Canon PowerShot S3 IS review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 19 Jan 2007

Price when reviewed: £243

Supplier: http://www.rankhour.com

Reviewed By: Ben Pitt

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

User Rating

We first reviewed the S3 IS in What's New, Shopper September 2006 and found it to be a capable performer but a little overpriced.

Its price has since fallen, so we were curious to see how it compares. The sturdy plastic case gives the camera a business-like appearance, and the generous smattering of controls show that this is an enthusiast's model. The 2in screen flips out for self-portraits and shooting from awkward angles, although its 150,000-pixel resolution isn't quite enough for manual focusing, despite a picture-in-picture displayed while making adjustments.

Manual exposure is well implemented, with buttons dedicated to shutter speed, aperture and ISO speed plus an informative preview picture. The zoom motor is dual speed for fast and accurate framing of subjects and overall performance is among the fastest here, capturing a shot every 1.4 seconds in normal shooting mode and at 1.5fps in continuous mode.

Image quality was generally excellent, although skin tones were often too pink under natural light and the autofocus misjudged a few scenes. Noise crept into view at ISO 200 and was quite heavy at ISO 800. However, we admire Canon's policy not to overdo noise reduction. The S3 IS's noise is fairly monochromatic and so resembles the grain you'd get from ISO 400 film. Still, FujiFilm's S6500fd provides the best solution, suffering far less noise in the first place.

The S3 IS is still a great camera, but it also remains a little overpriced.

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