Petteri Sulonen
Veteran Member
The S90 packs the imaging punch of an entry-level dSLR with cheap kit lens into shirt-pocket size. That's pretty amazing, any way you look at it.
Usability and "creative control" is the best in any camera anywhere near this size. Nothing else comes even close. It's marvelously customizable, and makes it possible to get just about any configuration at your fingertips. It feels like it was designed by and for enthusiast photographers, with the brief being "make the smallest possible camera that allows for the maximum amount of creative control and flexibility for situational photography." A few tiny niggles aside, it succeeds in this mission brilliantly. Obviously, bigger cameras allow for better ergonomics, but that's not what this is about.
The sensor is marvelous. It's the first in this size to clearly beat the performance of the Fuji F30 I had. When shooting RAW and manually controlling sharpening and NR, it produces a perfectly usable ISO1600 (comparable to ISO3200 on a dSLR). Base ISO looks about like ISO400 on a dSLR, with the intermediate steps somewhere between the two. ISO3200 is emergency-use-only; it goes blobby and artifacty even for black-and-whites. However, coupled with the f/2.0 lens (and IS), this adds up to low-light hand-held shootability comparable to a dSLR with an f/2.8 ... f/4.0 lens, which is pretty damn good really.
The lens is very good for what it is (i.e., tiny, bright, wide, with a reasonable zoom range). It's clearly better than the ones on the Fuji F30 and F100, pretty sharp in the center at all apertures and focal lengths, and decently sharp in the corners stopped down to f/4.0 or f/5.6 at most focal lengths, when applying software CA and distortion correction. It's roughly comparable to a low-end to mid-range standard zoom on a dSLR.
All in all, the camera packs an amazing amount of versatility into a really tiny box. If you can shoot it with a dSLR and kit lens, you can shoot it with the S90 -- and sometimes it even goes beyond this. In terms of absolute, maximal image quality it can't compare with cameras designed specifically around this purpose, but in terms of shooting flexibility per gram, it's currently the camera to beat.
The downsides? It's pricey, it doesn't do full HD video (if that's a concern), and it's emphatically a camera for photography enthusiasts rather than casual snapshooters. It's not a dSLR replacement -- never was meant to be -- but it's a great dSLR complement.
Problems:
The control wheel on the back is sloppy, and is easy to jog accidentally, screwing up your exposure settings. Battery life could be better.
Usability and "creative control" is the best in any camera anywhere near this size. Nothing else comes even close. It's marvelously customizable, and makes it possible to get just about any configuration at your fingertips. It feels like it was designed by and for enthusiast photographers, with the brief being "make the smallest possible camera that allows for the maximum amount of creative control and flexibility for situational photography." A few tiny niggles aside, it succeeds in this mission brilliantly. Obviously, bigger cameras allow for better ergonomics, but that's not what this is about.
The sensor is marvelous. It's the first in this size to clearly beat the performance of the Fuji F30 I had. When shooting RAW and manually controlling sharpening and NR, it produces a perfectly usable ISO1600 (comparable to ISO3200 on a dSLR). Base ISO looks about like ISO400 on a dSLR, with the intermediate steps somewhere between the two. ISO3200 is emergency-use-only; it goes blobby and artifacty even for black-and-whites. However, coupled with the f/2.0 lens (and IS), this adds up to low-light hand-held shootability comparable to a dSLR with an f/2.8 ... f/4.0 lens, which is pretty damn good really.
The lens is very good for what it is (i.e., tiny, bright, wide, with a reasonable zoom range). It's clearly better than the ones on the Fuji F30 and F100, pretty sharp in the center at all apertures and focal lengths, and decently sharp in the corners stopped down to f/4.0 or f/5.6 at most focal lengths, when applying software CA and distortion correction. It's roughly comparable to a low-end to mid-range standard zoom on a dSLR.
All in all, the camera packs an amazing amount of versatility into a really tiny box. If you can shoot it with a dSLR and kit lens, you can shoot it with the S90 -- and sometimes it even goes beyond this. In terms of absolute, maximal image quality it can't compare with cameras designed specifically around this purpose, but in terms of shooting flexibility per gram, it's currently the camera to beat.
The downsides? It's pricey, it doesn't do full HD video (if that's a concern), and it's emphatically a camera for photography enthusiasts rather than casual snapshooters. It's not a dSLR replacement -- never was meant to be -- but it's a great dSLR complement.
Problems:
The control wheel on the back is sloppy, and is easy to jog accidentally, screwing up your exposure settings. Battery life could be better.