Canon s90 ISO test, ACR 5.6rc1 test, etc.

[kirkt]

I just picked up an s90 with the idea that I could show up at events like my daughter's 2nd grade Halloween parade without wielding a bazooka and feeling a little awkward. This camera is really quite nice, in the day that I have had it and taken the obligatory pictures of an assembled jumble of stuff on the kitchen counter. I hope to take a picture of my first duck with it soon.

In any case, Canon have made a nice step back from the megapixel brink and increased the IQ and noise performance in this little fella to the point where I am impressed and looking forward to putting this puppy through its paces. It is not a 5D with L glass, but it takes remarkably admirable images and fits in the palm of your hand. I was looking at the G11 and the similar advanced P&S, but found a super informative review of the G11 on kenrockwell.com that pointed out that the s90 is the same thing, a lot smaller, with f/2.0 to boot.

Here is a smugmug gallery of the test shot I made:

http://kirkt.smugmug.com/Photography...36859284_P7yMu

The scene is lit by a ceiling-mounted, diffused, daylight-balanced fluorescent tube lamp in the center of the kitchen ceiling. I shot RAW and click WB'ed off of the Lastolite gray target. In ACR 5.6rc1, the s90 has beta support, and does a nice job with the beta Neutral profile. I applied the default NR, some capture sharpening, default tone and linear tone curve. Brought each image from ACR into PSCS4 as 16 bit, aRGB.

In PSCS4, did an Auto-Tone, +25 vibrance/+25 saturation, and a Smart Sharpen 70%, radius 0.8, remove Lens Blur. I took the 100% crop from this file, at the original resolution (3648x2736). Then I reduced the file to 1024x768 for this forum, bicubic sharper. I did not perform any output sharpening, so the images are slightly soft. Because I did no NR other than the default in ACR, the noise that was present in RAW was sharpened in the Smart Sharpen stage. For the images posted here, I converted to sRGB, 8bit and embedded the sRGB profile.

I shot in Manual, fixed aperture of f/5.6, and adjusted the shutter speed to get the proper exposure for each change in ISO. I used the camera evaluative metering. I shot ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200. I mounted the s90 on a Kirk BH-1 ballhead, Gitzo tripod. I used the 2 second timer to make sure I was not touching the camera during image capture. I turned off the OIS system.

Here is an example at ISO 100:


Scene - ISO 100



100% crop - ISO 100

Here is ISO 800:


Scene - ISO 800


100% crop - ISO 800


And here is ISO 3200:


Scene - ISO 3200


100% crop - ISO 3200

Pretty impressive. This was a test of both the new camera and the new ACR support for it, and so far, so good. I will shoot some more images and post them when I get a chance. I'll also run the RAWs through DPP and then treat them in CS4 and post the results to compare ACR beta for the s90 with Canon's.

Kirk

[tim]

ISO800's pretty impressive for a little camera, but 3200 isn't so good.

[ChasP505]

I appreciate the report as I'm personally shopping for a camera of this type and my company is looking for a compact camera to recommend to our real estate agents. It must have a fairly deep wide angle capability.

[kirkt]

Tim - the above image at 3200 had no NR applied, so take it for what it is worth. I will attempt to massage a NR'ed image out of the 3200 data and see how useable it can be. For a palm-sized P&S I think it does a pretty nice job - of course you aren't going to get that action shot in a dimly lit gym or from the back of the church during a wedding, but it gives one a lot of flexibility nonetheless. Also, there is a hyper-whacked-out mode where the image resolution is reduced and ISO is 12800 - a special "Scene" mode for taking pictures of someone blowing out birthday candles in a darkened room. I can imagine that that mode is software/processing driven and clearly not a native ISO.

Chas P - The camera is listed as 6.0 - 22.5mm f/2.0 - 4.9. (equivalent to 28-105mm.) - min aperture at all focal lengths is f/8. There is distortion correction performed on-board in JPEG mode, or in RAW conversion. Interestingly, ACR 5.5 does not perform the distortion correction due to lack of s90 support, so you can actually get some funky effects by passing the images through RAW conversion software that does not correct the distortion automatically.

