm closest focussing distance, which means that it can even focus on a fly walking across the lens front element, few lenses can match that, extreme close-ups are very clear, you can even see all the hairs on a small insect, or the pollen grains in a flower, I often use this camera for macro work, rather than my DSLR camera with a macro lens.
Auto-focus
The lens has a USM motor for focussing which means that it is quick, silent and very accurate, and it needs to be accurate when in super macro where the depth of field is very narrow, fortunately this lens handles it well, if your macro subject is very small in the frame you may need to refocus to get it right, but that is not very often, there is also face detection which recognizes faces within the frame, the camera sets itself up, focuses and exposes appropriately so that your portraits or family snaps will always be in focus, manual focus is also available.
Image stabilizer
The built in image stabilizer works well at all focal lengths, ensuring that all pictures are sharp and free of any camera shake, only in very dim light would you need to resort to a tripod, image stabilizing can be switched off if required, such as when you want to introduce some motion blur into your pictures.
Digital zoom.
There is an option of an extra 4x digital zoom, this is best turned off as the picture quality is dire when used, noise is magnified and exaggerated, the image stabilizer, whilst it is fine for the full range of the optical zoom, it will not be effective in the extra digital zoom range and pictures will be blurred unless you use a tripod, I prefer to do any extra zooming by cropping the picture on the PC, you get much better results this way.
Shutter
The shutter is an electronic type shutter with a good range of speeds, which are 5-1/3200 sec. continuous shooting speeds are up to 1.5 frames per second, movie frame-rates are 30fps and 60fps, self timer is timed at 2 sec. 10 sec. plus custom timer.
Controls
Unlike a small compact, this camera is quite complex and has quite a few buttons dials and switches, and it took me a while to get used to what everything does.
On the lens barrel there are two switches, one to turn on/off the auto-focus, and one to switch between distant, macro and super-macro focussing modes.
On the top plate there are the on/off switch, shutter release button, zoom lever, mode dial, mode lever and the continuous shooting/self-timer button.
On the back of the camera there are the print/share button, dioptre adjustment wheel, movie button, omni selector (4 way rocker switch), set button, menu button, display button, ISO button, and function button.
Some of the above controls will be described below where relevant.
Menus.
The extensive menus are accessed by pressing the menu button on the back, they are split into three colour coded pages, 1 shooting settings, 2 tools, 3 camera settings, they are accessed by scrolling through them with the omni selector and settings saved by pressing the set button, they are too extensive to go into here without making the review impossibly long, but the excellent 201 page printed manual takes you through them all.
Display
The display is on the LCD screen and in the viewfinder, and displays all the current settings of the camera, and the warning messages such as camera shake, low battery warnings etc, the displays default setting is off during normal operation except for when you are making a new setting and for a few seconds after, warning messages are always visible, by pressing the disp. button you can cycle through all the display options such as on, off, histogram etc.
Shooting modes
On the top plate of the camera there is the mode dial, with which you can set the shooting modes The shooting modes are: -
· Auto (point and shoot) · Program (as above but you can set certain parameters such a ISO, continuous shooting speed etc.) · Portrait · Landscape · Night snapshot · Sports · Scene (see below) · Stitch assist (discussed elsewhere in this review) · Movie (there is also a movie button on the back for instant movie recording, this button overrides the mode dial for the duration of the movie recording session) · TV (shutter priority, you select the shutter speed and the camera selects the aperture, ideal for sports, fast moving subjects etc.) · AV (aperture priority, you select the aperture and the camera sets the shutter speed, ideal for portraits, macro etc.) · Manual (you take control of all the camera settings) · C (custom function, save your favourite camera settings on here for future use.)
Scene mode includes: -
· Night scene · Indoor · Foliage · Snow · Beach · Fireworks · Aquarium · Colour accent · Colour swap The scene modes are all auto settings, which sets the camera to the best settings for the subject chosen.
Flash
The flash is turned on by the flash switch to the left of the top plate, the flash is adequate for most uses such as family snaps and works well, it can also be used to fire slave flash units in a studio set-up, there is also a hot shoe for external flashes.
LCD screen
This is one of my favourite features of this camera, and is one of the things which make this camera so versatile, The 2.5” LCD screen opens out and can be twisted around to just about any angle, rather like the adjustable screens you find on camcorders. You can open it out and twist it 180 degrees and hold the camera out in front of you to take a self-portrait, and still be able to see the screen to compose the picture. You can use the camera at waist level like the old medium format cameras. It comes into its own when used for super-macro as you can take a macro picture at ground level and twist the screen up towards you so that you can see it without you having to get down onto the ground to see the screen to frame the picture. You can hold it up over your head and twist the screen down towards you to take pictures over the top of a crowd such as at a sporting venue or a rock concert. When not in use it can be folded onto the back of the camera with the glass on the inside, so it is protected from damage. You can also twist it round and fold it back onto the camera and use it like a conventional compact camera screen.
