Compared to... Sony DSC-H9

Below you will find a studio comparison between the Canon PowerShot S5 IS and the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H9 at ISO 400.

Studio scene comparison ( @ ISO 400)

  • Canon PowerShot S5 IS : Aperture Priority mode, ISO 400, Default Image Parameters,
    Manual white balance, +0.67 EV compensation
  • Sony DSC-H9 : Aperture Priority mode, ISO 400, Default Image Parameters,
    Manual white balance, +0.7 EV compensation
  • Lighting: Daylight simulation, >98% CRI
Canon PowerShot S5 IS
Sony DSC-H9
ISO 400, 1/202 sec, F5.0
ISO 400, 1/320 sec, F5
3,785 KB JPEG
1,932 KB JPEG

Here the difference is all down to the amount of noise reduction being applied (both cameras - we presume - use the same Sony sensor). Canon, as usual, has opted to keep the noise reduction relatively light - certainly in comparison with Sony, but really there's only so much either camera can do with what is obviously very noisy output from the sensor. I personally prefer Canon's approach, because it's easy to remove noise but impossible to undo the effects of heavy noise reduction. In other words you could easily make the S5 IS result look like the H9, but you couldn't do it the other way. Again we'd note that the H9's ISO is marginally more sensitive than the S5 IS.