Battery Compartment

On the base of the camera is the battery compartment opened by flipping a small safety latch and dropping the battery out. The S20 features Canon's proprietary NB-5H battery pack which is a 6V 650mAh rechargeable Ni-MH. I got mixed results from the battery, on several occasions it lasted for about one hour, on others it died early... I'd recommend getting a second battery to carry around with you (you can of course also use a standard Lithium 2CR5 camera battery in emergencies, but this won't last more than half an hour and they are expensive).

Battery and Charger

Canon NB-5H battery (6V 650mAh)	Canon CA-PS200E charger / AC adapter (100-240V AC 50/60Hz input) (6.5V DC 1.5A output - Camera mode) (7.2V DC 0.65A output - Battery charging)
Notably Canon have improved the design of their rechargeable battery so it's easier to tell which way is up (a silly mistake with the battery pack used on the Pro 70). To charge the battery just take it out of the camera and drop it in the charger.	The charger doubles as an AC adapter / power supply for the camera using the supplied cable and dummy battery. The charger can only perform one action at one time (either charger or adapter).

The green charging light flashes whilst the the battery is charging, it takes about 90 minutes to do a full charge (which is very quick) and the battery should last for about 50 shots with the LCD on or about 200 with it off (Canon's figures, I got slightly lower results).

CompactFlash Compartment

On the right side of the camera is the Compact Flash compartment, the S20 is one of the first cameras (second from Canon) which will accept the new Compact Flash Type II standard. The only difference between Type II and Type I is the thickness of the package (by about 2 millimeters). (click on the image right to see a head-on view of the increased thickness of the CF bay - 128MB Type I card inserted).

This added thickness opens up possibilities for higher capacity, and this is perfectly demonstrated in IBM's innovative 340MB MicroDrive, a micro-miniature hard drive which is almost silent, low power and perfect for digital cameras. Other manufacturers are now bringing out new Type II cards including much larger capacity flash memory cards

Connections

On the left side of the camera can be found the Digital I/O (USB & Serial) and Video Out connectors. Next to this is the sensibly placed backup battery (button battery) compartment. The main digital connector is covered by a flip-off cover. The S20 is sensibly supplied with many different cables (serial PC/Mac, USB) best of all is the USB option which means you can just plug-in and download, no need for external card readers and it's quick. Picture above shows USB cable connected.

Supplied Accessories ("In the box")

Supplied in the box are the following items*

• Canon PowerShot S20 Digital Camera
• Wrist Strap
• Video Cable
• USB cable
• PC serial cable
• Mac serial cable
• Power adapter / charger ** Not US
• Battery Pack (NB-5H) ** Not US
• CompactFlash Card FC-8M (8MB)
• Software CD-ROM (Win95/98/NT4: ZoomBrowser EX 2.0, PhotoStitch 3.0, RS232 TWAIN driver, USB TWAIN driver) (Mac: Browser 1.0, PhotoStitch 3.0, Plug-in Module 3.0)
• Adobe PhotoDeluxe 3.0 (Windows), 2.0 (Mac)

* Exact package may differ by region