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Canon PowerShot S50 Digital CameraCanon's PowerShot S50 is the company's first 5 megapixel digital camera and features a high-resolution 3x f/2.8 optical zoom lens...
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Canon's PowerShot S50 is the company's first 5 megapixel digital camera and features a high-resolution 3x f/2.8 optical zoom lens together with a compact, black brushed aluminum alloy exterior. In addition, the S50 includes Canon's exclusive DIGIC Imaging Processor with iSAPS technology to provide enhanced image quality, increased processing speed and improved camera features including a 9-Point AiAF autofocus system for faster and easier focusing; 9-position White Balance; selectable metering modes for precise exposure in almost any shooting condition; selectable Second-Curtain sync flash; an improved Movie Mode that captures clips up to 3 minutes apiece with sound; and Direct Print capabilities with Canon's Card Printer CP-100 dye-sublimation printer and several Canon Bubble Jet Direct printers.
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45 Reviews from Shopping.com
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Ideal travel mate
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Pros: quality, enlargeable images; sturdy; macro capability
Cons: no provision for filters
The Bottom Line:
This is a wonderful, capable, sturdy little camera that produces terrific images. I highly recommend it!
Planning a return trip to Hawaii, I wanted to try digital underwater photography. Anticipating no 'deep-water' dives, I quickly gave up on the very expensive dive cameras that provided the resolution and manual control capabilities I wanted. Just as quickly dropped from my search were the less expensive, less capable 1.3 megapixel specialized underwater digital cameras.
Turning my search to underwater housings for more traditional digital cameras, I discovered the Canon combination of the WP-DC300 housing and S50 camera. Since the focus here is on the S50, I'll share my experiences with the housing in a different review.
In a sentence, the S50 performed flawlessly, yielded high quality enlargeable images, and took a beating!
5 mega-pixels generally allow enlargements up to 11x14, before significant image degradation is observable. Besides underwater, I shot wave action, people, surfers, portraits, mountains, sunrises, sunsets, and lots of macros of tropical flowers.
I am by no means a professional photographer, but the camera made up for enough of my mistakes so that friends, upon seeing the 8x10's images printed on a Canon S900 inkjet photo printer, wanted to purchase them! I took the camera and enlargements to work and two colleagues, in the market for a digital camera, went right out and purchased an S50 that day, because they liked the camera and its pictures so much!
This little, sturdily constructed camera was tossed into back packs, a dive bag, car trunks, and pockets. It never missed a beat!
Manual settings are prolific for those who can effectively use them, including virtual film speed (ASA), white balance, bracketing, and many, many more. Automation makes it easy for everybody else to take very nice point-and-shoot pictures. The 3X optical zoom works nicely, but one can never have too much of that.
I never needed the extra battery I purchased; battery life was excellent. Taking an average of 90 - 110 shots each day, and a high-count 0f 227 in one day, it never ran out of juice!
Since the camera is solidly built, a characteristic discovered from the first moment you pick it up, one is tempted to treat it less like a fragile jewel and more like a very useful tool. Therefore, I believe Canon missed by not including a provision for screw-on filters. I would have liked to put a UV or Sky filter on to protect the lens. A polarizer would have been very helpful in many settings. All the stresses I put on the camera never resulted in any scratching or damage to the lens, but I like the confidence that comes from knowing I can replace an inexpensive filter and not the lens or entire camera, should I get a little to rambunctious.
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