electronics Canon PowerShot S2 IS opinions and reviews

Canon PowerShot S2 IS

A successor to Canon Powershot S1 IS, S2 IS is a megazoom camera with a 12X optical zoom. The 5-megapixel camera incorporates many useful features, like the three kinds of image stabilization (continuous, shoot only, and panning). The 12X optical zoom performs in the range of 6.0 to 72.0 mm (a 35-mm equivalent of 36 to 432 mm) with the maximum focal length between f/2.7 to f/3.5.

There are various scene modes among which the stitch-assist panorama mode performs nicely. A rather striking function of the Canon S2 IS undoubtedly is the great burst mode, a big boon for ‘click-happy’ people as it facilitates taking 100 shots at one go on the 1GB SD card. One disadvantage though is that you cannot use this feature in the premier Superfine mode and as a result, the records look somewhat squashed.

Another impressive function called ‘My Colors’, present in many other PowerShot cameras, enables the use of post-production effects in-camera like accentuating your favourite colours in an photo or even highlighting a specific colour while converting the other part of the picture to black-and-white.

As expected, the camera features include the manual settings. However, the menu system isn’t really as comprehensible to be easily understood by the customers.

Coming to the image capturing ability of the camera, daylight shots are reveal some amount of noise. The image quality is decent though not finely honed even as the colour dissemination is appreciable. Some fringing was evident. But overall, it wasn’t too bad.

In the flash shots, colour capturing was accurate enough though it lacked the required brightness. Even here some fringing could be seen but the sound made was very much negligible.

Resolution wise, the 5MP camera gave approximately, 1, 350 lines of resolution. Start time of 2.1 seconds shouldn’t create any hassles. But the reprocessing time of 6 seconds is not acceptable. The Shutter lag is trifling. Among the image stabilization features, all three types worked well. But the best results were seen while using the panning effect.

The Powershot S2 IS impressive on many counts no doubt. But it does have some major failings; none bigger than the measly 1.8 inch LCD and the electronic viewfinder which is appalling. Further, even though the quality of videos taken via Motion JPEG is acceptable, it is not complaint with less space consuming MPEG-4 format.

Overall, this superzoom camera performs reasonably well on the image quality front. But some improvements are essential for it to be termed as a fine hybrid camera.