Canon PowerShot S90

Fantastic, fully capable point and shoot designed for the beginner through to professional – Point and shoots are a dime a dozen these days, and there are a range of compact digital cameras for under a hundred bucks, which take none too great photos. Then there's the $100 - $200 range. If you shop around, you can get a great little camera for this price, if you're not completely fussed on perfect colour saturation, or diverse manual controls etc. These still take what is essentially a snapshot of life to keep as an eternal memory (barring a hard drive disaster with no backup!).

Then there's the Canon S series. This review of the S90 is from a non professional point of view, although if looking for something to complement your D/SLR then this should be a worthy consideration. With 3.8 x optical, 4 x digital zoom, 10MP, excellent OIS tech (image stabilisation), 3" LCD screen, RAW and JPEG modes, SD Video (sorry, no HD here) with 30fps real time capture frame rate, and a solid feel in the hand, this is a wonderful piece of kit.

My most important requirement...shutter lag. The f2.0 wide angle lens reduces this to near instantaneous capture. You may find a little whilst shooting in RAW but pre-focusing corrects this most, if not all of the time.

My second most important requirement...low light capture. I shoot about 70/30 indoor/outdoor with my compacts and over the years I have come to experience that flashes designed into most compacts are lacking. The S90's flash is not the greatest, meaning that although it does the trick, it tends to give a certain harshness to the image, and there's an issue with the flash mechanism which i'll highlight below. However, the wide angle lens allows about twice as much light in than your standard compact digicam, and most of my indoor shots are blur free with natural tones which i'm happy with.

Plenty of manual controls which can be operated by the jog dial on the rear, or by using the focus/control ring on the front to change ISO, aperture, shutter, exposure etc. There is a shortcut button which can also be used to program a bunch of quick, at hand settings. Macro mode works a treat, and there's a bunch of theme settings included, which to be honest I don't use, so can't comment.

Although no HD recording, the video recording capability is still excellent. Audio is captured well, and playback seems quite smooth to me. Downsides are no HD, and no autofocus and only digital zoom whilst recording. This may very well be a dealbreaker for some, in which you can check out the S95/100, but are going to be paying the premium for.

My only gripe? The flash. If you're used to holding the camera with index fingers on top, thumbs underneath, if/when the flash pops up you will be surprised as it hits your left index finger. This can be avoided by learning to hold the camera differently, but takes some getting used to.

Quite simply, this camera does all of what the average snapper would want in a point and shoot, and most of what someone with more experience would want to achieve. Highly recommended. Crisp photos. Minimal shutter lag. Great in low light. Plethora of manual controls. No HD video recording. Flash mechanism potentially an issue.

A great little camera – Over 95 % of my shots came out brilliant the other 5% I stuffed up. This camera can easily be stashed away in one of my pockets. The videos taken from this camera were pretty ordinary. The battery life is average. Full manual control, Can easily set for point and shoot function, Very sturdy and reliable, Takes great pictures even in low lights. made in Japan If you don't to like to fiddle around with it controls, its not for you. The videos were only in 4 x 3 aspect and there is no auto-focus.