Power in your pocket

A compact camera that packs a big punch, the Canon PowerShot S100 is ideal for both amateurs and serious photographers.

It provides manual controls for advanced users and Smart Auto for weekend photographs allowing them to capture good quality snapshots right away without having to spend a lot of time learning how to operate it.

The S100 features a 12.1 megapixel CMOS sensor with Canon’s renowned HS (High Sensitivity) system. Together with the bright f/2.0 wide-angle lens and DIGIC 5 imaging processor, this guarantees very good performance and impressive shot quality.

Its 24-mm focal length lens in 35mm equivalence allows the S100 to capture beautiful landscape shots and it also comes with effective 5x optical zoom, which is equivalent to 120mm focal length in 35mm photography.

The S100 has Neutral Density Filter, GPS and full 1080p HD video recording as well as 3.0-inch, 461,000 dot LCD screen with five levels of brightness. At high brightness, the screen can be used to compose photos in direct sunlight.

You can operate the camera with one or two hands, as the thumb and finger grips provide good control over the camera. It also comes with a lens ring dial that can be turned to set focal length. A Ring Function button allows you to change the various settings easily.

Beginners will love the Smart Auto mode of the S100, which cleverly selects shooting parameters to fit current lighting environment. During the test, I found the S100’s Smart Auto properly assigned the right shooting scene mode for me. For example, when I shot a colleague with her back against the sun, the S100 selected portrait with backlit scene mode. 

Experienced photographers may use the mode dial to select shooting modes with more controls, among them Shutter Priority, Scene Mode, Creative Filters and Movie.

In Scene Mode, you can manually select shooting modes like Portrait, Landscape, Handheld Night Scene, Fireworks and Stitch Assist.

The Creative Filters mode is really fun to use. It allows you to shoot with filters like High Dynamic Range, Nostalgic, Fish-eye Effect, Miniature effect, Toy Camera Effect, Monochrome, and Super Vivid, for example.

The S100’s 12-Megapixel High Sensitivity CMOS imaging sensor and DIGIC 5 imaging processor captured sharp and well-exposed images. Apart from being more sensitive to capture light, the HS system also allows the S100 to capture images at a much higher rate of up to 9.6fps.

The built-in Neutral Density filter mode reduces the available light by 3 stops (1/8), allowing you to use slower shutter speeds and smaller apertures in bright situations without a real filter.

Thanks to its bright f/2 lens, S100 captured so,e great portraits during the test in The Nation’s newsroom. Since the lens is very bright, we didn’t have to turn the flash on but managed to capture impressively sharp portraits in bothSmart Auto or Portrait scene mode.

The outdoor shots of the S100 are also very pleasing and beautiful with well saturated colours.

The S100 also comes with GPS for easy logging of your shooting locations. Turn on the GPS logger and it will log the camera’s location all the time, even when the camera is turned off though it will exhaust the battery fairly quickly. 

The S100 also provides software for you to map out your entire trip picture-by-picture.

The S100 took about only two seconds to start up and get ready for the first shot. It has no significant shutter lag at all or about less than 1/10 of a second and captured about 8 full-size images in 0.8 seconds.

The S100 uses 1120mAh rechargeable Li-Ion battery, which should allows you to capture about 200 shots per one charge if you turn off the GPS.

Canon PowerShot S100 is available in black and silver and retails for Bt15,900.

 

        Key specs

_ Image Sensor: Approx. 12.1 Million pixels  

_ Lens: f/2.0 – f/8.0 24 (W) – 120 (T)mm (35mm film equivalent)

_ LCD Monitor: 30-inchTFT colour LCD with wide viewing angle (Effective dots: Approx. 461,000 dots)

_ ISO Speed: Auto, ISO 80 / 100 / 125 / 160 / 200 / 250 / 320 / 400 / 500 / 640 / 800 / 1000 / 1250 / 1600 / 2000 / 2500 / 3200 / 4000 / 5000 / 6400 (in P mode)

_ Shutter Speed: 15 – 1/2000sec.

_ Shooting Modes: C, M, Av, Tv, P, Auto, SCN, Creative Filters, Movie

_ Recording Media: SD memory card, SDHC memory card, SDXC memory card

_ Movie modes: Super Slow Motion Movie: 640 x 480; 1920 x 1080 (24fps), 1280 x 720 (30fps)

_ Interface: Hi-Speed USB; HDMI Output; Analog audio output (stereo); Analog video output (NTSC / PAL) 

_ Power Source: Battery Pack NB-5L 

_ Dimensions: 98.9 x 59.8 x 26.7mm 

_ Weight: Approx. 198g (including the battery and memory card)