I never feel quite comfortable without a camera… and I don’t really count the one in my iPhone, which is useful for quick snaps of things I want to remember, but I’ve seldom got a really good image from it. So for much of the last year I’ve had a Canon Powershot G9 strapped to my belt. It’s in many ways an admirable little beast, being built like a Lilliputian tank, but that did mean one needed a certain amount of dedication to carry it on a daily basis, and I wasn’t always up to the challenge. I’m not sure, either, whether I’ll be up to the challenge of paying to have it repaired after it suddenly expired last week, just two months after its warranty did.
So its successor is the new Powershot S90, with which I’m quite delighted so far. It’s substantially smaller and lighter than the G9 – it will slip in my shirt pocket – and it shoots RAW, has a better sensor than the G9, and boasts an F2 lens, though it seems to have a greater depth of field than most F2s I’ve seen.
Definitely much more pocketable, and, in the words of Chase Jarvis, the best camera is the one that’s with you.
All in all, a very pleasing, if rather pricey, toy. The only thing I need to fix now is the rotten British weather this week, which has given me only the gloomiest light in which to play with it. You see, once a bad workman can no longer blame his tools, he has to resort to the failings of the climatic conditions… but I was quite pleased with my first few shots:
Nothing earth-shattering, but I could only manage a few shots before the factory charge on the battery expired, and I had to go home and unpack the charger!
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The s90 has had saturation advertising here in Taipei and I can only imagine in the rest of Asia. I’ve been on the lookout for a P&S. This is sorely tempting.
Oh, in other news, what’s the high ISO performance like?
I’ll do some experiments – much better than the G9, which was now rather dated technology, but not as good as my SLR – as you’d expect, I guess. Will try to come up with more samples.