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Canon PowerShot S500 Review
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Review
Date: Apr 1, 2004 |
Image Quality
The
Canon PowerShot S500 Digital Elph is a
digital camera targeted to point-and-shoot photographers.
It takes excellent images in Auto mode, though
for the image samples, I used the "Manual"
mode almost exclusively. On the Canon S500, the
"Manual" mode is really a misnomer,
and should be renamed to Program AE or something
else.
The
image sensor in the Canon S500 is a 1/1.8 in.
CCD with 5 megapixels crammed in. Quality of the
lens is excellent.
We debut a Photo Gallery with a built-in slide
show feature. This should allow those still on
dial-up to view the image samples more easily.
Note that the 640x480 samples are reduced to High
quality (60/100). Click on any image to view the
original size.
Most
of the images in the Photo Gallery are original
versions, unretouched, to show the kind of images
you can get straight out of the camera. But, we
have also elected to present some of the images
that we have adjusted in Photoshop Elements.
Digital
post-processing is such an integral part of digital
photography that we want to also show what you
can do even when sometimes a picture does not
quite come out of the camera the way you thought
you saw it and took it. Many beginners visit photo
galleries on the Internet and wonder at the beautiful
images thinking they are straight out of the camera
-- not realizing that most of them are post-processed
in Photoshop or some other image editing software.
Where we have adjusted an image in Photoshop Elements,
we have appended "adjusted" to the file
name. Our post-processing is limited to Levels...
where we either brighten or darken an image slightly.
No sharpening or other effect have been applied,
unless specifically noted.
The pictures on this page provide a good sample
of what the Canon S500 is capable of. I have provided
samples at 800x600 size. Please open and download
the original size version only if you need to
and only once to your hard drive -- and
save me some precious bandwidth. Thanks!
The
Canon PowerShot S500 Digital Elph produces superb
pictures in Auto or "Manual" mode. I
like the inclusion of a histogram
in Playback mode to help judge whether a picture
is under- or over-exposed at a glance. I only
wish the weather was better up here in Toronto.
I will add to this gallery if the weather cooperates
in the next few days.
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