A Revolutionary Compact - The Canon PowerShot S90

Introduction

The compact camera with near-DSLR quality is the holy grail of the digital compact camera market, and the search for it sure intensified during 2009.

The DSLRs hung in there with smaller versions of their entry-level models, packed with more features like built-in guides in the Nikon D3000 and the Sony Alpha 380. The Micro Four Thirds gang arguably hit closest to the target with the popular Olympus PEN E-P1 and the Panasonic GF1, but although both cameras were smaller than the smallest DSLRs, they were comparably bigger than any compact.

And where was Canon going to be in this zone? We all thought we knew: an update to the PowerShot

G-series - bigger sensor than a compact, but larger and heavier. We guessed right, the G11 was released with a swivel LCD screen, but no one saw the surprise camera that was announced together with the G11, the PowerShot S90.

Why is a larger sensor such a big deal? Generally, a larger sensor gives you sharper, clearer images with less noise. A standard compact camera like the Canon IXUS 100 IS has a sensor measuring 0.435-inch diagonally, the PowerShot G11 has a sensor that is 0.588-inch diagonal, and the Canon EOS 500D DSLR has a sensor that's 1.056-inch diagonal. That's why DSLRs give you better-looking pictures!

And that's what makes the S90 so exciting. Canon has somehow managed to take the large sensor of the G-series and squeezed it into a compact camera body that's only slightly larger than a regular compact. Not only that, they've included full manual controls, and a unique manual control ring that's not even found on the G-series. All this would have been exciting enough, but they even threw in a fast f/2 lens, which is no less of a shot across the bow for near rival Panasonic LX3 which also features an f/2 lens.

Does it work though? The G10 had some issues with image noise, did Canon manage to overcome that with the S90 or is it still a noisy camera? Does the larger sensor work well in a smaller body than the G11's? Does the new-style manual control ring work, or is it a doomed innovation that shouldn't have left the planning room? Has Canon found the holy grail with the S90? Yes, yes, no, yes, yes and maybe. Read on and find out why.

Design

You'll either love or hate the way the PowerShot S90 looks. It's completely utilitarian and no understatement to simply call it a black box. A single matte black slab with no protruding features, the controls on top are cut so they don't jut out from the silhouette. Except for the gentle curves on the side, there aren't any styling curves or cuts like you might see on a Canon IXUS series.

We wondered in our S90 preview if Canon had taken minimalism too far over the edge into plain territory here, but after using it for a while we've become quite taken with the S90's unassuming looks. The camera fades away into the background and lets what's important take the foreground: the photographic act, and we can certainly live with that.

Handling

The S90 is only slightly heftier than a compact, and considering the bigger sensor and extra controls it's packing, that's an amazing feat. Unless you own one of those super-slim compacts, we're going to go out on a limb and say that you won't really feel the difference between the S90 and any other compact when you're carrying it around.

Even though it's a simple box, little features help to make single-handed shooting comfortable. The gentle curves on the sides help you grip the camera, together with a thumb-rest on the back of the camera, below the mode-dial. This buttress, where your thumb naturally finds itself, helps to give you a firm grip. The S90 feels nicely balanced and has a good heft to it.

Manual Focus Ring & Scroll Wheel

We're guessing what most people want to know is if the manual control ring works, and with a slight caveat, yes it does. Most marvellously. The caveat is that you need to get used to it. Details follow.

A physical ring you can rotate on the lens, the control ring surrounds the lens and gives you direct control over settings like aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focus, exposure and zoom depending on which mode you're in. What it controls can also be customized via the Ring Function button on top of the S90. A manual control ring isn't a new idea since lenses on DSLR cameras have manual zoom and focal control rings, and some consumer camcorders also have direct control rings on their lenses. But it's a first for compact cameras and being so useful, a wonder why nobody else has thought of doing it before.

