Canon PowerShot S1 IS Review

Overall Rating

Great quality pictures
10X optical Ultrasonic zoom
Great feel to the camera
video quality excellent
build quality

You WILL need high power reachargable batteries

Having not long bought the Canon PowerShot S1 IS I was looking forward to putting it through it's paces (I already own an Ixus V3 which has similar menu's) so I was able to get started right away. I had made my decision after much research on the internet and found this to have everything I needed and because it was 12 months old now it was at a bargain price for what it could do. The handbook that comes with it is very easy to follow and comprehensive and reading it you must if you want to get the very best from this camera. Having said that, you can get it right out of the box and start shooting in full Auto mode within minutes and get great results. The purpose of this camera is to give the enthusiast the ability to go into manual mode and experiment like a pro. Aperture and Speed priority, bracketing, adjustable flash output, it's all there to play with if your feeling adventurous. This camera has a great feel to it, not to heavy not to light and the grip is just right and well balanced even with the zoom active at full. The 10X optical zoom is a dream to use and having the image stabiliser is the icing on the cake so unless you are jumping up and down you should not get a blurred shot even down to one thirtieth of a second without flash (you can't do that with a good many camera's)The flash itself is adjustable (in manual mode) having red eye reduction, which works as long as you tell the person to look into the small orange light that comes on just before shooting and the overhaul flash is very even having no noticeable dark areas around the edges unlike many. You can adjust the quality of the pictures from the full 3.3 million right down to E:Mail friendly snaps at the touch of a smart button, so no need to keep going into the menu every time (nice touch that) You have spot, centre weighted and average metering so no need to get an out of focus shot ever again.
After you have taken your shots you can add narration to the individual pictures up to 1 minute long(which is more then enough)and play them back through your TV or computer with the supplied leads. The new Canon software is a doddle to use and you only have to attach one lead and press one button to download the pictures and the software even makes a new folder, names it with the date taken and files it in My Pictures ready for your viewing, how simple is that. Even though this camera is simple to use it gives you a professional feel as you click away and try to find more subjects to shoot, it's a pleasure to use.
As like most digital cameras of today it offers the ability to shoot short video clips with sound, but the quality of the video from this camera can hold it's own against some more expensive models. You have a choice of 15/30 frames a second and 3 choices of record mode 640X480(fine), 640X480 and the usual 320X240. The playback on my 32 inch TV was a pleasure to watch and the detail was crisp and sharp with no jerkiness or frame dropout. As to the length of record time ,this will depend on your Flash card and I chose to purchase the Sandisc Ultra II 1GB which gives me 15 mins of top quality movie.(580 top quality pictures)You can in fact use a 4GB microdrive which will give you an impressive 1 hour of movie, just make sure you have plenty battery power. As to the batteries, if there's a down side, this is it. Ordinary Alkaline and even Duracells will not last long but the rechargeable high power (2300AH) will. So an initial outlay of them could put you off (but I wouldn't let it). This is a superb camera and so easy to operate giving you great results every time. Like I said at the beginning of this write up I like to push any new camera to it's limits and this ones limits are very high indeed.
I could go on for forever telling you why you should buy this camera and not find one reason why you shouldn't, so go get it while you can as I would imagine very soon a new model will come out but at a dearer price, so why pay more when this little beauty does it all.