Canon Powershot S5 IS how is this camera?

Question

good quality? good pics in the dark? does it have CLEAR sound when recording loud things like a concert for example?

Answer 1

I have an S3 IS and I just love it. It has a great zoom, 12x, all optical. It has image stabilization which is important for high zoom values and also low-light conditions where you need longer exposures. It uses AA batteries so I can keep a spare set of rechargeables in my pocket, but a set of batteries lasts a really long time. It takes great movies, and 1 hr will fit on a 1 gb card. My S3 is 5 megapixels, which is great for 8x10 blowups. The S5 has 8 megapixels.

As for pics in the dark, I think there are cameras that do that better. The ISO speed is adjustable but I haven't played with turning it all the way up to see what it can do. Image stabilization helps though.

As for sound, I think it works about as well as most cameras like this. It would be better if it had microphone inputs (it records in stereo). Digital cameras aren't the greatest choice for recording sound. A mini-disk would be better.

I was just looking at the specs. The S5 includes digital wind filter, that's pretty cool. It also has 'face detection' so it can find a person's face in the view and focus to it, and also remove red-eye.

And it costs about what I paid for my S3!

Answer 2

The Powershot S5IS is the update to the S3 IS...and undoubtedly it's best features would have to be that great 12x optical zoom and the very handy flip out LCD screen.

It's far from being perfect and there are better cameras out there. But it's capable of producing very good day light shots and also good low light shots...BUT only using a very low ISO of 80-100. Anything higher than this and noise starts to be a big problem. So, if you want to take photos in low to very low light, your best option would be to keep the ISO low and mount the camera on a tripod...which is hardly practical for a concert situation.
Sound is recorded in stereo (great when playing back on your stereo system). It's very good for a digital camera...certainly good enough for a bootleg recording, I suppose...lol

Answer 3

The review of the movie mode in the S3 is the same as that given to the S5, which reads as follows from Steves-digicams.com:

"The S3 has a very high quality movie mode with sound, capturing your choice of 30 or 15 frames per second at resolutions of 640x480 or 320x240, and a high frame rate of 60fps at 320x240. The 30fps 640x480 Fine movies consume about 2-megabytes per second of recording but they look like they were shot with a camcorder, very smooth with no compression artifacts. While many digicams prevent zooming during movie recording, the S3 IS allows it because the ultra-quiet USM motor does not interfere with the audio. Speaking of audio, the S3's performance is exceptional. Both the microphone level and audio sampling rate can be set from within the S3's menu system. The S3 also has a wind filter that can be enabled, reducing the amount of wind noise present in the audio track. In-camera editing of movies is provided in playback mode, allowing you to cut from the beginning and/or the end, and saving the edited clip as a new file or overwriting the original. The maximum length of capture in any quality setting is limited to 1GB or 60 minutes, whichever comes first. If you plan to exploit the S3's movie mode, make sure to get a large and fast SD memory card."

Again, we can only conclude that the S5 is just as superior as the S3, but one step higher in overall resolution.

Good luck!

Answer 4

Here's the dpreview info http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/read_opinions.asp?prodkey=canon_s5is.
I think you have a good but not great camera overall, but with great features for certain needs.

But here again, Canon has 'over-crammed' the sensor, putting 8.2 million pixels on the smaller 1/2.5 " sensor, to get the lenses to work for this zoom range. This will affect your image 'satisfaction' level.

But most amaturs will find the camera a great grab and go camera.