How do you improve on near-perfection? Here's how...
Written: May 15 '02 (Updated May 15 '02)
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Pros: Even more spiffy features!
Cons: Still comes with only a 8MB CF card
The Bottom Line: A good improvement in the small S-series for Canon. User-friendly improvements makes it a good camera for first-time users.
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| kenshin27's Full Review: Canon PowerShot S200 / IXUS v² Digital Camera |
I've been enamored with the Powershot S-series line of digital cameras ever since the old S10. When the S100 came out, I was enchanted by its size and stainless steel shell. With the S110, Canon added some nice features while keeping the overall attractiveness of the line intact. You would think that after the S110, there wouldn't be much more for Canon to do with this line. The new S200, while not a huge jump from its brethren in terms of features, is a fine example of how simple refinements can make a good product even better.
Going under the knife
Let's first start off with the physical aspects of the camera. While it is the same size as the S110 and the S100 before it, there are some differences. The most noticeable is that the front face around the lens is no longer completely flat when the camera is off. Well, actually the S110 had a raised circular area around the lens as well but it was much wider and not as noticeable. The protrusion on the S200 is smaller but for some reason more evident. Plus the slight vertical bulge that existed on the right side of the front face of the S110 is gone. The microphone still exists to the top left of the lens but is now a simple pinhole instead of the more obvious gold circle that was on the S110.
Moving to the top of the unit, the circular border surrounding the shutter button that controls the zoom is now a darker color grey than that rest of the body. The on/off button is now very clearly labeled and is slightly larger and round instead of rectangular. I like this new button better because you can get better tactile feedback when pressing down on it. The slightly curved rectangular button on the S110 was a little too narrow for me at times which made me often wonder whether I was hitting the right spot or not.
Now the back of the camera is where the majority of the changes exist. The only thing that remains the same from the S110 are the nice LCD display, the viewfinder, and the 2 status lights located to the left of it. The sliding switch located on the top right edge of the back that allowed you to switch between shooting and preview mode now has an extra stop in the middle for movie mode. This is a _great_ improvement because on the S110 you had to muck around through the menu system to switch over to movie mode which sometimes wasn't worth the trouble. Now it's a simple matter of flickin' the switch.
The number of buttons on the back face have now pretty much doubled. And that's actually a good thing. There are now only 4 buttons right under the LCD display instead of 5. From left to right you have SET, MENU, DISP, and Exposure/White Balance/Trash. The first 3 buttons are now round which makes them easier to press than the slim vertical buttons that the S110 has for SET and DISP. For some reason they made the last button horizontal. I guess they wanted to make the buttons a little distinguishable by function. Again, these subtle changes are good for useability. Moving the single picture trash functionality out to its own shared button makes it easier to delete pictures without having to go through the menu system.
Now, to the bottom right of the LCD is a new raised circle that contains 4 new buttons in a compass pattern. These buttons now provide the functionality that used to be mapped to the buttons below the LCD on the S110. Macro/Infinity is now located on the left button, Flash is on the right, Continuous/Self-timer is on down, and Light Metering (which is a new function) is on up. So what's the point of having these 4 new buttons if the functionality they provide used to be accessible just fine from the buttons underneath the LCD? Preview my friend, preview. If you've read my old review on the S110, you should remember that one of my biggest gripes about it was the awkwardness of moving around a zoomed picture in preview mode. With these new direction buttons, that gripe is now gone and I'm a happy camper. =)
In the middle of the new directional buttons is a new tiny power light that shines green when the camera is on. Not really entirely necessary in my opinion but it doesn't detract from anything either.
The final change to the back of the camera is the CF card latch and door. The door itself is still plastic but the spring mechanism is a lot firmer than before which makes the whole contraption feel a lot less flimsy than on the S110. Plus for some reason they reversed the latch direction so that to open the door, you need to push up now instead of down. Doesn't really make much of a difference but the change is there.
The bottom of the camera doesn't seem to have changed as far as I can tell. There's a tripod socket on the left side and the battery cover on the right. The S200 uses the same battery as the S110 so at least the free battery I got with my S110 still works here.
Peek a boo
Speaking strictly as a non-professional, casual photographer, using the S200 isn't very much different from the S110. The most noticeable difference while using the LCD is that instead of just one bracket centered on the screen, there's now 3 that's lined up horizontally across. This is due to the new and improved AiAF (artificial intelligence autofocus) functionality which uses a broad metering field to calculate a more accurate focal distance. With it, the camera will attempt to focus from one of the 3 brackets that it deems the best for the given shot instead of just from the center bracket. The option is there to turn off this function and go with the center bracket instead.
