The Sharper Image

I was very interested in reviewing the new PowerShot S70 when I heard of its release. As the owner of an S50, I evaluated the newer S60 when it came out and came to the conclusion that the new wide-angle lens was a tremendous advantage, but that picture quality remained identical to that of the S50, and thus decided to pass.

I’m glad that I did, as the new S70 came out only a few months later, and represents a significant upgrade over the S60. First off, I’ll come right out and say that other than the sensor and minor differences in speed of buffering in continuous mode (I don’t use continuous mode and thus only know this from the spec sheets), the S70 is identical to the S60. Both cameras are fast to use, taking about 3 seconds from when you slide open the lens cover until they are booted up and extend the lens for shooting. Both cameras have the exact same control layout and body design (the S60 is silver and the S70 is black). Both share the new wideangle lens introduced on the S60, and both share the same software, both on the camera itself (its menu system and controls) and for your PC (Macs support Canon cameras natively, so I don’t install the Canon Macintosh software).

To recap, the S70 (and S60) are compact, prosumer cameras designed to be easy enough for non-photographers to use, but with enough manual control to delight the serious photography enthusiast. Both are capable of producing images of incredible quality, offer a wide assortment of exposure modes and metering options, and very important to PhotoShop enthusiasts, both support saving images in lossless RAW mode, which records everything that hits the sensor without any in-camera processing applied.

Compared to the older S30-S50 models, the S70 (and S60) has a slimmer body that fits better in a pocket, and some significant control placement changes, most important being the elimination of the multifunction switch on the back of the older models and fitment of a large zoom control in its place, while the old zoom control location now hosts the slider to adjust shutter speed, aperture and to move up and down menus. The new layout is more intuitive to most people, however if you’ve spent significant time using the older S30-S50 models, some adjustment will be required.

Okay, so now to the meat of the review, how does the compare to the S60 in the one area that matters, image quality? Well, as a 7 megapixel camera, the image files themselves are considerably larger, averaging about 4MB compared to the 2.5MB of the S60 (and S50) images. I took pictures of a street scene and a rose under ambient light using both Canon’s old and new cameras (with the much-appreciated cooperation of my favorite local camera shop). We set up a tripod and kept all cameras on ISO 50 (street shot) and ISO 100 (macro shot), set to aperture priority and allowing the cameras’ metering to select the correct shutter speed to match an aperture of F8.0 on all cameras. Cameras compared were the old S50 and G3, then the new S60, S70 and G6 (see my review of the G6). We then plugged a Canon i960 printer into my Apple PowerBook and using theG6 as a card reader (all images were recorded on the same card) we printed one 8X10 of each image from each camera.

To compare the 7MP S70 and G6 against the 5MP S60/S50 and the 7MP G6 against the 4MP G3, we cropped the central 20% of the street shots and printed at 8X10, simulating a much larger print (don’t ask me to do the math, I was a history major).

The results were pretty much what I expected them to be, with two surprises. First off, the 5 megapixel images were all equally sharp and even blown up showed very little grain. Likewise, the 7MP images were sharper still, and examining them under a 3X loupe, which revealed pixilation in the 5MP images, remained clean and natural-looking at 7MP. Now I’ve made beautiful 16”X20” enlargements from my 5MP S50 and many beautiful 11”X14” enlargements from the 4MP G3 and grain was never a problem. To get that sort of image size, however, I had keep cropping to an absolute minimum. The 7MP cameras will allow considerably large prints, or perhaps more importantly, give far more freedom to crop at the common 11X14 and 16X20 sizes.

So what were the surprises? Well, the new 7MP sensor is the same size as the old 4 and 5MP sensors. When the 5MP S50 and G5 were released, many users complained about increased noise in their pictures. I don’t know if it was the sensor itself, or the processing in the camera, but the new 7MP cameras have less noise than the 5MP models from last year (or this year’s S60). In fact, the 7MP S70 and G6 images appeared a bit snappier than those from the 4MP G3, which is widely regarded as one of the best digital cameras of any resolution. Comparisons for noise were made on the macro shots at 8X10, which were shot against a black background that emphasizes sensor noise. The G3 shots had extremely low noise even in the ISO 100 macro shots, but the S50 and S60 images revealed noticeable noise (grain) in the black background. The S70 and G6 were clean and natural, with the background even revealing the texture of the construction paper, something the G3 failed to do.

In short, I consider the 7MP sensor of the new S70 and G6 to be a significant upgraded to last year’s 5MP sensors. In fact, I was so impressed with the image quality, that the question isn’t whether or not to buy a 7MP digital camera , but rather WHICH one to buy as I cannot afford to replace both my G3 and S50.

The 7MP sensor makes a lot of sense in the larger G-series camera with its advanced controls and fast lens, however the compact S-series are more likely to be with you, and thus will probably see more use. In the end, it is a difficult decision that I’ve not yet made. Even the economics aren’t significantly different as both the S50 and G3 are valued within $100 of each other on the used market, while the S70 and G6 sell new for within $100 of each other. Either upgrade will cost about $150-$200 after selling the old one.

In the end, I give the new S70 my highest recommendation for a camera of this type. It is fast, easy to use, extremely versatile, and produces images of such spectacular quality that you will be simply amazed. If you want a small camera to carry with you everywhere, you cannot do any better.