A scroll wheel that surrounds the directional pad on the back of the S90 works in tandem to give you control over an additional setting. For example, the control ring governs aperture in Aperture Priority, but if you customize it to take over ISO, the scroll wheel will then take over aperture control. In Auto mode, the manual control ring is set to focal length control and the scroll wheel to exposure.

This two-handed action takes a while to get used to, and it's not without its problems. Despite the nifty one-handed skills we're reading about on the Internet, we've never been able to work the manual control ring with just one hand on the S90, it has always been two for us. Also, the scroll wheel surrounds the tiny directional pad, and it's easy to move one when you mean to move the other, we learned to be extra careful around it.

But when you do get used to it, it's incredibly easy to change settings on the fly, and the amount of flexibility it affords you makes shooting on the go so much fun.

Zoom

The zoom toggle, being a tiny stub, barely clears the front line, but stays this side of usability. The zoom toggle feels a little oversensitive, as if it's zooming towards presets instead of reacting to minute adjustments.

If you don't like using the zoom toggle, you can always switch to using the manual control ring to zoom. In Auto mode, the control ring is set to preset focal lengths by default. If you think about shooting in terms of lengths like 28mm or 50mm, this is an absolute joy. Shoot wide? Set to 28mm. Shooting a portrait? Go straight to 50mm.

Mode Dial

The Mode Dial was the one control on the S90 we couldn't get used to. Mostly recessed, it's stiff and hard to move, making mode-changing one of unnecessary frustrations.

Flash

The S90's built-in flash is pretty cool. Instead of popping up, it slides upwards silently, smoothly, and slides right back down when not needed.

LCD & Menus

The LCD deserves special mention. Large at 3-inch, the LCD is also dense at approximately 461k dots, and it shows. It's brilliant, bright with rich colors and sharp to a fault. We've never seen an LCD look so good on a compact camera before, and it even comes with brightness controls.

If there's a fault to the LCD, it's this - and this is nit-picking at its fineness here - its brilliance makes your shots look so good it's hard to see the flaws, like blurriness or noise unless you zoom in close. Yes, it's silly to mention, but we'd feel bad if we didn't admit that this is one good thing you should watch out for if you don't want surprises later in post-processing.

The menu is intuitive and easy to use. Manual aficionados will love drilling through the menus and discovering how much the S90 lets you have manual controls. Even the timer menu lets you determine exactly how many seconds it should wait and how many shots it should take after that.

Performance

Sure, the PowerShot S90 has great handling. But how's the image quality? Does that larger-than-a-compact's sensor really make a difference?

Aperture, Focal Length & Others

A lot will no doubt be mentioned about that f/2 lens, and while we absolutely love the speed and bokeh available with it, we'd be careless not to mention that f/2 is only available at the 28mm (35mm equivalent) setting. At 35mm, the widest you can get is f/2.5, at 50mm you get f/3.2, at 85mm you get f/4.5 and at 105mm you get f/4.9.

These are still impressively wide apertures for a compact camera however. Ordinary compacts like the Canon IXUS 120 IS can only manage f/2.8 at 28mm, while the S90's nearest competitor - the Panasonic Lumix LX3 - gives you f/2.0 at a wider 24mm.

The 3.8x optical zoom may not sound like much, but it's the equivalent of 28mm to 105mm on a 35mm. Still, it's something you'd want to consider if you'd prefer to shoot longer distances. AF on the S90 works fine and even does basic face detection, though manual focus is available. The shutter is fast and responsive on the S90, but there's not much of a burst mode at approximately 0.9 shots/sec. The S90 doesn't shoot HD video, but the SD video footage looks great. The battery life is shorter than we expected; we shot around 422 photos and two minutes worth of video before it died.

Clarity

Images from the S90 are sharp and clear, going by the numbers we'd reckon a rating of 1600LPH vertically and horizontally on our resolution chart.

