Canon Powershot S80 (and A620) Evaluation

Evolution of This Page:  This started out as a post of some tests I did in December 2005 to evaluate the Canon Powershot S80 camera.  It's morphed into an evaluation of the S80, to some extent in comparison to the Canon A620, with some comparison photos from both cameras.  

(Updated 2/6/06): Although the tests demonstrate that some samples of the S80 have corner blur, they also show that it is repairable.  (See the test page.)  Furthermore, I've come to agree with most S80 owners that it is not a serious drawback in most situations.

Therefore, the tests have been moved to a separate test page.  This page now contains just my observations and discussion of the S80 (and A620), and sample photos.

 If you have any comments, please post in the discussion thread.

My Comments on the S80 (Dec. '05):  After returning my original S80 for replacement, and evaluating the S80 (and A620) for a couple of weeks, I have the following comments.  (See also the following section for some opinions after shooting about 1000 pictures with each camera.)

I think the S80 is a fine camera.  It has strong and weak points. 

Strong points:  The S80's strongest point is its responsiveness.  It's got all the manual adjustments.  Most of them are instantly accessible via buttons.  Its very tractable menu system, and its speed in both record and playback, make this camera feel like it's almost an extension of the photographer's mind.  It may not sound like a big deal, but now that I've used the S80 for some real shooting, I can say that for someone who likes to change modes and manual settings, it really makes a difference. 

Other plusses:  Wide angle lens, pocketable size and weight, and large LCD that is viewable from a wide angle.

Walking around taking the comparison photos with the S80s and the A620, I was struck by two things.  One was, of course, the better controls on the S80.  The other was just how superior the LCD on the S80 is to the A620's.  After trying to get the exact same scene framed in the S80s using their LCDs, I found it clearly much more difficult to do the same thing on the A620.

Weak points:  The control wheel is too easy to hit accidentally, the images are blurry in the corners, the lens is slow at maximum zoom, the grip and zoom control are awkward, and it's susceptible to dust reflections when using flash in dusty places.

Conclusions about corner blur:  Based on my two test cameras, here are my conclusions:

• Corner blur can be a real problem in some cases, particularly at or below 42mm focal length.
• The replacement S80 was somewhat of an improvement on the original one, particularly at 28mm.  But it wasn't blur free
• Longer focal lengths and smaller apertures help.  42mm looks like the worst focal length.
• Since the camera prefers shooting at f4, and it's not as bad at 28mm as at middle focal lengths, the effects of corner blur will be less than worst case in typical shooting.

I decided to keep the replacement S80.  Following my trip to Asia, I am sending it to Canon for warranty service.  I'll report the results here and on the forum.

Further Comments on the S80 and A620 (Jan. '06):  Both cameras went with me to Asia for three weeks, taking about 1,000 pictures each.  I shoot handheld, and in low light situations I look for something solid to prop the camera against.  Most of the time I carried both cameras (so much for the S80 saving me two ounces over my old S45), and it was instructive to see which one I reached for in different situations.

The conclusion was clear:  For me, the S80 is the superior camera.  The A620 had a couple of significant advantages (faster lens, telephoto) but just could not measure up to the S80's 28mm wide angle and superior operating controls.

(Added 1/19/06) A number of people have posted in the discussion thread that they chose the A620 over the S80.  I don't disagree with or disrespect that choice.  The S80 has a lot of flaws and the A620 has a lot of plusses; I list many of both below.   It's a complex tradeoff and what is important to me may be less so to someone else who uses their camera differently or just has different priorities.  I've reported my observations in the hope that they will prove useful.  Everyone has to make their own evaluation.

What made the difference:  

28mm Wide Angle.  There ain't no substitute.  Some of the shots I like best simply could not have been taken with 35mm equivalent:

Sample photos taken at 28mm zoom:

Jioufen, Taiwan - 1/60 @ f3.2, 5.8mm (28mm equiv), post-processed	Taipei - 1/400 @ f5.6, 5.8 mm (28mm equiv)	Mandalay, Myanmar - 1/320 @ f4, 5.8 mm (28mm equiv)
Bangkok - 1/60 @ f3.5, 5.8 mm (28mm equiv), postprocessed	Jioufen, Taiwan - 1/13 handheld @ f2.8, 5.8 mm (28mm equiv), post-processed	Bangkok - 1/40 @ f2.8, 5.8 mm (28mm equiv)

I often did appreciate - and reach for - the 140mm equivalent long end on the A620, particularly on a river cruise when the S80 was not really up to capturing many of the images we passed on the banks.  (Yes, with the S80's 8 megapixels you can crop a long shot, but you wind up with a 4 megapixel image and give away an f-stop on a telephoto shot to boot.  It doesn't work.)

But what this really made me appreciate was the usefulness of having a second camera along, and rather than the A620 I'd prefer a stabilized long-zoom model.  Of course, it's a big step up from the S80's 100mm at f5.3 to the A620's 140mm at f4.1.  But even the latter isn't up to those long-distance shots.

Focus and Speed:  At most a couple of shots were lost due to bad focus (using center focusing, of course - AiAF is just an invitation to misfocus).  But many suffered from blur due to shooting handheld in less than perfect light conditions.  Put the S80's slow lens on a small sensor digital camera, and that's inevitable.  Score one for the A620, with over a full f-stop advantage at the long end.  To remain competitive, Canon simply needs to put image stabilization on the S line.

