Overview
The Canon S5 IS digital camera is an 8-megapixel 12X “super zoom” camera with an SLR-like body, and is the successor to the S3 IS, sharing the same lens and many similar functions. The S5 IS uses Canon’s new DIGIC III processor. A face-detection feature identifies multiple faces in a shot and will optimize focus, exposure, and flash accordingly. The camera features an image stabilizer (IS) lens as well as high-ISO (up to 1600) settings to help with low-light shots.
SD or SDHC cards can be used. SDHC is a newer format of SD that’s for cards of greater than 2GB. Note that SDHC is not backwards compatible. So if you use a card reader, you’ll need one specifically compatible with the newer SDHC format. Mine is not, so I just bought a fast 2 GB SD card (SanDisk Extreme III).
I’m writing this review from the standpoint of a hobbyist, not a pro. I take mostly family and vacation type photos, often shooting in automatic or scene modes. I’ve had a number of ultra-compact digital cameras as well as a few mid-size ones. My most recent camera, and the one that I’m replacing with the S5 IS is a Fuji Finepix S6000fd (reviewed here:
http://www.epinions.com/content_376457498244), which is an excellent camera. So I’ll include information in this review noting where the two differ to provide a bit of a comparison or point of reference.
Basic Comparison to Finepix S6000fd
In many ways the Fuji Finepix S6000fd is quite comparable to the S5 IS, although the Fuji is 6-megapixel. They are both SLR-like “mega-zoom” cameras with face detection and good movie modes. The S6000fd is actually a generation back in Fuji’s lineup, but still an excellent camera, and one I’d recommend. You’d probably get a good deal on one now that it’s a bit older. But there were a few extras on the S5 IS that made me make the switch. The biggest reasons were the image stabilization and the hot shoe for an external flash. The dedicated movie button and a few other features are nice too. However, there are also a few things from the Fuji that I’ll miss. First, I find the Fuji easier to grab a-hold of, as it’s a bit larger overall and has a larger grip with nice rubberized areas. It just feels better. I’ll also miss the manual zoom ring on the lens as opposed to the electronic zoom from a switch as found on the S5 IS. I’d love to see this from Canon, but it seems no one is going that route (in non-SLR cameras). In fact, it looks like even Fuji has abandoned it, assuming the S8000fd is the replacement for the S6000fd that I’m replacing. Also, the 3” LCD on the Fuji is larger than the 2.5” on the S5 IS, but it’s not a flip/twist screen. I find the picture quality between the two to be the same.
Shooting Modes
The S5 IS has a number of shooting modes, including fully automatic, special scene modes, and a manual mode that allows you to set your own Aperture and Shutter. As a hobbyist, I tend to stick to the auto mode, preset scene modes, and occasionally the Program mode when I want to change just one setting (such as white balance) and leave the rest on auto. A few of the scene modes are on the dial. Others have to be selected from the menu.
The scene modes directly on the dial are: Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Night Snapshot, and Sports. I like having sports directly on the dial, rather than having to go into a menu. Additional special scene modes are available by setting the dial to SCN, then using the menu to choose from: Night Scene (I’ve not yet found the difference between this and Night Snapshot – if someone knows, please comment), Indoor (party – is supposed to preserve some of the ambiance), Foliage (enhance color), Snow (avoid glare), Beach (avoid glare), Fireworks (slow shutter), Aquarium, plus two creative modes: color accent and color swap. Color accent will allow you to select a color then take a shot with everything in black & white except the selected color. Color swap does just what it sounds like. I’ve taken a few interesting photos with color accent, but it’s definitely not something that will get a lot of use.
The dial also has a setting for stitch-assist. This helps you line up multiple photos that can later be stitched together into a panoramic scene. You can use the left arrow to choose whether you’ll shoot them horizontally, vertically, or in a grid of four. It helps you do this by displaying part of the previous photo on the screen to help line up the next shot. These can be fun. I’ve used this with other Canon cameras too, and even on the first few tries you can achieve good results.
A Custom mode on the dial lets you save setting you’ve used.
