Canon PowerShot S500 Review

Posted on 2005-04-03 21:09:48 by LSDsmurf
Especially considering the price, the Canon PowerShot S500 is a fantastic buy. I've used several different digital cameras, and this is definitely the best(Olympus C-765, Pentax Optio S4, several Olympus Camedias). That being said, I have a few complaints:

Flash - Indoor scenes often have too little light to take a picture without a flash, but regardless of how little light there is inside, a flash will always make the pictures look incredibly washed out at ranges closer than about eight feet or so. More than ten feet will result in a blurred, low quality image that really doesn't benefit at all from the flash. So, for low lighting, get a tripod-- and get a decent tripod, too, the cheap ones are really unstable.

Batteries - Third party batteries cost me something like $5, and they work for maybe three recharges-- so do NOT buy one of these. The OEM batteries are exorbitant, though.

Lens size - A tiny lens means a tiny camera, but it also means a camera that can't take pictures that require a lot of light-- you either use a flash(losing color quality), or take a very blurred picture. For some reason, as well, low-lighting conditions often result in bizarre white balance. Indoor pictures always seem too orange, however I set it...

Additional praise:
Focus - Generally works out to be perfect or near-perfect.
Movie Mode - I don't expect it to be like a professional video camera, but for what it is, it works quite well. The microphone's easily twice as good as iPod mics I've used.. Size - It's so small! And the design is incredibly well thought-out. Everything's in the right place, and easy to use.
Quality - Picture quality is fairly consistent if you have the right ISO settings-- I usually use medium or high quality on S or M2-- low quality small pictures are only worth it if you want to just show them to friends and take a zillion, they're not really suitable for printing.

While I think I might rather have an EOS Rebel ideally, I'd rather go with something that's 1/3 the price and half the size. Good work, Canon!

Link: The Canon S500




Especially considering the price, the Canon PowerShot S500 is a fantastic buy. I've used several different digital cameras, and this is definitely the best(Olympus C-765, Pentax Optio S4, several Olympus Camedias). That being said, I have a few complaints:

Flash - Indoor scenes often have too little light to take a picture without a flash, but regardless of how little light there is inside, a flash will always make the pictures look incredibly washed out at ranges closer than about eight feet or so. More than ten feet will result in a blurred, low quality image that really doesn't benefit at all from the flash. So, for low lighting, get a tripod-- and get a decent tripod, too, the cheap ones are really unstable.

Batteries - Third party batteries cost me something like $5, and they work for maybe three recharges-- so do NOT buy one of these. The OEM batteries are exorbitant, though.

Lens size - A tiny lens means a tiny camera, but it also means a camera that can't take pictures that require a lot of light-- you either use a flash(losing color quality), or take a very blurred picture. For some reason, as well, low-lighting conditions often result in bizarre white balance. Indoor pictures always seem too orange, however I set it...

Additional praise:
Focus - Generally works out to be perfect or near-perfect.
Movie Mode - I don't expect it to be like a professional video camera, but for what it is, it works quite well. The microphone's easily twice as good as iPod mics I've used.. Size - It's so small! And the design is incredibly well thought-out. Everything's in the right place, and easy to use.
Quality - Picture quality is fairly consistent if you have the right ISO settings-- I usually use medium or high quality on S or M2-- low quality small pictures are only worth it if you want to just show them to friends and take a zillion, they're not really suitable for printing.

While I think I might rather have an EOS Rebel ideally, I'd rather go with something that's 1/3 the price and half the size. Good work, Canon!



Link: The Canon S500



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