After a picture is taken, you can see a preview of the picture on the LCD for 2 or 10 seconds depending on what you set the option to. During this preview time, you can hit the new Trash button to immediately delete the picture if you wish. The S110 I believe had a similar function but it wasn't as intuitive. The other neat thing about this preview on the S200 is that it will display a brightness histogram in the top right corner which will show you if the picture is too dark or too bright or just right. This way you can see how your picture came out and then adjust your ISO accordingly if needed. Very, very cool.
There's still a lot of functionalities and settings that you can set through the built-in menu system. 3 still image resolutions are available: 1600x1200, 1024x768, 640x480 along with 3 video resolutions: 640x480, 320x240, 160x120. Unfortunately with video, you're still limited to about 6 second clips at the highest resolution, 15 seconds at the middle range, and 30 seconds at the low end. Compression options still fall within the Normal, Fine, and Superfine ranges.
Another minor but useful new function is auto-rotate that is nice when previewing pictures. Basically if you hold your camera vertically for a shot, when you preview it, the camera will automatically flip the picture around so that you don't have to physically rotate the camera to get a good look at the shot. Of course the image is shrunk a little bit to fit within the suddenly shorter vertical space but still looks fine. However, this function may not work if you're shooting something straight up into the sky or down at your feet.
For white balance, there are two new available settings: Fluorescent H, which is for shots in daylight fluorescent or "daylight fluorescent-type 3-wavelength fluorescent lighting." Whatever that is. And Custom, where you can set a custom value with a sheet of white paper or cloth or whatever you want to set your white point to.
There are now also 5 photo effects that you can take pictures with: vivid, neutral, low sharpening, sepia, and black & white. Vivid attempts to bring out the bolder colors in a shot. Neutral does the opposite and tries to tone down the bold colors. Low sharpening uses softened outlines of an object. And the last 2 are pretty self-explanatory. While I personally won't use these features much I guess they're fun to play with for awhile.
Besides that, I don't think there's anything much different from the S110. Low light pictures will turn out better with the introduction of the slow-synchro setting. Other Canon cameras have had this setting for awhile now but this is the first time I remember seeing it in a S100/200 series camera. Pictures in general will probably turn out better with the improved autofocus and for those who like to have full control of their camera, there's more than enough settings for you to play with. The S200 did seem to lose .1 megapixels though since it (and the S330 as well) is now officially a 2 megapixel camera, not a 2.1 megapixel camera. I don't think it makes a difference as far as I can tell.
Worth the price of admission?
Considering that you can find the S200 for under $350 these days, it's a pretty good deal. Since I purchased mine online just at the brink of when the S200 was coming out and got a really good deal from Dell, I was able to sell my old S110 for the same price that I got this S200 for. Best swap I ever made. =) Again, as with the bump up from the S100 to S110, the new features are there but not particularly overwhelming. However, with the S200, Canon definitely focused their attention on making it more user-friendly. While the enhancements are small and don't jump out at you, prolonged exposure to this camera makes me appreciative of just how much more intuitive it is to use. In my opinion everything about the S200 is more polished when compared to the S110. Even the slight whirring action when the lens extends seems more solid and smooth to me.
I must apologize for not reviewing the photo-editing software that comes with the camera but I'll leave that for others to comment on. Since I'm a Mac user, between Photoshop and iPhoto, I have no need for anything else.
My only annoyance with this camera is the measly 8MB Compact Flash card that comes with it. I don't understand what Canon is thinking. 8MB is way too small for general use (especially if you use the video function) and with CF cards being rather cheap these days compared to 2 years ago when the S100 was introduced, I don't understand why they can't bump their default card up to at least 16MB. But, that's a complaint about Canon itself, not the camera. The camera's great. =)
For the casual/vacation photographer, this camera is superb. You probably wouldn't even need to look at the manual to figure out the basics and it's still one of the most unobtrusive digital cameras around. For those of you with stronger willpower than I, you might want to wait another revision or so to see if they're able to bump up the zoom which I think is the last important improvement that they can make on this series. There's no point in having a S200 and S330 at $50 difference if you can combine both into one. But what do I know? Maybe they make more money this way.
My review on the Canon Powershot S110:
http://www.epinions.com/content_49465101956
My review on the Canon Powershot S100:
http://www.epinions.com/elec-review-48E6-25EDD06C-3A1E7E31-prod5
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 293
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Epinions.com ID:
kenshin27
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Member: Ben C
Location: NJ
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 17 members
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