Canon PowerShot S80

Reviewed January 2006

Image Quality

The Canon PowerShot S80 is only the latest in a long-running series of S cameras that have a sleek elongated metal body and a slide back lens cover that not only protects the lens but also powers on the camera. With each succeeding generation, the S-series cameras have added capabilities and features, and the S80 is no different.

The S80 carries on with the 3.6X zoom first introduced on the 7.4-megapixel S70, and adds a 2.5-inch LCD monitor, and a a re-engineered set of primary controls.

Although not directly related to image quality, the new controls are important as they impact the ease of use of the camera, and in turn the shots the captured with it. In comparison to previous S cameras, two of the redesigned controls stand out: the Multi-control Dial and the new shape and position of the Mode Dial.

The redesign of the Mode Dial makes it very functional. but it can easily be rotated accidentally while the camera is pulled out of a pouch, and we found that a check that it is positioned as desired before shooting had to be done.

The Multi-control Dial on the other hand is the one innovation that, in our opinion, requires even more user attention. With the some applications, such as selecting apertures or shutter speeds, the dial is extremely effective. But the fact that it retains the functions associated with many other 4-direction controls — flash mode, macro, ISO, and manual focus — also makes it prone to errors. And while using the dial, we noted that settings got changed accidentally very easily, and occasionally would cause shots to be lost or captured with improper settings.

As noted earlier, the S80's lens is a carry over from the S70, a zoom that covers the equivalent of a 28 to 100 mm. It offers a useful wide angle that has only a little barrel distortion as long as the subject is not too close, making it well-suited to both indoor and outdoor shots. Indoors and with flash, the S80 yields a bright image at 50 ISO, the flash lighting up to 10 feet easily. However, at the widest angle some light fall off can be observed in the corners of the frame.

At the telephoto end there is no detectable distortion, and the 100mm equivalent focal length is excellent for portraits.

Interestingly, while there is some increase in noise at higher ISO values, that increase is relatively light. Indeed, although with flash photos some noise is detectable even at 50 ISO, there is only a slight increase up to 200 ISO, which appears to be the upper range of the Auto setting (regrettably the actual ISO range of the Auto ISO setting is undocumented).

It is also worth noting that while some noise is detectable in flash photos, noise is in fact nearly undetectable with standard shots at up to 100 ISO, and is comparatively light at 200 ISO.

And at 400 ISO noise, while it is more noticeable when photos are examined at 100% scale on a monitor, it is still not overwhelming.

With our test camera, we notes that images have a relatively soft focus across the entire focal length range of the zoom, and that the extreme left side of wide angle shots exhibited a lesser sharpness than all other focal lengths, particularly at wide apertures.

The S80's primary metering pattern is evaluative, a system that meters a number of points in the frame, pushing these readings through proprietary algorithms to produce exposure settings for aperture and shutter speed. The exposures that result from the process are rarely flawed, as exemplified by the high contrast shot at right, of black cows on a snow background. The shot was captured without having to compensate the exposure, a process that is commonly required with many other cameras when snow occupies most of the frame.

Unlike the S70, the S80, has no RAW image format, only JPEG at any one of three compression level. This is an omission that is hard to understand since the software included with the camera is able to support it, and since the camera provides so many other user controls. And, while the Superfine JPEG format is quite good and produces images that are effectively artefact-free, when images are observed at 100 % on a monitor, we felt the compression which averages around 7:1 may be a contributing factor to the relatively soft images and highlighted the absence of a non-lossy format.

Still, the 8-megapixel CCD allows the S80 to yield images that can be printed to a 8 x 10 size at 300 dpi on a photo printer, ensuring an excellent result that is comparable to a continuous-tone print, and may even surpass it in its ability to show detail.

In summary, the PowerShot S80 offers the high-quality build of the S-series cameras are known for, and adds some new and interesting controls. But its image quality, albeit very good, is not as high as we hoped to see, and in our opinion, has not surpassed that of the S70, its predecessor.