Surprisingly, when compared against another Canon compact, the IXUS 120 IS, we found little difference in resolution. Surprising, but we kept in mind that in a recent shootout that we conducted (to be published in HWM December 2009) found the 120 IS to have the clearest resolution amongst six other modern compact cameras. The S90 is also clearer than the Panasonic Lumix FX65 (another well-performing compact), though unsurprisingly it's not as sharp as an entry-level DSLR such as the Nikon D40x, which has a larger sensor than the S90.

ISO Performance

ISO performance is where the S90 really shines. ISO noise levels were consistently acceptable up to ISO800, and depending on the shot, even up to ISO1600, while the highest ISO3200 setting was too noisy to be used.

These are what the noise levels look like on our color chart.

These are what the noise levels look like in a simulated low-light environment, with varying levels of brightness.

Where it gets exciting though, is when the higher ends of the ISO settings get compared. At ISO800 there's clearly less noise than compared to the IXUS 120 IS and the FX65. At ISO1600, the IXUS 120 IS and FX65 have clear visible noise, but the S90 remains reasonably clean and not much noisier than the D40x.

In comparison to its nearest competitor, the Panasonic Lumix LX3 (with the latest 1.3 firmware update) which has a slightly smaller sensor at 0.429-inch diagonal to the S90's 0.588-inch, we found that the LX3 captures images with more detail, at a good 1800LPH horizontal and vertical against the S90's 1600LPH.

ISO performance however, pales next to the S90. The LX3's images do manage to retain their sharpness at higher ISO levels but at the expense of noisier images, while the S90's images seem to fudge up slightly, likely due to its more aggressive noise reduction. Noise is more noticeable on the LX3 even at ISO400. At ISO800 the S90's images manage to stay relatively clean, while the LX3 has more noise. At ISO1600, it's the same scenario where noise is much more prevalent on the LX3 than the S90.

In real-world shooting situations, we found that most ISO800 shots were usable and ISO1600 is still acceptable in certain situations, more than what can be claimed for most compact cameras on the market today. If ISO1600 is too noisy for you, the S90 steps up from ISO800 to ISO1000 and ISO1250 before reaching ISO1600. Together with the fast f/2 lens, this opens up a whole new world of hand-held shooting in low-light without the tripod.

Photos shot at ISO800 remain relatively noise-free, and is the clearest we've seen a compact digital camera at this setting.

A sample of an ISO1600 shot that is quite acceptable, and at noise levels equivalent to ISO800 on most other compact cameras.

Noise will be more noticeable in ISO1600 shots with lots of dark areas, so while we'd shoot at ISO800 with confidence, we'd still venture carefully into ISO1600 territory.

Sample Images

These are sample images shot with the Canon PowerShot S90. The images have not been post-processed and are copyright to SPH Magazines. We kindly ask that you do not reproduce them elsewhere. Click to see the original full resolution images (which are rather large).

Conclusion

The Canon PowerShot S90 offers a compelling package in a small body: great ISO performance lets you shoot at ISO800, and even take quite a few chances at ISO1600 - something you cannot say with most, if not all compacts at the moment.

Coupled with the fast f/2 lens, it gives you a better chance of capturing clearer shots in low-light while shooting hand-held. Image clarity is top of class for compacts, and the S90 gives you full manual control with easy to use controls.

With so much going for it, the S90 doesn't land without its caveats. If you're used to getting 5x optical zoom on your compact, 3.6x on the S90 may feel restrictive to you. The S90 shoots an approximate 0.9 shots per second (approximately 0.6 shots/sec. with AF), so it won't do if you're looking for a sports camera.

We started this article by asking if the S90 was the holy grail of near-DSLR image quality achieved with a compact body. The answer is a clear no. In terms of image quality and speed, nothing beats a good but bigger-sized DSLR, and perhaps we'll never see the day when technology will give us a compact-sized DSLR. Instead, we'd put the Canon PowerShot S90 as a holy grail amongst digital compact cameras. If you value image quality and manual controls but don't want to carry a big body, this could very well be worth the S$749 asking price for you.

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