Canon PowerShot S60 Review
Phil Askey, August 2004

Review based on a production PowerShot S60

On May 19th of this year Canon announced the PowerShot S60, the replacement to the fifteen month old PowerShot S50. Despite the '60' in its name the S60 has the same five megapixel CCD as the S50, this will no doubt be the cause of some confusion for buyers who will assume that it is a six megapixel compact. There are a wide range of differences and improvements with the S60 compared to the older 'S' cameras, here's a summary of changes since the S50:

• New body design, smaller and lighter (with a much improved sliding cover mechanism)
• New wide angle lens: 28 - 100 mm equiv. (3.6x), F2.8 - F5.3
• New image size option: 2048 x 1536
• New movie clip size: 640 x 480, 10 fps, up to 30 sec
• Max shutter speed up to 1/2000 sec from 1/1500 sec
• PictBridge support
• Higher capacity NB-L2H battery

UA lens technology

Canon are keen to point out that the S60 has a lens which utilizes 'UA lens technology'. This has lens elements which have 'ultra high refraction index glass' which allows the entire lens system to be thinner (yet maintaining the same image quality).

Key specifications

If you're new to digital photography you may wish to read the Digital Photography Glossary before diving into this article (it may help you understand some of the terms used).

Conclusion / Recommendation / Ratings are based on the opinion of the reviewer, you should read the ENTIRE review before coming to your own conclusions. Images which can be viewed at a larger size have a small magnifying glass icon in the bottom right corner of the image, clicking on the image will display a larger (typically VGA) image in a new window. To navigate the review simply use the next / previous page buttons, to jump to a particular section either pick the section from the drop down or select it from the navigation bar at the top. DPReview calibrate their monitors using Color Vision OptiCal at the (fairly well accepted) PC normal gamma 2.2, this means that on our monitors we can make out the difference between all of the (computer generated) grayscale blocks below. We recommend to make the most of this review you should be able to see the difference (at least) between X,Y and Z and ideally A,B and C.

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