twinfeats's Full Review: Canon PowerShot® S5 IS Digital Camera
My last digital camera was the Minolta Z1, but there were several issues I had with it that caused me to look for something better. I read the specs on the S1 IS and couldn't wait for it to be released, buying one as soon as it was available. I have not been disappointed - all the things I found wrong with the Z1 are not present in the S1 IS. The pictures are generally quite excellent, especially outdoors (as with most digital cameras). Indoors the pictures are generally very good and S1 IS seems to do a very good job not overexposing with the flash.
This camera has wonderful manual controls so you can get somewhat creative, and the various auto modes are all solid and pretty standard these days. The S1 IS nearly always gives me well focused pictures with great color and balance, as a digital camera should!
The 10x zoom is great, it is very responsive to the pressure sensitive control, although as with all such controls you'll have to adjust to how much pressure to use for various zoom speeds. It is also quiet - very quiet. A pet peeve I had with the Z1 was with the noise from the zoom in videos, I couldn't be more pleased with out silent the S1 IS is.
I shoot a lot of movies with my S1 IS, I use it as much for that as for stills. I also extract a lot of 640x480 stills from my video for web sites, and the S1 IS in 640x480 Fine mode at 30 FPS is every bit the equal of my much more expensive JVC progressive scan digital camcorder, at least in standard lighting. When the light gets low, however, the S1 IS video recording does suffer, but for a digital camera it is still absolutely first rate.
You can see for yourself, the photos and videos from April 2004 testing at http://www.OmahaMartialArts.com were all taken with the S1 IS (stills were all extracted from video). Still have been post processed for size with Photoshop (JPEG quality 60) and movies have been converted with QuickTime to MPEG4 (high quality).
Now for the one thing I do not like about the S1 IS. When shooting in continuous mode the camera takes about 2 frames/sec. However the viewfinder and LCD do not show you a live image once you start taking pictures, they show you each image as it is taken. This makes it exceptionally difficult to use continuous mode to shoot a moving subject where you need to pan the camera. I just use video mode instead for this, but it does limit you to 640x480. This is one thing the Z1 did better, maintaining the live image when in continuous mode. The S1 IS approach lets you see what you've captured right away, but it is a pain to track a moving subject this way.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 475 This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts
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