helps you find the perfect gadget. ver. 1.8.7

The Canon PowerShot S90 is designed for photography enthusiasts...

"It's user friendly, without lacking the sophistication that a fairly generous helping of manual control/s provides; shame about the lack of anything approaching a grip though."

"You have loads of tweaks at your fingertips, something rarely found on compact point-and-shoots. If you love finely adjusting f/stops, ISO, shutter speed and the like, you’ll really enjoy playing with this camera."

"The S90's photo quality is on par with the best PowerShots, too, which is to say generally excellent..."

"Most point & shoot cameras do well in one test but poorly on others, but the S90 was good across pretty much all of them, with accurate color, low noise at most ISO settings and sharp, clear images with plenty of detail."

"Image is of course crucial, and the S90 delivers. Dynamic range is excellent.... The lens produces excellent corner-to-corner sharpness, excellent contrast and pin-sharp detail, with minimal wide-angle distortion. Exposure metering is spot-on under a wide range of lighting conditions, and colour rendition is pleasingly natural in the default setting."

"The S90 produced some very good images - sharp with strong colors. Contrast was good with infrequent overexposure in strong light, which is a problem with most point and shoot cameras. Even indoors the camera performed well and I enjoyed being able to take pictures in low light situations without having to use the flash."

"When it comes to image quality, the PowerShot S90 delivers."

"After inspecting all of our photos, I saw moderate barrel distortion present at the wide angle extreme, and only small traces of other aberrations."

"Because the S90 can grab so much light, we were able to shoot at reasonable shutter speeds inside without the flash, taking photos of kids that stopped their incessant action without the washed-out, frozen-in-time look that a flash always seems to impart."

"Very good low-light photo quality…. There is a Low Light mode that drops the resolution to 1,824x1,368 pixels (2.5 megapixels), but allows for a sensitivity of ISO 12,800."

"The Canon PowerShot S90 point-and-shoot...justifies its price with almost DSLR-caliber low-light shots…. Canon suggests using it with a birthday cake and candles. We used a single candle in a dark room and the results were excellent—even for 2.5MP (we easily made 8.5×11 prints)."

"Fast and accurate in all lighting conditions, and...it can focus in darkness at a range of several metres.... Unusually for a Canon camera the S90 features sensor-shift image stabilisation rather than the usual optical system. It works just as well though, allowing sharp hand-held shots at shutter speeds as low as 1/10th of a second, even when zoomed in."

"Even indoors the camera performed well and I enjoyed being able to take pictures in low light situations without having to use the flash."

"With great ISO performance, a fast lens, and this new 10M sensor, the S90 offers some of the best low light abilities I have seen on a camera of this size. Canon did also include their new Low Light Exposure mode on the S90, however I found the quality of images produced by this mode were not that great."

"A VGA-quality movie mode is on the dial as well, so HD fans are out of luck. Plus, you can't use the optical zoom while recording, not that there's a lot there to use."

"The things we didn't like about this camera were few, but the main one was the poor video mode. In an age of point & shoots that record high definition video, the blurry, grainy 640 by 480 pixel video that the S90 shoots feels positively primitive."

"The S90 is almost unique among recent compact cameras in that it doesn't have HD video recording. The video mode is limited to 640 x 480 resolution at 30fps, with mono audio recorded via an internal microphone.... The video and sound quality aren't that brilliant by recent standards, but at least it can record clips up to an hour long."

"The S90 records movies at two resolutions, 640x480 and 320x200, both at 30 frames per second. The movies are smooth with good color. While optical zoom isn't available in movie mode, I found that digital zoom did a good job. It's kind of surprising that Canon did not include HD capability.... Quality of the lower-res video capture, however, is very good."

"This camera does not offer HD video recording– just 640×480 pixel SD footage – which is a disappointment. There’s also a low light option for shooting candle-lit scenes."

"As we've come to expect from Canon the build quality is very good, but surprisingly the top and bottom panels are plastic, not something I'd expect from a [$430] camera."

"The Canon PowerShot S90 is a fairly small camera with a smooth finish that makes it easy to slide in and out of a pocket or a purse. It has a combination metal/plastic exterior that feels pretty solid…. I get the impression the S90 would survive a few drops (though you really don't want to drop a fine, expensive camera like this now, do you?)."

"The S90 is made of a combination of metal and plastic, and it feels pretty solid in your hands."

"The S90 uses the NB-6LD rechargeable lithium-ion battery which Canon says should last for 220 shots. After shooting 154 photos and four videos the battery still had plenty of life."

"A battery life lasting 220 shots without flash isn't particular generous however, and any less would be downright alarming at this price point. As it was, after a couple of days' use our battery was back in the provided charger, so you'll want to cart this or a spare battery away with you on any extended trip or visit."

"The battery is rated 220 shots per CIPA, a pretty weak number. By comparison, the G11 is 390."

"Another area that needs improvement is battery life: the S90 is well below average in this department."