Canon PowerShot S80 8 Megapixel Compact Camera - Compare Digital Camera and Accessory Prices

Washington, DC (20001)

$267.95

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Description:

PowerShot S80 perfectly embodies the compact design and superior handling that are the hallmarks of the S-series, and as the top model in the line, it's equipped to impress. The 8.0 Megapixel CCD and wide-angle, high performance lens ensure spectacular images, while the extra-large LCD screen makes shooting and playback easy and fun.

Quick Glance

Memory Type: Secure Digital (SD) Card, MultiMediaCard (MMC)

LCD Screen Size: 2.5 in

Camera Type: Compact Camera

Megapixels: 8 Megapixel

Lens Mount: Fixed

Optical Zoom: 3.6

Weight: 7.94

Summary

Product Title: Canon PowerShot S80 8 Megapixel Compact Camera

Manufacturer: Canon

Lowest Price: $259.00 from sunny beaches

Power Score: 4.2 | 35 Reviews

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Product Reviews (16)

Amazing Camera

Strengths: Wide Anlge Zoom, Great Picture Quality, Lot of Advance features which you won't find in other cameras in this category

Weakness: None

Very happy with this camera. 8 Megapixel combined with a Wide zoom lens make this a powerful performer. Has a sturdy body and is fairly compact for what it can do. The camera with its wide zoom lens lets you see alot more of the surroundings than the other cameras. Usually cameras that have a wide zoom lens are big and bulky and alot more expensive while this one fit a wide zoom lens in such a...
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By vibsan - Dec 4, 2005

The S80, other reviews, and reality

Strengths: This is a perfect camera

Weakness: Raw mode would be nice

When reading the other reviews you should consider what you are buying... A pocketable camera with many (raw mode would be nice) professional features. In addition, you get added functions to make a less than professional seem more like one. I've had an S30 (now passed on to my wife). This camera is a bit smaller, a tad heavier, and tons better. (Sure hope she doesn't see this.) I've also have...
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By mgshn - Dec 29, 2005

Stay away from Canon

Strengths: size

Weakness: reliability - lens locks and Canon wont stand behind Customer Service

STAY AWAY FROM CANON POWERSHOT PRODUCTS - I warn anyone against considering a purchase of any Canon Camera. I purchased a Powershot S80 camera for my son last Christmas. After the first few uses, the lens became locked in the out position. When I returned it to the Canon Factory for repair, they exchanged my camera for a refurbished camera WITHOUT TELLING ME. The first time my son used the...
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By Sarnold939 - Dec 8, 2006

Did the research and it all lead to the SD550 ... ohh then enter the S80

Strengths: easy to shoot for my wife, and has all of the advanced feature for me, quick to shoot while chasing the little ones, New Canon interface and thumb wheel controls are easy to use

Weakness: A little heavier than I expected

We were really set on either the SD500 or SD550. After researching and play with them in the stores, we were sure we wanted a Canon. My wife likes a simple point and shoot, but I wanted options and gadget settings. We are also trying to snap those quick picks of the little ones and wanted something that turned on fast and clicked away. We could not find this camera in the stores and took a chance...
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By fhervert - Nov 26, 2005

CanonS80 - good features, bad barrel effect

Strengths: Intuitive controls, many modes including the manual mode, fast picture taking and browsing, compact size.

Weakness: The barrel effect seriously distorting pictures. Also, grainy-looking images at ISO200 or higher.

The camera has excellent controls and menu system. I didn't have to read the manual at all to figure out how to operate all the modes and use all its features! This was my first digital camera ever (I used manual-mode film cameras before), but I felt like I have been using these controls for years. The wide angle lens plus small dimensions were the main reasons why I bought this camera. Other wide angle cameras are bulky - this camera could fit in the pocket in all my jeans, slacks, or the shirt pocket.

The main problem I found with the camera which was bad enough to return it to the store and pay the $40 restocking fee: the "barrel distortion" (fish-eye effect). It is hugely noticeable. It is sufficiently bad to consider images taken at the wide end of zoom unnatural, useless, and delete them. A straight vertical line, say, the corner or wall of a building, looks like an arch hanging from above. The door frame showed tilted to about 60 (!) degrees on the pictures, instead of the normal 90 degree-vertical. Only what's in the center of pictures looked correct. This problem is significant and makes pictures look unrealistic, even surrealistic. People who happened to be near the edges of the picture are recognizable, but look bizarre, as if their faces are stretched, or rather, flattened. So I found the camera was not practical for example to take a picture of a group of friends. True, the wide angle allows everyone to fit in the picture, but the picture taken is junk - people on the sides are so unnatural, it's embarrassing to show them these pictures. It is more practical to take two pictures with an average zoom with S80 or a cheap 36mm+ zoom camera and stitch them together in photoshop. I showed my pictures to a few friends, and they all exclaimed how weird or bad the pictures looked. My advice is to buy a non-wide angle compact camera instead of S80. I also learned not to trust sample pictures at a popular camera review site (dpreview).

The quality of pictures taken indoors was generally great, if the zoom was in the mid-range. I got some overexposure in the auto mode outdoors. The sky looked pale-white on the pictures, although it was blue in reality (the sun was setting behind my back and was blocked by a building, so it couldn't have caused this effect). I made the sky look right using the manual exposure mode, but at the cost of the objects on the ground looking little darker. The manual mode is very practical and gives the total control of the exposure of the picture. As I change ISO, aperture, or shutter speed, the brightness of the picture on LCD adjusts.

The video quality is definitely good. I recorded in a room with fluorescent lights in the Auto regime, and the quality was as good as outdoors. The parameters of the video file: PCM Audio, 11024Hz 88 kb/s (1 chnl); Motion JPEG video, 13847 kbs in the 640 x 480 mode. The video plays on any PC with Windows XP. The camera can zoom in during video recording, but this digital zoom results in an image that is very blocky and blurred. Playback volume coming from the camera's speaker is loud enough and can be changed. The sound is clear on a PC.

I'd say don't count on using the camera at 200 or 400 ISO. Pictures taken at 200ISO during the day had bad granulation of shady areas. That looked more like a jpeg compression artifact, although I took all my pictures at the highest quality settings. The same pictures taken with 50 or 100 ISO (with appropriate shutter speed adjustment) looked excellent without any artifacts.

Just a sidenote. My camera had two hot pixels (blue and pale white) in the CCD, which are visible on dark pictures even at 1/16 shutter speed at 100ISO, and a hot blue pixel on the LCD. One website recommended to replace a camera that has hotpixels at shutterspeeds less than 1 sec. BTW, the LCD is sufficiently good in terms of both size and resolution.

Card speed - I purchased a 133x SD card, and the camera worked very fast with it. It is possible that 66x (10MB/s) would have been fast enough. I could start taking pictures just a second after opening the front cover. When browsing pictures there is a very short delay between them, and it seemed faster than most cameras my friends use.

By arehaas - Feb 25, 2006

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