Let’s start by saying what it ain’t! 
It’s not your daddy’s rangefinder, street camera. In other words, it’s not a Leica! Haha. It’s not a sports camera. With a recycle time of about 1 second, there are plenty shots to be missed. As for this ‘review’. I promise that it will not in any way be a professional review with charts, graphs, or any semblance of order. You have my word on it. I’ll just be spouting off my impressions of shooting this dude outside for about 30 minutes in 100 degree heat! Perhaps it was less time!
When I got home, I opened the package, pulled out the camera and the battery, assembled them, and turned it on. From reading the “what’s included” on the Canon website, I gathered that there was no SD card in the package. I made a stop on the way home from work and picked up a SanDisk 2 GB SD card for $12.00. I inserted the card into the camera, formatted it, and noticed that I could get about 134 shots in RAW, on a 2 GB card.
One of the first things that I did was see if could figure out all of the settings without opening the manual. The answer is, yes. The menus are intuitive enough to get the camera configured to some reasonable, non-super-consumer mode. I went to my favorite, aperture priority, or Av, turned off auto focus assist, turn off the beeps, turned off the shutter sound, in other words, mute! There is a handy little ring on the front that allows you to adjust the zoom to 28, 35, 50, 85, or 105 mm. Very nice. This ring can be customized to do different things. I prefer the stepped zoom.
After turning off all the bells and whistles and winnowing it down to a camera that I could use without being frustrated, Hobbs and I set off to a nearby field. He’d been cooped up all day, so I decided to take him with me. As you can see from the top photo, he found a place to explore.
I’ve never really used a camera that didn’t have a viewfinder, having only live view, if you will. I still prefer a viewfinder, but this display is nice and clear and easy to see even on a bright day. The first thing that I noticed was that the auto white balance tends a little bit towards the cooler region. On the display, Hobbs looked a bit blue rather than his cool 18% gray! In loading the RAW files into Lightroom, they had that same bluish look. Sliding the temperature slider a tad to right brought things back to the way that I like them.
As I mentioned at the top, this thing is sloooooowwwwwwwwww on the recycle time. The best that you can do is about 1 frame per second, assuming that you turn off the image preview or make it go away by pressing the shutter button again. But, the right tool for the job, right?
Initially, I put it on Auto ISO; however, it seems to favor rather high ISO settings, like 800, preferring to keep the shutter speed around 1/250, regardless of aperture by raising the ISO. I switched to ISO 200 for the balance of the shots. Viewed on the web, it would be rather hard to tell which was which. I think that it is quite usable all the way up to ISO 800, perhaps 1600, or maybe even 3200. We’ll see how it does on the morning walk.
It is a tiny beast. I feel that I could drop it easily. It includes, fortunately, what Canon calls a neck strap; however, unless you have an extremely small head, this is a wrist strap.
I think that I’m going to like this camera. Stay tuned. BTW, here are a few more shots that I took while out in the field. They aren’t high art, just a quick look. I promise better later.
It took me a while to remember my SmugMug login and password. I’ve not used it in quite a while!
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11 Responses to “Canon S90 – My first look”
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1 second recycle time? Does that refer to shooting RAW or JPGs? My Ricoh gives me around 3 seconds for RAW (argh!) and around 1 second for JPGs… Don’t ask me why, doesn’t make any real sense.
Yea, auto ISO is something that usually doesn’t work in those P&S. Seems to be made for those who don’t want to go into photography, but are more snapp’in away. Meaning, it prefers rather short exposure times and small apertures, so that the shots are getting sharp from fore- to background.
So glad you have the new camera, even if it’s not a Leica. Does sound like a minimal learning curve for you so do have fun. And, as technically savvy as you are, finding the little quirks that need tweaking will be easy for you also. The shutter lag time has always been a deterrent for me, that’s more about me than the camera. Just for curiosity, how does the size compare to your Lieca?
Well, let’s just say that I have it in my pocket right now. The Leica just won’t fit in the pocket no matter how hard I try.
It’s palm sized, just about. I’ll take a photo of them side-by-side one day.
Paul, congratulations! For it’s purpose I’m sure the pros will outweigh the cons with the S90 — even if it’s a Canon.
Enjoy all those extra photo opportunities and we look forward to some of the results.
It’s a preference thing and I believe I’ve tried almost all the combinations, but I’ve settled on using the large ring around the lens for exposure compensation while the small dial on the back is aperture — works better for me.
Quite impressive results – without even reading the manual!
I use one of these when I hike and backpack now, rather than carrying my digital SLR.
Of course, that’s to enable me to carry a 4×5, so I still end up carrying a fairly large pack.
Good that you seem to enjoy the camera. It’s certainly a chance buying one without much more hands-on experience than the web may provide (and that moment with the amigos, of course). Are these images right out of the camera? I think you can get out more from it if pushing the contrast or saturation a bit, they actually look rather flat. Maybe a bit more sharpening, it’s hard to say seen in this resolution. I know, this is completely subjective and tied to taste, mine to be specific.
Hey, Ove. You’re right. These were pretty much out of the camera. I didn’t spend any time at all tweaking. I’ll tweak more later.
I like photos with a bit more punch, myself.
I’ve used the S90 since it was released, and I read somewhere the other day that it’s end-of-life’d now. Hmm, I guess that was about one year…
For slightly faster operation, you might try autofocusing and then (awkwardly) toggling the focus button to manual. You now have a rangefinder, albeit one that doesn’t change focus easily/quickly. Still, may help with candid people photos or anytime you want to “speed” things up.
At first, I thought the front ring was great. Now, not so much. Functional, but not great. I wish the rear had detents (my wife’s older SD 880 has same wheel with detents).
Operationally, I still prefer my Panny LX1. I bought and sold the LX3, finding the high ISOs to (still) be unacceptable and the zoom range to be too short for my taste. The upcoming LX5 doesn’t appear to address these issues, so the S90 is still the best pocket camera for my money (and I don’t count myself as a Canon fan).
Thanks, Lorenzo: I think that I’ll stick with the Leica for true street shooting. However, I really do like this camera. It’s very handy. Nice to be able to have a camera in your pocket and be ready for any occasion. I, too, looked at the LX3, but wanted a bit more optical zoom. Having had the S90 for a few days, I think that I’d like it better if the zoom went out to about 150 or 200. However, 105 is perfect for portraits and beats 64mm any day.
Oh yeah: forgot to suggest the custom grip – I think it helps a lot:
http://www.kleptography.com/rf/#camera_s90