You must have know not long ago, last spring, that the Fujifilm Super CCD EXR powering the F200EXR gave us an accessible ISO 800 image for low-light shooting in compact-class cameras. Such a barrier wasn’t broken ever since the Fujifilm F30. Yet in recent weeks, Canon surprised every enthusiast with his two flagship Powershot compact cameras: devices that generate a good ISO 1600 image thus, blowing away Fuji’s domination.
The importance of high-ISO performance
As much as I sound like a broken record, good high-ISO brings
- More light-gathering capabilities
- Faster shutter speeds
- Sharper images.
SUPER SHORT Recap of Canon’s past years
Before such a revolution, Canon was convinced that megapixels gave the consumer the opportunity to make large prints and crop. We can easily notice this line of thought by counting 13 megapixels out of the G10 (2008) or 12 megapixels out of the G9 (2007). Yet despite many reviews stating Canon’s lack of hi-ISO performance in comparison to the Fujifilm F30, the brand didn’t shift between each year models and blindly added excessive resolution. As such, compact ISO performance stayed bad past the ISO 400 value.
Yet the year 2008 saw the birth of another dangerous competitor to Canon’s G series: the Panasonic Lumix LX3, a camera sporting a wider, brighter and faster lens (f2.0-f2.8). Despite having less megapixels (10mp) and reach (24-60mm lens instead of the g10’s 28-140mm), the LX3 proved to reach a good ISO 800 image quality. The rest of the Panasonic line of that year benefited from the LX3 innovations. Thus the Lumix ZS3 stood to be another high seller towards the SX200is or the SX110is. With Nikon attacking from the dSLR front and Panasonic eating up market shares from the compact front, Canon needed to bounce back both sides.
Canon’s recent radical shift in compact image quality: Fall 2009.
When came the time of the year for Canon to release the next G series, many rumors spoke of a CMOS camera in hope for image quality up to EOS Standards. Yet we can all agree that the SX1is’ CMOS sensor didn’t benefited much improvements from such hardware. With the Sony EXMOR R sensor claiming above average image quality and the Fujifilm SuperCCD EXR cameras standing in top spot, eyes turned to Canon awaiting his move. And a groundbreaking move it did: the announcement of the Powershot S90 and G11 blew me away!
Portrait of a man at ISO 1600 taken from the S90 samples of DPreview
click here or on the picture to access the full gallery and the originals.
Just by looking at the picture quality from the dpreview samples (especially the man’s S90 portrait), we can notice that noise at ISO 1600 has been converted into a something that resembles grain thus not being destructive at all. Detail is also kept at a very high level. If I’m not mistaken, this new ISO 1600 is reminiscent of the 350D’s image quality at ISO 1600. This totally changes the name of the game!
A compact camera capable of producing high-ISO image quality is now within the reach of the consumer. This would remove the need of a dSLR camera for many types of still photography. I would be able to produce decent pictures without the bulk.
At the moment of this article, the S90 and the G11 are priced 530$ CDN and 600$ CDN. A tag that puts them against the likes of the dSLR Canon EOS Rebel XS/XSi, Nikon D60/D3000, Sony Alpha a230, Pentax Km.
I’m not sure how the competition is going to react to this. So far, Canon runs unrivaled compact camera performance at a level only beaten by its EOS line and the Nikon CMOS-EXPEED class dSLRs.
Quoted from the Canon USA website : You asked, and Canon not only listened, but delivered big-time.
Only one question remains: Why didn’t they put HD720p in the S90 and G11?
More info
DPreview's Canon Powershot S90 samples
http://www.dpreview.com/gallery/canons90_preview/
DPreview's Canon Powershot G11 samples
http://www.dpreview.com/gallery/canong11_preview2/
Canon USA's S90 page
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=144&modelid=19210
Canon USA's G11 page
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=144&modelid=19209
A look at what the competition is doing
A Flickiver of shots taken with the Sony EXMOR R WX1 camera
http://www.flickriver.com/groups/dsc-wx1/pool/
DPreview's Fujifilm F70EXR samples
http://www.dpreview.com/gallery/fujif70exr_samples1/
3 comments:
The camera TRULY excels at macro photography. The macro shots I've taken thus far are clear, sharp, and have great depth of field. In a word, they are superb: this camera is a macro shooter's delight. (A nice touch, too, is that in AUTO mode the camera.
r4i
thx for giving your input
Just bought an S90. So far, it's proving to be a great camera. With usable high ISO settings and an f/2 wide angle, it has amazing low light capabilities.
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