The dial also has “creative zone” modes for Program (similar to Auto in that shutter and aperture are set automatically, but allows you to choose other settings manually mostly through the FUNC button), shutter priority, aperture priority, and manual. The semi-pros who don’t want to grab their SLR and lenses might appreciate these, and they would probably be great for a learning tool for someone on their way to an SLR.
There is a movie mode on the dial, but it’s not necessary to turn this on since you can start a move at any time by pressing the dedicated movie mode button.
Shooting and Image Quality
When taking shots, you can press the shutter button half way to focus and evaluate the scene. The camera will display “raise the flash” if it detects low light. I like the choice of words, rather than a red or flashing symbol. Other indicator and warnings may appear with the shutter half way, depending on your shooting mode.
I’ve been very pleased with the quality of the shots, both indoor and out, that I’ve taken with the S5 IS. For a hobbyist shooting mostly family photos, they suit me just fine. I’m no pro, so I can’t speak to the technical details. I’ve always been pleased with the color from my Canon cameras that I’ve owned, and this one is no exception. The only color complaint I have is that sometimes indoor shots tend to be slightly more yellow than I’d prefer. I’ve read that this is typical of Canon’s white balance and that the manufacturer has said that this is on purpose and to preserve more of the ambiance. In any case, it’s more preference and quite minor at that. I need to remember to switch to P mode and set the white balance to Tungsten (incandescent) more often when I’m not using my external flash.
The high ISO settings do work and allow you to get shots that might not otherwise be possible, although image noise increases greatly and image quality is quite poor when you move into the higher numbers, especially 800 and above. The best shots are those at ISO 200 and below. It’s still nice to have them there when shooting in locations where you’re either not allowed to use the flash, or so far away from your subject that the flash won’t reach. In fact, in the latter situations it’s nice that the flash doesn’t try to automatically fire since you have to manually pull it up, rather than remember to turn it off.
The quality of the movies is also very good. I’ll speak to that in the movie section.
The S5 IS includes a self-timer function. There’s a dedicated button just behind the shutter button for setting the self timer or continuous shooting mode. I like having the dedicated button better than flipping to a menu as I had done on my Fuji. The symbols for these make it easy to find the function since it’s not something I use all the time. The self timer can be set to fire after 10 seconds or 2 seconds, with the latter being ideal for long exposure shots from a tripod to avoid any shake from pressing the button itself. There’s also a custom self-timer setting. Through the menu you can configure this for the length of the delay in seconds before the shot fires, as well as set it to take multiple consecutive shots at about 2 seconds apart (a little longer if the flash is needed). I’ve used this several times and it’s great! It avoids a lot of running back to use playback mode to see who blinked and then having to set the shot up again.
Face Detection
Face detection is not just a gimmick. It really does work. The S5 IS will detect multiple faces (up to 9) in a scene and adjust focus, exposure and flash appropriately, giving priority to faces over other objects that might be in the shot, even if closer to the camera. With face detection enabled, the camera will begin to put brackets around the faces it detects as you compose your shot. This only works for faces that are facing the camera. I’ve seen Fuji advertise that their latest system will continue to track faces even when the subject turns sideways, although I’ve never seen this in action. It’s most noticeable how good the face detection works when shooting people in a brightly backlit environment. Due to the picture window in our living room, I often notice how well this feature works and can easily compare to many shots in the same location taken on previous cameras I’ve owned. I’m a fan.
Playback and the LCD display
The LCD display is nice and bright, and produces a good sharp image. I’m pleased that they increased the size since the last version of this camera, as that was one of the reasons I didn’t choose the previous model. At 2.5”, there are certainly bigger screens on other cameras, but this is very usable. The LCD is a pop-out vari-angle type, so you can flip and rotate the screen, allowing for shooting from overhead or down low. I’m not sure how terribly useful this is for the type of shooting I do. I’m sure it will come in handy on occasion, but it’s definitely not a “must have” considering it’s a trade-off for having a larger screen instead.
