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Resolved Question

Canon Powershot s100 worth upgrading from s95?

Mar 20, 2012 5:21AM PDT

Hi there,

I was looking at digital camera reviews and the Canon Powershot s95 seems to be getting better reviews than the s100, although the s100 is newer and has a bunch of upgrades from the s95.

Why is that? is the s95 better value?

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marc_b85 has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Canon S95/S100
Mar 20, 2012 7:50AM PDT

Here is a comparison of features:

http://snapsort.com/compare/Canon-S100-vs-Canon_PowerShot_S95

The S100 has some nice improvements.

But...

I have been thinking about the same thing.

What bothers me about the S100 is that it is using more megapixels (12 instead of 10).
The reason for going to 10 megapixels in the first place was to reduce noise.

Go to more megapixels and you will get more noise. Then they have to apply more noise reduction which reduces detail.

Looking closely at similar pictures of the same scene, I see a loss in detail with the S100.
A small loss, but noticeable when "pixel peeping".

The other thing that I don't like on the S100 is the worse shutter lag.
S95 - 0.15 sec
S100 - 0.5 sec

The longer lag is caused by a feature that was taken from the Canon G12
That feature lets the camera select the scene automatically.
A good feature that will probably be good for the person that just shoots in Auto Mode.
But when shooting in any of the manual modes, it is not needed or wanted.
But the cost to the shooter is a longer shutter lag.
The Canon G12 will let you turn-off that feature.
I downloaded the User Manual for the S100 and can not find a way to turn it off.

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Thanks for the informative reply
Mar 20, 2012 8:06AM PDT

This pretty much confirms what I was thinking and had read some other reviews.

Thanks a lot for your time.