Canon PowerShot Elph 110 HS sample photos

Curious about the photo quality from Canon's 2012 entry-level Elph? Check out just what this little ultracompact can do.

Joshua Goldman

March 23, 2012 2:51 p.m. PT

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ISO comparison

Overall photo quality is very good to excellent for this class of camera. Its photos are best suited for Web use and prints up to 8x10, though under the right conditions prints as large as 13x19 are possible. Like most point-and-shoots, the more light you give the Elph 110 HS, the better off your photos will be. However, it does well indoors, too, up to about ISO 800. Its high-ISO photos are good, certainly better than even a really good smartphone camera, but they're very soft and ISO 3200 is pretty much unusable.

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Macro

If you like to shoot close-ups, the 110 HS can focus as close as 1.2 inches from your subject. This is a 100 percent crop from the inset photo taken at ISO 100. Even at larger sizes and with heavy cropping, the photos are excellent for inspecting fine details.

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ISO 100 at 100 percent

This is just to give you an idea of what the 110 HS is capable of at ISO 100 when photos are viewed at full size. The 16-megapixel resolution is more usable than most in this class, allowing you to enlarge and crop and still get quality good enough for Web use and smaller prints. When viewed at full screen size her hair isn't as detailed and the individual strands look a little crunchy, so you probably wouldn't want to do larger prints.

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Shooting performance

Shooting performance from the Canon PowerShot Elph 110 HS is mixed. It has low shutter lag at 0.3 second in good lighting and 0.6 second in dimmer condtions. However, it's shot-to-shot times are a little slow at 2.2 seconds without flash and 3.6 seconds with flash. If you switch to continuous shooting, it can fire off 2.1 frames per second at full resolution with focus and exposure set with the first shot. That might not be as fast as some of the competition, but this Elph also doesn't make you wait while it stores photos till you can shoot again. If you need something faster, it does have a high-speed burst mode that can capture at up to 5.8fps at a 4-megapixel resolution. The results are good enough for Web use or small prints.

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Zoom range

The zoom range on the 110 HS is more about improving your framing than getting you closer to a distant subject. It goes from an ultrawide-angle 24mm (top) out to 120mm, or a 5x zoom.

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Lens distortion

With such a wide lens, there is unsurprisingly some barrel distortion (top). There's no pincushioning with the lens extended, though. The lens is fairly sharp at the center, but it gets very soft in the corners and off to the sides.

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Fringing

Fringing in high-contrast areas is prevalent, but for the most part it's difficult to see at smaller sizes. This is a 100 percent crop from the upper left corner of the inset photo.

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Color

Color performance is excellent from the 110 HS: bright, vivid, and for the most part accurate. Exposure is also very good, though highlights will blow out on occasion.

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Creative Filters

For those who are addicted to the photo filters from a favorite smartphone app, Canon includes several of its high-quality Creative Filters. From top left to bottom right: Auto (no effect used), Toy Camera Effect, Soft, Monochrome, Super Vivid, and Poster Effect. View this larger to get a better look at the differences.

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Miniature Effect

Also included in the effect options is Miniature Effect, which makes subjects look like tiny models. While other manufacturers have added this effect to their cameras, Canon still does it the best.

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Photo effects

The 110 HS has several photo effect options with presets for subject and skin-tone color as well as individual adjustments for contrast, sharpness, saturation, red, green, blue, and skin tone. If that's not enough, Canon also includes its Color Swap (for example, change all blue to yellow) and Color Accent (you can pick one highlight color and make everything else monochrome; pictured) features.