Perhaps what I like best about image playback on Canon digital cameras is that it’s so easy and intuitive to zoom and pan your image. You zoom during playback the same way as when shooting – using the zoom button. And you simply pan with the 4-way controller. This is great for getting in close on faces to see if everyone was smiling and things like that. One think that Fuji had on the S6000fd that was great for this purpose was a “face” button right on the back of the camera that would zoom to each face that the face-detection feature picked up during recording. I’d love to see Canon add this to the next version of the S5 IS. In addition to zooming in and out on a given photo, you can keep pressing in the “zoom out” direction to switch to a grid view that displays 9 small images on screen and allows the use of the directional selector to move. As you highlight each on, it gets a bit larger on the screen to give a little larger of a view.
During playback, a movie will be indicated with the video icon. Pressing the set button brings up the control bar where you can play, slow play, or step through the frames. A nice touch is a small volume slider that you control, intuitively, with the up and down arrows. Nice. There are even a few basic editing features to allow the beginning or end of a movie to be cut.
Deleting an image or movie during playback is as simple as pressing the Delete button (same as FUNCT during shooting), indicated with the icon of a trash can beside it, then pressing SET to confirm. I like this better than having to go to a menu to delete as with Fuji and maybe other cameras.
Using the menu button during playback allows you to play a slideshow (even set transitions), work with categories, use in-camera red-eye removal, use sound recorder, and a few other items.
Ergonomics and form
The S5 IS has a good feel to it. It’s heavy enough to not feel like a toy camera. The grip is not quite as big as my Fuji FinePix S6000fd, which has a perfect size grip for me. I don’t have very big hands, so I think just about anyone would benefit from a slightly larger on this camera. I find that the slightly small grip causes my finger slightly overshoots the shutter button when I take a good grip on the camera. Canon also did not rubberize the grip like Fuji did, making the Fuji feel even more solid. Canon did, however, leave a nice spot with raised bumps between the movie button and the 4-way selector on the back for your thumb. The nice weight of this camera also makes it fairly well balanced with a Speedlite 430EX flash attached. I was concerned it might be too top heavy.
The optical eyepiece is larger and easier to use than a small digital camera, although it could stick out a little further to be more comfortable and prevent you from having to press your nose into the camera. Overall, it seems a little grainy, but about the same as the S6000fd. A diopter adjustment is provided.
The control buttons on the back have plenty of spacing to prevent pressing the wrong one. The four-way controller is easy to use by rocking it in the direction you choose. However, I prefer cameras where the “set” or “ok” button is in the center of the controller, rather than separate. On the S5 IS at least it’s right below it.
The mode dial on the top is large enough and has a bit of a grip to it, making it easy to turn.
One of the worst design choices that affect this camera is that Canon put the SD slot inside the battery compartment on the bottom. If the camera used a lithium-ion battery that was held in by a tab or something, it might not be that big of a deal, but with AA batteries that can just fall right out, this is a real pain. And the door can be a bit tricky to close since it has to press the batteries down into the springs, so it’s just overall a real pain. If you often use a tripod, you’ll have to remove the camera from the tripod to get at the card. I might even go back to keeping a cable attached to the computer and transferring images via USB cable rather than removing the card to put in the card reader.
Batteries
The S5 IS uses four AA batteries, and I’m no fan. It’s too much to fiddle with getting them in and out of the camera and charger and the batteries plus charger make for big, bulky travel. A lithium-ion battery with a compact wall charger (no cord) would be easier to deal with. The battery compartment door on the S5 IS can put up a bit of fight sometimes. On the good side, the camera does seem to have decent battery life, although I’ve not done any precise testing. I recommend changing the image stabilizer function from the default of "continuous" to "shoot only" to help maximize battery life, although I was still impressed with the battery life even before changing this. I'm using Duracel NiMH batteries with 2650 mAh, which I believe is the highest mAh rating of any AA battery you can buy.
