Well, if you've been with me during my testing, and noticed how the S90 shots in the Oregon House chambers were tilted as compared to the LX3 and the WX1, and were with me in my subsequent "Is my sensor crooked" post, well, I gave it one more shot today. Here's a pretty big file, but this is pretty much the story:
For this shot, and several others, I lined up my S90's upper horizontal grid line against one of the panel borders on the wall you see above -- actually, you can see the "speaker outlets" on the wall, and there's a border above that -- but I actually lined it up against the border above that. So, call it "the border above the border above the speaker outlets."
And, while the border lined up just perfectly with the grid line while I was shooting, you can see the general tilt that resulted, absolutely including that border that I had "lined up" against. It probably decreases as you go "down" the image -- more distortion at the top, and less at the bottom.
And I used the word "distortion" -- I really don't think this is a "tilted sensor," but rather it probably has everything to do with the optical barrel distortion present in the S90's lens, and the S90's in-camera processing to "eliminate" it. "Or not."
I took it back to Best Buy, and while they took a quick shot and called it "good," I explained how it was a subtle thing that you're not going to see in uncontrolled snapshots, and that was apparently good enough for them -- they refunded my full purchase price.
Well, that story raises a few questions and/or issues, doesn't it? Perhaps that wasn't "big enough of a problem" to bail out of the camera, but it was to me. There is just absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the S90 tilt was clearly evident in the first round of high-ISO comparison shots I took -- the LX3 and the WX1 were fine, but the S90 was obviously tilted. And there's just no way I could live with that.
And then, so why didn't I just exchange it for another S90? Well, I've got a few issues there. First of all, I just don't have any confidence anymore in Canon's first attempt at pairing a hugely distorting lens with in-camera correction -- obviously, Panasonic is getting it done much better than Canon is, at least in my experience. I generally expect that other S90's may well have entirely similar issues.
Also, there was the obvious vignetting in my S90 shots with blue skies. More "lens problems."
And I have got to say, the S90 just wasn't really the kind of "fun pocket camera" that I've come to prefer -- it's just a bit bigger and more involved than the kind of "whip it out of your pocket and grab a shot" pocket cameras that I've used before. Perhaps I was substantially influenced by the little Sony WX1, but let me tell you -- for a "quick, fun, grab-it and go" camera, the WX1 is the one I want to grab. Sure, the S90 utterly crushes it in many ways, but the S90 is more of a "serious" camera in the shape of a pocket camera -- maybe it's a case that, if you give me controls, I'll go ahead and use them -- whereas with the WX1, I'll just whip it out and indeed just snap off some shots.
So, in the end, I was pretty bitterly disappointed with the S90's lens. And if it's a "serious" camera I want -- and I do want Canon's most "serious" compact -- then it just makes far more sense to get a G11, and get away from those S90 lens issues.
Perhaps my S90 was a "bad" one, and hopefully nobody else will see the kinds of tilting and such that I experienced. But this is my story, and I'll just buy a G11 from my local shop when it gets them in. And then I'll move on with my life.
Tom Hoots
http://thoots.zenfolio.com
For this shot, and several others, I lined up my S90's upper horizontal grid line against one of the panel borders on the wall you see above -- actually, you can see the "speaker outlets" on the wall, and there's a border above that -- but I actually lined it up against the border above that. So, call it "the border above the border above the speaker outlets."
And, while the border lined up just perfectly with the grid line while I was shooting, you can see the general tilt that resulted, absolutely including that border that I had "lined up" against. It probably decreases as you go "down" the image -- more distortion at the top, and less at the bottom.
And I used the word "distortion" -- I really don't think this is a "tilted sensor," but rather it probably has everything to do with the optical barrel distortion present in the S90's lens, and the S90's in-camera processing to "eliminate" it. "Or not."
I took it back to Best Buy, and while they took a quick shot and called it "good," I explained how it was a subtle thing that you're not going to see in uncontrolled snapshots, and that was apparently good enough for them -- they refunded my full purchase price.
Well, that story raises a few questions and/or issues, doesn't it? Perhaps that wasn't "big enough of a problem" to bail out of the camera, but it was to me. There is just absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the S90 tilt was clearly evident in the first round of high-ISO comparison shots I took -- the LX3 and the WX1 were fine, but the S90 was obviously tilted. And there's just no way I could live with that.
And then, so why didn't I just exchange it for another S90? Well, I've got a few issues there. First of all, I just don't have any confidence anymore in Canon's first attempt at pairing a hugely distorting lens with in-camera correction -- obviously, Panasonic is getting it done much better than Canon is, at least in my experience. I generally expect that other S90's may well have entirely similar issues.
Also, there was the obvious vignetting in my S90 shots with blue skies. More "lens problems."
And I have got to say, the S90 just wasn't really the kind of "fun pocket camera" that I've come to prefer -- it's just a bit bigger and more involved than the kind of "whip it out of your pocket and grab a shot" pocket cameras that I've used before. Perhaps I was substantially influenced by the little Sony WX1, but let me tell you -- for a "quick, fun, grab-it and go" camera, the WX1 is the one I want to grab. Sure, the S90 utterly crushes it in many ways, but the S90 is more of a "serious" camera in the shape of a pocket camera -- maybe it's a case that, if you give me controls, I'll go ahead and use them -- whereas with the WX1, I'll just whip it out and indeed just snap off some shots.
So, in the end, I was pretty bitterly disappointed with the S90's lens. And if it's a "serious" camera I want -- and I do want Canon's most "serious" compact -- then it just makes far more sense to get a G11, and get away from those S90 lens issues.
Perhaps my S90 was a "bad" one, and hopefully nobody else will see the kinds of tilting and such that I experienced. But this is my story, and I'll just buy a G11 from my local shop when it gets them in. And then I'll move on with my life.
Tom Hoots
http://thoots.zenfolio.com
