Misfiring Neurons Just another geek with a blog

Sushi and compact camera musings

Raw fish: om nom nom!

I have had my Canon S90 for nearly a year! Quite hard to believe - in fact Canon has already announced an update is due out soon (S95). Apparently the rear dial doesn't turn freely anymore on the S95 but I haven't actually found that the loose one on the S90 has been the problem many feared it might be. I like that they've added extra holes for a proper neck strap though - that seems like it could be useful.

If there was one thing that would make me want to upgrade, it would be the ability to attach a dedicated optical finder. I know Canon would rather have me buy the G11 for that but those cameras are simply too big once you've tried the S90 (not to mention the lens is a stop slower!)

I would imagine such a device using a proprietary clip instead of the usual flash shoe to keep the size down; perhaps with an extra frame marked for 50mm FoV. It doesn't need to be super-accurate, although large and bright would be very desirable. For bonus points, the finder could incorporate a focus indicator LED and illuminated frame lines that switch as you zoom the lens - I'm sure many people would pay good money for this.

I often find that I am holding my camera up to my eye, zoomed all the way out and pre-focused, just trying to eyeball the correct framing. It works surprisingly well! Some enterprising users have already hacked (well, glued) finders onto the S90 but a first party solution would be far more elegant. Mike Johnston recently likened these cameras to the original Leica; I think a proper finder would really cement the argument.

Lightroom tells me that my catalogue only has about 750 shots from the S90. It's not much but I have some travels coming up so that number should go up soon. More importantly, I have a very large number of keepers - about 150 are marked 3+ stars - and most of these are in difficult low-light situations where most compacts would struggle to deliver much in the way of usable pictures. These are 150 shots I would not have made with my DSLR because it was sitting at home!

On a related note, I managed to drop mine a short distance onto some gravel. Luckily it escaped with nothing but a mark or two on the lens ring paint - easily sorted with some black permanent marker The build quality (while not up to Leica M standards) is also more than adequate!

Shot info: f/2.2, 6.85mm (one step from full wide), ISO 1600, CR2 converted through Lightroom 3.

Canon PowerShot S90

I've had a Canon S90 for a couple of months already and in that short time have already managed some really nice shots. It's barely larger than a candybar cellphone and the picture quality beats anything I've seen from a similar-sized cameras. I always felt the G10 is a touch too big to carry at all times, and the S90 fits this role perfectly. Lightroom 3 handles the noise really well if you shoot raw, though you will definitely need something like PTLens to straighten up the barrel distortion at the wider settings (if you shoot JPEG the camera corrects it internally but only partially; PTLens can fully correct the JPEGs too). As with other PowerShots, the IS is unbelievably good - here is a hand-held sample at half a second:

And to illustrate just how tiny it is  - here's mine next to an AA battery (you might also recognize the Gordy's camera strap it's wearing):

Nikon expert Thom Hogan has posted his views on the S90 and sums it up much better than I could. I find the S90 a great camera for those times when I don't feel like lugging my SLR around. And since I've had a chance to handle the Olympus E-P1, I really don't lust after a m4/3 camera anymore even though I'm sure it's technically a better proposition.