Viewfinder.
After the brilliance of the LCD screen the viewfinder is a bit of a letdown, it has an electronic viewfinder screen which has a pretty low resolution and is not the clearest screen that I have seen, under certain light conditions it is practically useless, but it is useful for taking moving subjects however, as it is much easier to follow a moving subject with a viewfinder than with an LCD screen, so although it isn’t perfect, it’s still a lot better than nothing, there is a dioptre adjustment wheel so it can be adjusted for spectacle wearers to use without their specs on.
Movie function
This camera has a movie recording function, this is not a function that I have had much cause to use as yet, so I shot a test movie for the purpose of this review, not exactly Hollywood but it sufficed to determine whether this was a worthwhile addition or not.
The movie function is easily activated turning the mode dial to movie, or by pushing a single button on the back of the camera,
Pictures of Canon PowerShot S5 IS
Wasp taken on Canon PowerShot S5 IS
no matter what mode you are in, the camera will reset to its movie mode immediately, so there no chance of missing anything whist you are setting it up, this mode is ideal for creating video clips for you tube etc. you can edit your movies in camera or on the PC with the supplied software.The available movie modes are: - · 640 x 480 @ 30 fps · 640 x 480 @ 30 fps LP · 320 x 240 @ 60fps · 320 x 240 @ 30fps · frame size measured in pixels. · fps = frames per second.
Maximum movie length in any one continuous clip is 1 hour or 4gb whichever comes first, or when your card is full, if you still have enough room on your card, you can restart filming within a few seconds, but it will save it as a new movie file, all files are saved in the AVI (video) & WAV (audio) file types
The movie that I shot was in the 640 x 480 mode, it was well exposed, picture quality was good, frame rates were constant and ran smoothly, panning was smooth with no jerkiness as you pan, you can zoom in and out whilst filming, unlike many compacts, which have a fixed focal length whilst filming, sound is in stereo and sounds quite good, with no distortion in the louder sounds, quieter sounds are well recorded and clear.
Viewing and downloading pictures.
You can view your pictures and videos on the LCD screen by pressing the cameras on switch to the left which takes you into preview mode, you can zoom into your pictures to check the focus, view them as a slideshow, or view them as thumbnails, and select which picture to view from the thumbnails, or you can delete any pictures you don’t want, you can sort them into folders from here as well, you can edit your pictures in here, such as adding colour, fixing redeye etc.
Pictures and video can be displayed on a TV screen via the supplied video cable.
Downloading pictures to your PC is easy using the supplied USB lead, using either the supplied software, or as I do by using the windows down-loader, which will allow you to delete the images from the card at the same time, some photo editing software such as Corel etc. have their own down-loaders, which can down-load pictures into a folder or directly into the editing software.
Printing.
You can print pictures from this camera to any direct print enabled printer with the supplied cable, the button for this is on the left side of the viewfinder, I always print my pictures from the PC, I have never used this facility so I cannot say how well this works or how easy it is to use, but I don’t foresee any problems with it
Other features.
This camera comes with all the features that you would expect from a camera at this level, such as red eye reduction, exposure bracketing/compensation, exposure and focus lock, self-timer, remote operation from a PC, both auto and adjustable white balance, etc. Light sensitivity is from 80-1600 ISO, both auto and manual selection is available.
Build quality
Build quality is generally good, the polycarbonate body and lens barrel feels solid enough, all the controls and moving parts work smoothly and are well made, however there are a couple of small niggles, one is a well known problem, that is the lens cap which is designed to pop off if the camera is switched on, pops off all too easily, but as it comes with a lanyard that can be fixed to the camera strap there is no chance of loosing it, the other is potentially more serious, (I’m not sure if this is a common problem or just with mine) the metal ring that fits around the lens has a habit of popping off very occasionally as well, if you were to loose this, it wouldn’t affect the camera operations in use, but you wouldn’t be able to attach the lens cap at all, I’m not sure how this happens, I have tried twiddling with it to make it fall off but it will not budge, but on a couple of occasions now, it has fallen off for no apparent reason, and luckily I have noticed it, and now I keep my eye on it just in case, it is easy to put back on again, so as long as you don’t loose it, it’s not a big problem.
Handling.