The lens
When turned off, the lens on the S5 IS retracts back pretty far into the camera, making it a lot more compact than my Fuji Finepix S6000fd. However, because it’s not always extended, I find that I don’t put my left hand on it to help stabilize the camera when shooting. The Fuji remains extended and has a manual zoom ring with naturally lends itself to holding it that way. I much prefer that particular aspect of the S6000fd, but it seems that virtually all cameras in this class are more like the Canon. I’ll miss this with my Fuji though! The S5 IS lens can accept an optional telephoto or wide angle adapter lens. There’s a setting in the menu to configure the camera if you have one of them attached.
The 12X zoom is plenty for my needs. My Fuji camera had only a 10X and I was satisfied. Some are calling for Canon to bump up to 18X with their next generation of this camera, as some manufacturers have done, but this not a concern for me at all. In addition to the optical zoom, you can also use digital zoom. There’s a special setting for fixed 1.6X and 2X digital zoom. I used to turn off digital zoom completely, but with an 8-megapixel camera, there should be plenty of pixels available to do some digital zooming and still have decent resolution left for some good prints. The advantage of setting the fixed digital zoom rather than zooming in all the way with the optical first would be that you could still use a larger aperture. I’m still too new to this area to comment further on this benefit.
The S5 IS has a macro and a super macro mode. Super Macro supposedly lets you take shots of images that are 0cm (i.e. touching) the lens. I’m not sure how practical this is, but oh well!
As with other Canon digital cameras, the zoom is controlled by a ring around the shutter button. There are two zoom speeds which are controlled by how far you press the button. You can use the zoom when taking movies, but choosing between two, fixed zoom speeds is not nearly as nice as the manual zoom function provided by the zoom ring around the lens on the Fuji Finepix S6000fd. I will certainly miss the subtle slow zoom you can accomplish with that. Yet the image stabilizer of the S5 IS adds a benefit to movie mode that the Fuji camera does not have.
Menus and Ease of Operation
The S5 IS menu system is quite similar to other Canon cameras that I’ve owned. I’ve always found it to be fairly intuitive. I do find it more user friendly than Fuji’s menu system. One nice thing about having a good number of dedicated function buttons on the back and top of the camera itself is that there’s less of a need to go poking through the menu to find something. I like having a dedicated button for ISO (on the back) and for setting single/continuous/self timer (on the top). The SET button, when not in a menu, also functions for choosing your AF type.
The FUNC button provides access to various shooting setting, some of which will only be active when not in fully automatic mode. These include things like white balance, flash level, and image (or movie) size settings.
Movie Mode
Canon has done something fairly unique with the S series models in that they’ve added a dedicated button for shooting videos. The button is located on the back, just to the left of where your thumb would rest. This means you don’t have to switch the dial to movie mode. Or in our case, perhaps it’s more important that you don’t have to switch it back! I can’t tell you how many short movies we have where we intended to take a snapshot instead, thinking it was in Auto mode. You also have the ability to press the shutter button to snap a photo while in the middle of taking a video. It does cause a short pause in the video, but it’s a lot better than stopping, switching the dial, snapping a photo, then switching back to record more! Be aware that movie mode will be affected by manual settings like white balance if the camera mode dial was last left in a non-auto mode. I have a few “yellowish” videos because I had been taking some flash photos and left the white balance set for “flash” instead of “auto”.
Unlike most smaller cameras, the S5 IS allows the use of the optical zoom during movie mode. This makes it even easier to just leave the camcorder behind, especially considering the range of zoom available! The image stabilization works in movie mode too.
When I researched this camera and read about the stereo sound, I scoffed. I figured, how much stereo separation could you really get from microphones that are just a few inches apart and what difference could it possibly make. I was wrong! I played back some of the first clips that I took, and you really can hear the difference. And the general sound quality definitely does have better depth and richness to it than what I’ve experiences from any previous digital camera. Thanks to the USM (ultra-sonic motor) lens, zooming is nearly silent. I’ve only heard the zoom or focus mechanism on a few of the quietest videos in the form if a very faint rat-a-tat-tat sound. The camera will pick up the sound of the zoom ring clicking back into place if you’re not careful. There’s also a wind-noise filter, but I’ve not yet tried it in an appropriate situation to comment. The manual says it will degrade sound if used when not necessary.