Another interesting mode is "Stitch" mode - I am not very familiar with Canon's P&S cameras, so maybe this is not new. Stitch mode is an aid for shooting multiple image panos. In Stitch mode, you start at one end of the pano, taking your first shot. The camera will then fix the exposure/WB for the subsequent shots and prompt you to take the next shot. In the LCD, the previous shot will be displayed with a live view next to it, so that you can visually position your next shot to overlap with previous. Again, not something that you are going to use all of the time, but nifty and useful, especially for handheld panos.

One thing that is not mentioned at all here is the controls that the s90 has to get to various functions quickly. In addition to a dial on the back of the camera and the menu system, the camera has a ring on the body, around the lens where it exits the body. The ring can be set up to dial in aperture, shutter speed, ISO, manual focus (yes, the s90 has manual focus and focus bracketing), etc. Pretty convenient - you can assign the function of the ring to whatever you would like, it is pretty customizable. It also has 2 custom modes (C1 and C2) on the shooting mode dial that can be used to access user stored shooting configurations. So, you set up the camera the way you want and then register those settings to one of the two custom slots and you can return to that combination of settings quickly.

I am sure there are a lot of other nifty features I have yet to uncover, but I get the sense Canon took a lot of user feedback into consideration when designing this camera. Although, the AEB is still +/- 2 stops.....

Kirk

[Electric Shepherd]

Wow, that ISO 800 shot is pretty impressive. Whilst I'd take Ken Rockwell's opinion with a large pinch of salt, he looks to be on the money with this one.

Looks like our P&S might have to suddenly stop working for one reason or another

[kirkt]

Originally Posted by Electric Shepherd

Wow, that ISO 800 shot is pretty impressive. Whilst I'd take Ken Rockwell's opinion with a large pinch of salt, he looks to be on the money with this one.

Yes to all of the above. I read and examined a lot of test shots and opinions before plunking down the $ for the camera, mainly centered around the G11, the Lumix LX3 and the Sigma DP2. Each had their own pluses and minuses, but I tended toward Canon. I take all reviews with a grain of salt, as I use this camera I will post my experiences with it so you can take mine with a grain of salt too. The noise at 800 is evident but not ugly - some might say pleasing and film like.

Originally Posted by Electric Shepherd

Looks like our P&S might have to suddenly stop working for one reason or another

Ha!

Kirk

[kirkt]

So here is the above ISO 3200 test, run through DPP, neutral, with the automatically set NR values (DPP set them) and sharpening at level 5 in the RAW panel. I turned down the luminance NR setting to preserve detail, to about 6 out of 20.

I exported as 16 bit TIFF, brought the file into PSCS4, applied Neat Image's default NR profile after auto profiling in the uniform gray area in the Lastolite target. Then I applied the same adjustments as outlined above, took a 100% crop, then reduced the file to 1024x768 as above.


^^^ Non-NR'ed ISO 3200 image (from first post)


^^^ Scene - ISO 3200 DPP + Neat Image + PSCS4

Link: http://kirkt.smugmug.com/Photography...37594224_P6Hpu



^^^ 100% crop - ISO 3200

Link: http://kirkt.smugmug.com/Photography...37594190_orUgg

This is a serviceable image, in my opinion. It was well exposed, so the noise is controllable.

Pretty cool. More to come - DPP images with 100% crops.

Kirk

EDIT - I forgot to crop the 100% crop to 800x800 pixels.

[tim]

Pretty impressive for a little camera!

[kirkt]

Here are some late afternoon daylight shots with flash - in manual mode. Telephoto and macro. Nice to be able to meter for ambient and adjust flash power and camera distance to get the correct balance.

ISO 80 - 200, handheld. ACR 5.6rc1, neutral profile with some sharpening and image size reduction in PSCS4 (1024x768 ).

For anyone who has ever worked on a Series Land Rover, these images are for you....

Kirk


^^ f/8, ISO 80, 1/40 sec - fill flash was a little harsh - too much power!



^^ f/4. ISO 80, 1/30 sec - better fill ratio



^^ f/4, ISO 200, 1/125 sec - MACRO mode - I think I forgot to WB this one in ACR



^^ f/4, ISO 200, 1/250 sec - MACRO mode

[tim]

Quite amazing from such a wee camera