Canon Releases New Line of Digital Cameras

Canon just announced their new lineup of digital cameras today. Two in particular caught my eye. First is the pocketable PowerShot S90. Apparently, this uses the same high-sensitivity sensor as the new G11 with most of the same features -- only in a much smaller form factor.

I thought Canon's new G11 pro point-and-shoot—decked out with everything but HD video, depressingly—would make me drool the most, but I was wrong: Canon's pocketable pro point-and-shoot, the S90 is fapfreakintastic.

The design is exactly what I want in a high end point-and-shoot—it's svelte, but not too puny, and the black metal finish feels sturdy, without the whole thing feeling like a little brick. (I hope you like black, since it comes in black and...black.) It really manages to achieve that zen balance level between feeling professional and consumer, though it makes me want to run around shooting only in black and white. What slew me, though, was the clicky control ring around the lens, which you can use to adjust almost any setting—it can change the ISO, focus or zoom. As you know, real gadget people love dials and gauges things that actually click and feel like they actually control things in this age of silent squeegee presses on glass screens, and it taps into that pretty hard.

I almost don't know why you'd even go for the G11 with the S90 on the table—the S90 uses the same high sensitivity sensor, meaning you should get the same kind of image and low-light performance, which I can't wait to check out in depth, since Canon's using the same size sensor as the G10 used to use, but actually cut the megapixels down to get better light sensitivity. The S90 also has a fast F/2.0 lens, and it's not the size of a gorilla fist. Did I mention it was cheaper too? $430 to the G11's $500.

The only real problem I see right now is that it doesn't shoot HD video, just standard VGA. But if it shoots truly gorgeous pictures—which we intend to find out shortly—I can let that go.

The S90 sounds like a perfect camera for travel.



The other is the new PowerShot G11. It improves upon the G10 by decreasing the resolution (yes, this is actually an improvement), reintroducing the swivel LCD display, and still uses the same 28-140mm equivalent zoom lens.

Both of these cameras look like real winners. I'm particularly pleased to see Canon reduce the megapixel resolution in the G series and focus on lower-resolution sensors with less noise and greater sensitivity.

Read about the rest of Canon's new lineup here.