As a guy who definitely makes use of movie mode on a regular basis, I always like to point out when a camera records AVI videos rather than the dreadful proprietary Quicktime movies you find on most digital cameras that can’t easily be edited with standard PC software like Windows Movie Maker. I also hate how Windows can’t display a thumbnail for QT videos, making browsing more difficult. That has actually become one of my requirements when buying new digital cameras because we’ve become quite fond of shooting short movie clips with our digital camera rather than dragging out the camcorder. I’ve seen people comment that MPEG4 would be better, since it’s more compressed. Perhaps that’s true, but with multi-GB memory cards, I’m not too concerned with the large size of the AVI files. They can always be edited into something more compressed once on the PC (very easy to do this with Windows Movie Maker).
I shoot all movies in 640 X 480 at 30 fps. They look very good, with very little compression artifacts noticeable, although they are there if you look. They seem very comparable to the AVI videos from the Fuji camera. Other modes include 640X480 30 fps long play mode, 320X240 60 fps mode, and 320X240 30 fps mode. Movies can be recorded for any length up to one hour, provided there is room on your memory card, although the manual states that a high-speed card may be required.
Flash and Red Eye
The build-in flash on the S5 IS has a pretty good range. Output will be adjusted to be appropriate for your subject if a face is detected in face-detection mode. The flash does not pop up automatically, but must be manually pulled up. This can be a plus or a minus. If you take a lot of shots where you’re trying not to use the flash, as I do, then you don’t have to remember to turn the flash off. On the other hand, some people who take a lot of flash shots might prefer one that automatically pops up.
Red eye has always been a big problem for me because of some family members who seem to get this with virtually any flash at all. Other cameras we’ve owned have had a “red eye reduction” mode that would fire a pre-flash or bright light prior to the shot. I’ve found them to be only minimally effective and heard complaints from subjects about the extra annoying flash. I also didn’t generally use them because of the way they would delay the shot. I’d miss too many shots waiting for the red-eye flash or light to fire fires. The S5 IS also has this mode, but it simply shines an orange light when you press the button half way, so it’s not annoying to the subjects. It also doesn’t seem to delay the shot as I’ve seen with other cameras. However, it doesn’t do any better of the job than the other type and is still only partially or non-effective, so removing via software (in-camera or on computer) is still often necessary.
The playback function of the S5 IS has a red-eye correction feature. This can be selected from the menu. Using the right and left arrow will rotate through the photos. Pressing the set button will select a photo and the camera will search for eyes to correct and draw a box around them if it finds them. If it does not find them automatically, you can move the selector to “add frame” and then use a zoomed view to move a box around the subject’s eyes. Once selected, moving the selector to “start” will begin the process. After a few seconds the process is complete and a prompt appears to choose to save the corrected image as a new file or to overwrite the existing one. In my testing, this whole process seems to work very well, indeed, even removing red-eye that only amounted to a slight maroonish tint.
Perhaps the best feature about taking flash photos with the S5 IS though is the fact that it has a hot shoe! This is one of the key new features that caused me to replace my Fuji S6000fd camera, which I love using. I’ve never been totally happy with my indoor family photos, mainly due to flash reasons. Between red-eye issues discussed above and unnatural lighting of the flash shooting straight-on and creating strange shadows, I’ve always wanted to try a camera with an external flash. So I purchased a Canon Speedlite 430EX flash with my S5 IS camera. I’ve only had it a short time and I already love it! This far I’ve used it almost exclusively to bounce off the ceiling. What a huge difference in the photos! Lighting is so much more natural, color is far better, and shadows behind my subjects are eliminated! I would highly recommend purchasing this flash, even though it’ almost as expensive as the camera itself. Don’t fool with the 420EX since you can’t angle the head to bounce it off the ceiling.
I’ve not yet taken any photos in larger areas that require a greater distance on the flash, such as kids’ performances, but I can’t wait to try it out there too. My hope is that I’ll be able to rely less on using the high-ISO settings and dealing with all the noise and grainy-ness problems.
