Canon PowerShot S50 Digital Camera

I love this camera for travel and for snapshots. It's small enough to carry around, with excellent picture quality, nothing protruding to break off. I've been very happy so far (6 months).

This is a very solid feeling camera, not as light as some others of the same size, but feels compact and solid, not at all flimsy. Doesn't come with a case, so get an aftermarket one. Great lens protection when closed, but no LCD protection. I purchased a pack of screen protectors designed for PDA's and cut them to size to help protect the LCD, and this works just fine.

The metering produces excellent results. You can choose three focus zones: center left, center, and center right, or allow the autofocus to automatically choose the zone.

The flash is probably my main complaint. While improved over the S30, it's only useful up to about 12 feet distance portait style snapshots, is better indoors, and expect to do some red-eye correction in your photo editing software if shooting in very low light. Unfortunately, there is not hot shoe, accessory flash mount shoe, or external flash sync. Corners are slightly darker on wide shots when using the flash. But the flash does work, and cycles fairly quickly. It works really well as a fill-flash for backlit subjects.

Color saturation and quality is excellent. Resolution is excellent at 5 Megapixels. However, there is some noticeable purple ghosting (chromatic aberration) along high-contrast borders (a black object with light colored background, for example). I always shoot at the highest resolution and lowest compression. I get about 300 photos on a 512MB CF card in this mode.

There is also noticeable noise in the photos when shooting anything above the 50 ISO setting. This is generally not a problem, and can be easily corrected with software like Neat Image, but I therefore stick to the 50 ISO setting unless light absolutely requires another setting.

Startup time is a little slow, especially if you then also need to change some settings (use the custom function to speed this up). It is no slower than the majority of cameras I tried in its price range. Cycle time and shutter lag are faster than most. Pre-focussing, or manual focussing makes a big difference in the shutter lag.

The camera controls are fairly intuitive, though no top LCD means the rear LCD screen comes on when you change any settings, a concern if you're doing your best to conserve battery power.

Ability to print directly to some Canon printer models without a computer is definitely a plus, and the results are decent.

Battery life is average, but the proprietary battery means you can't have an emergency set of AA's on hand. Fortunately, aftermarket batteries from Digipower (and probably others) are also available for much less than the Canon Batteries. (I paid around $50 for one, well worth it... it has a higher 700mAh capacity than the Canon's 570 mAh stock batteries.)

The off-camera battery charger, with 110V prongs that fold down flat makes the charger easy to pack and transport on a trip. It's roughly an inch shorter than the camera, and the same width and height. Having one battery charging while using the other battery, I've never been inconvenienced by lack of battery power, though there is no battery meter, just a low battery warning. Batteries last much, much longer with the LCD turned off. I can shoot over 250 photos (no flash, no LCD, no review) on a single battery charge.

Stitch assist mode allows you to take panoramic photos, allowing you to see the last photo and superimpose the next photo over the top, while keeping exposures the same. A nice feature, and speeds up panorama stitching later on the computer.

Close focus distance is good at around 12", but not great. Zoom is 3X optical, and I never use the digital zoom (on this or any other digital camera). It takes about 2 1/2 seconds to zoom from wide to tele, and the control is well placed right in front of the shutter release button.

Another nice feature is the ability to annotate pictures with a voice recording, after shooting. Switch to photo playback mode, press the mic button and press to record. Up to 60 seconds, depending on memory capacity.

Auto bracketing, a range of white balance presets and a "custom" white balance, EV compensation for flash and regular modes, manual focus (though a little clumsy, it works), Manual, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Portait Mode, Landscape Mode, Backlit mode, Movie Mode, Night Mode, make it a fairly customizable camera for the tinkerer.

The ability to save a custom user setting has proven useful, and a great improvement over the S30, which I previously owned. The custom setting allows you to quickly revert to a setting needed. A second, or multiple custom settings would be an improvement.

However, 90% of my photos have been on Auto, with Auto White Balance, Auto Flash, and Auto Focus (read: point and shoot), with excellent results.

I also have the Canon waterproof housing for this camera, and have used it rafting, surfing, and snorkelling, with decent results. Underwater, the flash does not do well, as it is too close to the lens and lights up the sediments in the water. Fogging is a problem but using dessicant packs helps a great deal. The housing gives access to every function on the camera, though you need to know where they are as some of the labels are obscured.

My S30, which is essentially the same body, was dropped from a moving car, dropped on a trail while mountain biking, scratched, and had several noticeable dents in the housing from various impacts. It never missed a beat. This camera already has one dent in the top above the LCD, and also hasn't missed a beat. This is one durable, reliable camera.

While not a prosumer camera, many of it's features rival and exceed some prosumer models costing much more. But compact size and excellent point-and-shoot results have left me very happy with my purchase.