Canon PowerShot S200 Review

Overall Rating

Cheap
Fast CPU
Carry anywhere (small)
Very good specs
Compact charger

No profiles, or scenes
No optical stabilization (too advanced 4it)
Weak zoom
Crammed buttons
No external dial for shooting conditions
Limited recording time
No histogram before shooting, only when reviewing taken photos

My camera was a bargain deal!

I bought a Canon S200 to capture photos of my patients, X-rays and ECGs where I can't put them on a scanner. It turned to be a great tool, performing exactly what I wanted and more. The quality was very good except in some X-rays.

I read some articles and booklets on digital photography, and with this little tool and its success with me, I went really WILD, and thought that I can shoot almost anything interesting on the road when I'm driving. The short boot up was seducing; I could shoot a picture in less than 5 seconds after switching it on.

I used it to publish some of my photos over the net and to picture some items I offered on auctions. The results were astonishing.

Not only the camera is noticeably small (the new Minolta Dimage Xt say it's small; it's thinner but wider than s200), also the charger is intelligently small!! No wires at all!! Just plug it in the wall and slip the battery in it as letter in an envelope. Sure some of us understand how important this brilliant design is, esp. during traveling and outdoors; it's practical and elegant. There's always a draw back of charging battery outside the camera; if the battery is drained in the middle of a party, then you have to wait until it's charged to shoot again!

Canon provides an optional adapter that fits in place of battery to run camera after the batteries had died! However, it is not the answer to all situations; even in the party you need to mingle and 'socialize' with others, not stay tied to the wall plug, staring at others, hunting friends in the crowd, shouting at them, ask to smile, then shoot from the other corner in the room LOL LOL LOL. I think this 'cordless' design's advantages beat its disadvantages


I could take pictures for the neighborhood and some friends. The resolution was fine for my friends, but not so much for surrounding buildings. There was no blurring, but the details were not so sharp, may be because the natural instability of hands or may be the resolution was too low. No way I could magnify the distant photos e.g. beyond 40 meters

I could use higher resolutions for recreational purposes, but I'm not willing to spend more money. I'm sticking for my original goal; medical photography. At that level (close objects with no much art needed beyond balanced brightness and contrast) it's excellent, and I can squeeze more details than I can need by magnification.

However, when I started to drag my camera to shoot in different climates I discovered its biggest limitation; no pre-set shooting profiles!!! I could rely on full automatic adjustment, but for better results I had to adjust some parameters manually to fit the shooting situations as sunny, cloudy or fluorescent illumination, which took few seconds of concentration, but this is too long for instant shooting.


As regard panorama pictures, you must take care to shoot all scenes at same distance; otherwise, the software will not be able to overlap scenes with different focal lengths. I don't know if the XD cards of Panasonic cameras can overcome this limitation or not. If anybody knows please tell me.

One disadvantage in the design is the tripod hole is not in the center of the camera. So, when you shoot serial photos in panorama view this can be an additional factor for bad quality of pictures.

Optical Zooming was not enough, and the only useful application was to capture minute details as fine print on a paper if it's near the minimum distance of the camera, or to get better shots for objects in show room, or on a stand where you can't get near it enough. But for distant objects it's useless.

Shooting in dark was not bad if you can tweak the right parameters correctly, there is some artificial lighting around and you are not shooting fast moving objects. The biggest challenge is the tweaking; I don't know if those complain of dark shooting conditions have tried to let the camera evaluate the white balance or not. I agree that the flash is so weak, but this is the average for this class of cameras.

Video recording is both audio and video (not all cameras record audio) and limited by resolution of movie; 160x120 will give you max 30 seconds. Higher resolutions limit time.