Slow cumbersome camera takes great wide-angle shots

It's a good thing babies look cute, because otherwise very few people would put up with the little crying, temperamental suckers.

With this camera, I have a very similar reaction. It's a good thing it takes beautiful wide-angle pictures, because otherwise its fussy little annoyances would make me want to throw it against the pavement.

In fact, if you are considering this camera, I suggest looking at the S80 instead, Canon's newer and faster upgrade . However, the S80 is costlier, and some of its improvements aren't as large as I would like - e.g. focus speed is still only average, and the movie mode actually has MORE aliasing artifacts at VGA resolution than the S60, despite its higher framerate. So in lieu of the Canon line, I also recommend looking at the Ricoh Caplio R3, which is faster and has twice the zoom. If you've never heard of it, it's quite an interesting camera, though it's not for everyone, as it needs more tweaking than the Canons to get the best images. You can read my thoughts on the Ricoh here: http://www.epinions.com/content_217558847108

The Canon S60's pictures are good because of the high quality wide angle lens, the 1/1.8" sensor which is 20% larger than most digicams, and the very good metering, white balance, and in-camera noise reduction. Unlike other cameras, I never have to worry about white balance outdoors.

Unfortunately, this camera has many ergonomic problems that make it difficult to get spontaneous shots. These include slow startup speed, below-average battery life, proprietary battery, cumbersome on-off switch mechanism, slow zooming rate, and difficulty of changing most settings, like ISO and white balance. All of these things make it hard to get quick spontaneous shots with this camera. Canon's new S80 has improved the overall speed, as well as the buttons and settings, but still has the cumbersome on-off sliding door, and its focus speed is still only average.

For further details on the S60, see below:

PROS:

1. The wide angle (28mm equivalent) is awesome indoors, helping you take photos without having to back into walls, and outdoors where you can get sweeping views of scenery and architecture. Only a few other pocket digicams have such a wide lens, including the Fuji models F510, and several Ricoh Caplio models (R2, R3, GX8 and GRd). Reviews of the Fuji suggest that its lens is rather soft, and the Ricoh models are hard to buy in the US, although they are otherwise very interesting cameras, particluarly the R3 which I also own.

2. Superb image quality. Color is exceptionally good. Colors are pleasantly saturated without looking cartoonish, and this is one of the few cameras which consistently takes images that I consider breathtakingly beautiful. The metering is very good, and it is particularly good at handling contrasty scenes without blowing out highlights. The automatic white balance is excellent outdoors, but has trouble (like most cameras) indoors.

3. The optical viewfinder. Many cameras don't have one, but this one does. This is handy in bright sunlight when the LCD is hard to see.

4. Pocketability. This camera is somewhat heavy, but still fits into my shirt pockets. Except for the Fuji and Ricoh offerings, it's smaller than other wide-angle cameras like the Olympus wide zooms, Nikon 5400, or Minolta A1/A2/A200.

CONS:

1. The camera is SLOOOOW. It is slow to start up, slow to turn off, slow to zoom from wide to telephoto, slow to focus, slow to write to the memory card, and slow to play back images. I've missed many shots because I couldn't get the camera turned on, or zoomed, or focused, in time.

2. Gigantic sliding door contraption. Turning on the camera requires sliding a gigantic door that covers half the front side of the camera - this requires a large hand motion that can't be done with a flick of a finger, again contributing to the slow feeling. Turning off the camera is also a cumbersome two-step process. You have to first push the door a couple of millimeters until it bumps against the lens, then wait for the lens to retract (takes a few seconds) before you can finally close the door the rest of the way. Ironically, the two-step turnoff motion also makes it paradoxically easy to turn off the camera by accident, as it only takes a small push to bump the door against the lens.

No other Canon digicam is this cumbersome ... what were they thinking?

3. Battery life is below average. If I avoid the flash and movie modes, I get about 300 pictures per charge, which is OK but less than Panasonic and Sony cameras in this size and price range, and much less than my Ricoh R3, which gives me over 500 shots/charge. Furthermore, if I use the movie mode, the battery life goes down drastically. Even a couple of minutes of movies seem to drain the battery substantially.

4. Cumbersome ISO handling. Although sometimes I have to use the flash, I usually prefer to avoid it when possible, because the flash makes pictures look harsh and artificial. However, the camera does not make this easy. If I try to take a non-flash picture in low light, the camera will often select a slow shutter and low ISO, rather than a faster shutter and a higher ISO. The result is very blurry pictures. When I manually select an ISO of 200, things get much better. But the whole point of "auto" ISO is that the camera should automatically bump up the ISO when needed. The Canon doesn't seem to do this very well.

Unfortunately, the ISO is not easy to change manually. You first have to turn on the "function" menu, then scroll down to the ISO menu, then scroll rightwards to get the ISO you want. The S80 appears to have fixed this with a dedicated ISO button.

5. The movie mode has nice VGA resolution, but only 15 frames/second, which is quite choppy.

Despite its shortcomings, I used this camera a lot due to its wide angle lens and high quality. But found myself cursing this camera a lot as I used it. Recently I got a Caplio R3, and have switched to using that camera instead, because of its smaller size, better battery life, better zoom, and faster operation.

Other reviews
I have tried several cameras in my quest for the perfect travel digicam. You can see my reviews at the links below, which are sorted in order of my preferences:

Ricoh Caplio R3 - wonderful 7x zoom, small size, very good outdoor image quality, but build quality not so robust.
http://www.epinions.com/content_217558847108

Canon S60 - nice wide angle, but extremely slow camera and mediocre battery life.
http://www.epinions.com/content_184597712516

Sony DSC-S40 - smallest size and takes AA batteries. Has wider-than-average 32mm, but still not wide enough.
http://www.epinions.com/content_180326272644

Panasonic LZ2 - long zoom and AA batteries are nice, but not the strange colors, and overly aggressive noise-reduction.
http://www.epinions.com/content_182222098052