Canon S100 MUCH MUCH MUCH better than expected.

I have and use a Canon S90 from the first day it came out.

After some delay caused by endless forum complains about soft lens and green tint screen and sucky colors, I finally decided to buy the S100.

The single reason for buying it was 1080p video, I really needed that in a pocket camera for family walks in the park.

As for still image expectations, after seeing reviews, comparison charts and forum discussions, the S100 should have been about the same as my S90, with added 24mm and 2MP but with softer lens and suckier color.

After 2 days spent with the camera, I am blown away by the image quality. It so much better than the S90 is not even funny. What a surprise, after low expectations I am blown away.

First, the lens is much better. It's sharper at every setting that the S90, especially at the long end and at infinity focus. The S90 to be honest was truly sharp only at close focus distance.

The DR seems much better at every ISO setting, not only by default but even when recovering shadows the S100 reveal much less noise to my eyes.

The files can take MUCH more torture than the S90 files. The colors stay together even in heavy post, and at high ISO.

Every ISO setting is much better. The grain is only marginally less than the S90, but colors and DR are much better and this matters a lot. Indoors in fluorescent light ISO640 was maximum for the S90 to get a good photo. (True in some other light conditions the S90 was good even at 1600.) With the S100, in the same ISO640 conditions, I can shoot at ISO 1250 and get the same or better quality. I shot at ISO 2000 in very bad light. There was grain (cleanable), but colors, details, DR was impressive. Run a Topaz Denoise and you get unbelievable quality at ISO 2000 for a P&S. I am ashamed for Olympus, but the S100 is better than my E-5 was at high ISOs.

I only shoot RAW, and another surprise was that the files from S100 look almost perfect as they load. I own and owned many cameras, and the Olympus E-5 was the only one that needed very little touch in PP. Now the S100 equals it or beat it. The files look gorgeous as they load, most of them do not need any PP. Compare that to the heavy work I have to do on my Nikon D5100 files, it's a blessing. I use Apple Aperture btw.

The S100 is much faster in response and focus than the S90. The S90 was the slowest camera I ever owned. No, actually the Olympus E-PL1 was the slowest but that was all together by far the worst camera I ever touched, so I prefer to forget I ever owned it.

In my opinion the S100 is in a different league when compared to the S90. It is so much better in every single way.

I am so in love with this little wonder, and totally unexpected too. I don't remember being so impressed about any camera I owned.

P.S. Video is good but not the impressive. The IS works but it is not optimized for video, any handycam will beat it, even with sharpens set to +2 the videos are kinnda soft, and starting with ISO400 very soft, and it does not support manual control, not even for the shutter speed which is a must. And when I think the main reason for getting it was video..... :)) It's usable though, and as a photographic tool is amazing, it worth every penny.