| Design | | Personally I loved the design of the Powershot S80. It’s bulky compared to the Canon Ixus and slightly heavier but I like to be able to feel the camera I’m holding. Canon has gone for a black and silver colour scheme. Covering the lens at the front of the digital camera Canon have opted for the very fashionable glossy black which TV companies seem to like so much at the moment. The gloss makes it a magnet for fingerprints, but that’s not something that personally bothers me, a quick wipe on your trousers and they disappear. Turn the camera around and at the back you’ve got a 2.5 inch LCD, the wheeled menu dial, the play, a self-timer button and print button (we’ll talk about this later). There’s also an easy to use zoom. On the side you’ll find a dial for all the different modes including AV, TV, manual and auto as well as a covered AV out port and USB slot. And at the bottom, hidden away is a home for the battery and SD card. | | Setup/Installation | | It’s recommended you charge the battery up for at least four hours before using it. Once you’ve put the battery and SD card in you’re ready to switch the machine on. The camera will take you through a few functions to set the date and time and also the language you’d like the instructions in. As soon as you’ve done this you’re set to start snapping. | | Features | | Here we have a top of the range 8 megapixel digital camera that’s perfect for a slightly more advanced photographer. It’s fine if you’re looking for a point and shoot camera but even better if you want to experiment a bit. To select the shooting mode you want you simply turn the dial on the side of the camera. The modes include Program AE, AV, TV, manual and there’s a custom mode which saves your specific settings. You can select from 12 scene modes using the SCN including fireworks, underwater, foliage and snow, a stitch mode that works well for combining shots into a panorama, movie and My Colour which allows you to fiddle with colours. Behind the front cover is a 3.6x wide optical zoom (f/2.8-to-f/5.3, 28mm-to-100mm) lens, a red eye flash and a normal flash. You can take XGA movies at 640x480 pixels and 30 frames per second (fps), and the less common 1,024x768-pixel mode, at 15fps and it comes with a 9-point AiAF and FlexZone AF/EA. There’s three exposure modes include a spot mode for more precise control and a well-designed evaluative mode and a noise-reduction algorithm for exposures longer than 1.3 seconds. Oh and it works underwater and has its own white balance for it. | | Performance | | I really liked this camera. It was easy to use and is full of great little tricks. For example I particularly liked the print function. Attach your USB cable, click the print button and the camera communicates to the printer and starts printing your selected photos. The panorama mode works a treat – take a photo and it appears in a split box so you can line up the next shot. In the past it’s all been guess work, now it’s simple. The menu wheel feels good when you’re rotating it, allowing you to move from one option to the next seamlessly and it’s all been laid out so everything is self explanatory. The menu functions also show up on the screen in big, easy to read letters meaning you can shoot and change functions at the same time. It takes no time for the camera to jump into action and the Digic II processor provides excellent images. The only thing we stumbled over was how to switch the Canon Powershot S80 off. Finally we worked out it was by covering the lens and pressing the play button. | | What's In The Box? | | Canon PowerShot S80 digital camera, wrist strap, battery pack NB-2LH, battery terminal cap, battery charger, AC/AV cable, interface cable, SD Memory Card, user manual. | | Overall Opinion | | As long as you don’t mind a camera that is slightly bulkier than the trendy IXUS range, you’ll love the Canon Powershot S80 digital camera. It’s full of neat little tricks and produces great images without any hassle. The camera has been designed with simplicity in mind and because it works on a basic level and advanced level it’s the ideal camera for the whole family. |
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The S80 is a excellenta camera but its a
bit on the bulky side.
Good 3.6x Optical Zoom
We loved the way the jog wheel is
used to chose the cameras settings.
The S80 uses popular SD cards
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