Canon PowerShot S1 IS Review

Overall Rating

10X Telephoto Optical Lens
It's a Canon so lots of Features!

32X digital zoom is a waste of a picture.
NO MACRO!
Very hard to frame at telephoto distances.

My opinion & experience with the Canon S1 iS
The first 6 hours were great the last 6 hours today was a nightmare. And I seriously mean a nightmare. The images I got today were so bad that I would be ashamed to show my great, great, great grandfather (one of the first Photographers in Illinois) the images I got from this camera.

Now before S1 fans start reminding me how good it is. I will admit two things, the S1 is a good camera for many and that mine was possibly malfuntioning because it was a refurbished camera. However with that said, the many different shots I took June 30 were most disappointing. The zoom worked exceptional and even the digital zoom upto 16X worked flawless.

However the image it produced, while crisp was rather terrible. The colors had to have massive amounts of Photoshop editing to make them right and then they were not that good anyways. The bad pictures were mainly for Landscapes and such. For people and other things, it was much better but not much.

However my biggest peeve even past the bad color was something that didn't malfunction at all. And that was the View finder. The view finder is a LCD screen. Good idea on paper but terrible in reality if you wear glasses and shoot while wearing them. I know dioptic meter but to me that makes no sense, how can I take a picture of something if I can't see it? Out side, in the sun it was terrible because as we all know sun & LCD screens don't mix. I couldn't see what I was taking a picture of outside. Which makes the camera essentially worthless to me because I take pictures out side mainly.

Framing the picture at great lengths was very difficult and often most of my shots were slanted and not straight. Most of the pictures I took with it were this way and had to be trashed or straightened with photoshop.

Normal batteries last about 130 pictures, which is not too bad at all considering how much power the zoom requires. But if you leave it on for more then five minutes it starts to get warm and it also has a humming sound.

Take my review for what you want. If you want a good camera, buy the S85/A95 or S2 IS, both are a far superior camera. I returned the S1 after playing for it for a day. Mainly because of the view finder issue, the color issue on landscapes, and because the macro wasn't very good at all.

Review by ChristopherMartin

Members' Comments onchristophermartin's Review

• SteveTC on 8th Nov 2005

  The comments of Christophermartin are not justified on the S1 1S.Either he's plugging Photoshop or he needs to buy a new camera instead of buying a re-furbished one which is CLEARLY faulty.

• christophermartin on 8th Nov 2005

  No SteveTC the comments are completely justified and the entire review is based on the ACTUAL camera that I owned. I attributed that some of the problems could have been due to it being refurbished but most of my problems with this camera would have been the same refurbished or not.
  
  Reviews giving only high praises towards products are not useful, honest reviews of both the good and bad points are useful in helping others. This review is based on honest opinion of this product. Thanks