Handling with this camera is good, it is well balanced, it is fairly heavy for its size, (approx. 450g – 15.9 oz.) but not too heavy, all controls are well placed and easy to operate, (even with my great big hands), there is a hand grip on the right side of the camera, which makes it easier to hold,
Now for the most important bit, the picture quality.
Exposure is accurate with all pictures being well exposed, colours are well rendered and accurately represented with natural tones, the white balance works well in auto for outdoor shots, other settings are available for artificial light, sharpness is good in all pictures except at the maximum zoom at infinity where the focus is a little soft, stopping the lens down a couple of notches helps a lot with this and sharpens things up a lot, at the macro setting images were impressive, sharp, well focused and showed plenty of detail, overall the results were very good.
Digital noise
One of the most important factors in digital picture quality is noise, on this camera the noise is very good at low ISO settings but soon gets worse at higher settings, I set the camera on a tripod and took a series of identical pictures at different ISO settings, I used the same crop on all the pictures, then studied the results in detail, the results were as follows: -
ISO 80 – at this setting results were excellent with no noise, and no apparent noise reduction. Fine detail was rendered very well.
ISO 100 – results were almost identical to the above, just a very slight reduction in image detail, but this is only discernable at very high magnification.
ISO 200 – noise is just starting to be visible at this setting, with a little less image detail but it is still not bad at all.
ISO 400 – noise is more noticeable at this setting and would be seen at medium sized enlargements and there is a slight blurring to fine detail.
ISO 800 – Noise is a lot more noticeable at this setting and would be seen in a normal print, image detail is also lower.
ISO 1600 – Noise at this setting is unacceptable, picture quality and detail is very poor, colours are muted and muddy looking, with details in low contrast areas almost obliterated by noise, even a small print would show up the poor quality. (see cropped flower pictures for examples of noise levels)
These results show that if you keep within the 80-200 ISO range then picture quality is excellent, good at 400 for smaller prints, but it worsens quite a lot after that, but if you put that into context and compare the results with other small cameras then these results are very good in comparison, as many other small cameras use such aggressive noise reduction that even at the lowest ISO fine detail is lost, I have stuck within the lower ISO settings and had some amazing pictures with this camera, especially the close ups and landscapes at low to medium zoom levels, and you would never get such good results as this from an ordinary compact.
This camera comes supplied with a 32mb SD card, but that doesn’t hold many pictures at all, so it will be necessary to buy a higher capacity one of at least 2gb or more, it is compatible with the high capacity SDHC cards, if you are going to be using the video function a lot then one of the new high speed ones would be a better bet, the SD card fits into a slot along side of the batteries accessed via the battery cover at the bottom of the camera underneath the hand grip.
Batteries.
Power is supplied with 4x AA batteries and it comes supplied with a set of alkaline batteries, but this camera is rather heavy on batteries, so a couple of sets of rechargeable batteries and a charger is a must, if you do not want to spend a fortune on batteries, rechargeable batteries last a lot longer between battery changes as well, I got a couple of sets of Hama batteries and a charger, and they last very well in this camera, the cover for the battery compartment is on the underside of the camera.
Software
The software disk supplied with this camera includes the following software: -
Zoombrowser EX 5.8 – this is used to download pictures and movies from your camera, sort, edit and display them, operate the camera remotely.
Photostitch 3.1 – merges several images into one panoramic photo, you need to set the camera for this and take pictures in sequence for this to work.
Eos utility – This software is for Canon’s EOS series cameras, and pictures downloaded with Zoombrowser EX
And finally
This is an excellent medium sized camera, with an excellent spec. It is very flexible in use, the results are not quite up to DSLR standards but are much better than ordinary compact cameras, which is exactly what you would expect from a bridge camera, and if you stick to the lower ISO settings then you cannot fault the image quality, in fact this is my camera of choice for macro pictures, everything works exactly as it should, there are a couple of niggles but nothing major, and nothing is perfect. The new SX series offers higher spec, but image quality is no better than these, in fact at ISO 80, I would say that this camera has a slight edge over the newer models.
If you are thinking of upgrading from a compact to something more flexible, but don’t want to go all the way to a DSLR, then this camera will fit the bill nicely.
Availability and price
Since the launch of Canon’s new SX series of bridge camera’s, this camera is getting harder to find, unlike most cameras that are going out of production this camera has still held its price due to its popularity, so you will not find it at bargain basement prices just yet.
At the time of writing this camera can still be bought from the Amazon market place (third party sellers) from £306 upwards. Other sites (Cheapest I found was on Google shopping search) are offering it at £230 upwards which is a good price.
(+) Ultra-compact dimensions, fun automatic tools, good performance for the asking price (-) Cluttered menu layout, camera buttons are scarce, specs are almost identical to the Samsung ES15
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