Controls:  The S80 proved a super performer when making adjustments on the fly.  It was a breeze to jump between ISO settings, adjust flash and exposure compensation, revise and reshoot on the fly.  When you're traveling, often you're shooting from a moving vehicle, or trying to snap people before they move away, and you've only got so many seconds to adjust and reshoot.  The S80's controls were a tremendous boost in those situations.  The A620 was frustrating by comparison, forcing the use of extra button presses and wasting precious time.
     I initially thought some of the touchy control issues would get in the way, but that just didn't happen.  I quickly learned to stay away from accidentally moving the S80's controller wheel and to use both the A620 and S80 on-off and playback-record modes.  
     The S line's shooting priority feature (the shutter button always jumps back into record mode) remains exactly right.  But it's time to retire the sliding lens cover on-off switch.  It was fine back in the dark ages of 2002, when a camera took four seconds to start up, but now it takes as long to slide the cover open as it does the camera to turn on, and that's not acceptable when in a rush to grab a shot.

Operating Speed:  On both cameras, the Digic II speed was delightful.  With my old S45 I was accustomed to missing shots while fishing the camera out of a bag or pocket and waiting for it to turn on.  With both the A620 and S80, the turn-on time was trivial compared to the fish-out time.  Sometimes I lost another couple of seconds turning the A620 LCD around, though.  (But at least it's not all scratched like the S80 is already.)  As mentioned, though, with this operating speed the S80's lens cover on-off switch has become an annoying time-waster.

Displays:  Having slavered after a flip-twist LCD for years, I was eager to put this feature of the A620 to use.  And it did save getting down on my aging knees a couple of times, in rather dirty places to be sure.  But in almost all situations, the S80's larger, brighter display proved superior, and was visible from a wide enough angle to allow those over-the-crowd shots holding the camera overhead.  One problem, though.  I carry pocketable cameras in pockets, and the S80's LCD has gotten as scratched in three weeks as the S45 did in two years.  It looks like there's an anti-glare coating on the S80 screen that is terribly prone to being marked up.

S80 Image Flaws:  The S80's corner and edge blur really threw me for a loop when I first evaluated it.  It still bothers me intellectually that such a great camera would have such an easily demonstrated weakness.  And I can pick out a number of shots where I can see it, even in rather small images.  But I agree with numerous posters that it almost never makes a big difference in real-world pictures.  I also saw flash flare in one image I took, and it's annoying but not a show-stopper.

Battery Life:  Several times I had to switch to the S80's spare battery, even using the new large-capacity Li-Ion cell.  The A620 never got close to the capacity of the rechargeable AAs.  A pair of NiMh AAs packs more power than the S80's expensive Li-Ion NB2-LH, is smaller, and just barely longer.  Why can't Canon give us a break and change over?

Size and Weight:  Edge to the S80.  It's smaller, lighter, and has a better form factor for pulling out of a pocket or crowded bag.

Conclusion:  For my purposes, the S80 wins.  Just for yucks, I'm sending it off to Canon to see if they can "repair" the lens blur problem, and will report back.  When I get it back, I'll put the A620 up for sale on eBay.  Then I might start looking for a slightly larger, long zoom digital camera.  I liked traveling with two cameras.

P.S. Grumble: Canon dumbs down A620: Canon deliberately chose to dumb down the A620 in a couple of ways that proved annoying in use.  Yes, the marketing people have to find a way to justify a higher price on Canon's other cameras, but it's frustrating when a piece of equipment is hobbled at absolutely no cost savings to the manufacturer.  Entering a voice memo on the A620 requires a total of seven button pushes to start recording.  This is a huge frustration when trying to snap photos, annotate them, and pay attention to what's going on at the same time.  On the S80 it only takes two pushes.  Since the A620 print button has no use when the USB cable isn't attached, it could have been used for this function.

Another irritation is that stitch mode on the A620 only works in landscape orientation, so panoramic photos can be at most 2304 pixels high.  Canon simply chose for the software not to allow portrait mode and 3072 pixels.  On the S80, panoramas can be shot in landscape, portrait, or a two by two panel.  Several times I reached for the A620 to shoot a panorama because I wanted maximum sharpness, only to go for the S80 in order to use portrait orientation for higher resolution.

S80 and A620 Photo Album - Taiwan, Myanmar and Thailand:

In response to numerous requests (OK, one request) I have posted an album of about 170 photos taken with the S80 and A620 during a trip to Taiwan, Myanmar and Thailand in Dec. 2005 - Jan. 2006. 

Notes:

• Photos were taken with the S80, except those with the letter 'a' following the sequence number were taken with the A620.  
• Many photos were post-processed, including sharpening. 
• The album page may take a few seconds to load the thumbnails when first viewed. 
• Please view the full-size images sparingly to conserve bandwidth.

Click here to view the photo album.

Comparison Photos: S80 and A620:  

Real-life photos: These were shot in Program AE mode, evaluative metering, and I let the cameras pick the exposure.  All were taken at 42mm equivalent to stress out the S80's corner problem.  Several high contrast subjects were include to see how the cameras handled the highlights and shadows.  Click on the images to see the originals (large files).

Bear in mind that these were taken with two S80s with a corner blur problem.  I don't have equivalent shots with the S80 that Canon repaired, drastically reducing the problem in the corners.

Original S80, 1/250 @ f4, 8.6 mm	A620, 1/200 @ f4, 8.5 mm (42 mm equiv)

What I see:  I can't really see it at this size, but at double this size or larger the corner defects in the S80 image above are clear, especially blurring in the upper right and fringing in the lower left.

What I see: (updated 12/16/05)  In all four of these pictures, comparing the full size shots (click on the images) the S80 is a little sharper on the left side, but it has blurring all the way down the right side.  In the last three shots, I have the same shots taken with the original S80 (full size images, 3 megs+: second, third and fourth).  Both S80s show the same right side blurring.

Comments?  Please post in the discussion thread.  If you really need to email me, I'm bilofsky@toolworks.com.