Tag Archives: mark bolton

Clifton Suspension Bridge

Yesterday I bought a new Canon s95 compact camera to replace the Olympus EP1 that I’d had since last year.   I have a full range of ‘proper’ Canon kit for my main work (interiors, gardens, hotels, lifestyle work for editorial and commercial clients) but I am rarely without a smaller compact camera to get those unplanned ‘extras’ that seem to sell so well with my agents.  Great for snaps of friends and family too.  I never really got on with the Olympus… various reasons, but what it came down to was the fact that I felt it wasn’t quite as ‘pocketable’ as I required.

The Olympus was a bit too big, especially with the cute little viewfinder which slips into the hot-shoe… not comfortable in the the jeans pockets!.  It produced good digital files, but not any better than the Canon G10 I used to have.  The EP1 is not in the same group of cameras as this Canon (its has interchangeable lenses and uses a bigger sensor for a start), but I’m comparing them for the purpose of this quick review.  So, onto Ebay it went, and a week later I am proud possessor of canon’s new compact, the S95.  This is a quick ‘first impression’ of the camera, not a detailed breakdown, and whilst I include a couple of shots taken on the first day of having it, I can’t pretend to know enough about lens testing and the scientific side of things to make it an exhaustive test.

It’s smart and neat looking with a nice ‘brushed’ finish that is good for the grip, and the screen is huge, filling virtually the whole of the back of the camera.  And the screen is very bright and contrasty, which helps in bright light. The camera is nice and weighty, and feels solid.  Its also very small… ideal for what I need (especially in comparison to the Olympus) and the lens fold back into the chunky front ring.  If I have a small gripe, its ‘smallness’ can be a little fiddly… the top dials are very small and were difficult on a cold day.

Otherwise the controls are all easy to get to, either through the menu system, which is very familiar to Canon users, or through the adjustment ring around the lens.  The default mode for this ring is to adjust aperture, but this can also be set to any of a number of different modes… ISO, exposure compensation, manual focus etc.  Its a really nice touch and in contrast to the top plate dial, is chunky and easy to grip.

I took the camera out for a quick road-trip (down to our famous local landmark, the Clifton Suspension Bridge) and the results were good.  I shot RAW as usual, and used Lightroom to process the resultant pics.  As I say, I’m not here to do a scientific test, but I’ve used enough cameras to see that the results are really positive.  There was a little bit of ‘fringeing’ at the edges on a couple of backlit subjects, right at the edge (easy to sort out with Lightroom), but apart from that, the images were sharp and contrasty, with good detail. I used a nifty piece of software (PTGui) to stitch some of the images together to do this panorama, and then used a ‘Black and White’ preset in Lightroom to make this image.

Clifton Suspension Bridge

I have yet to try any of the ‘auto’ settings (I do a lot of snapping, friends, family, parties etc), and I haven’t tried the flash yet, but will post some results when I do. So far, I’m very impressed and look forward to some better weather (its raining today!) so that I can try out the macro features down on my allotment!

There is a lot more info here, from the best camera review site, DPReview…