(UPDATE) Canon releases the S90. A new Panasonic LX3 competitor?
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0908/09081907canons90.asp
Canon S90 Key Features
- Lens Control Ring
- 10 million pixels sensor
- RAW shooting
- Fast f/2.0-4.9 maximum aperture range
- Lens covering the classic 28-105mm range
- Dual Anti-Noise System (high sensitivity sensor and Digic 4 noise reduction)
- 3.0 inch PureColor II LCD
- Optical Image Stabilization
- Smarter Scene Detection
- Low Light mode
- DIGIC 4 image processor
- HD output
Amazon has it available for preorder only at $449.95
The LX3 has a far wider angle (24mm vs 28mm)Â but to me it seems the S90 could be a real LX3 competitor. Someone close to Panasonic told me today that we will not see any LX3 successor this year. Should I believe him? We will soon know it!
Which camera is better? Lots of discussios here:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1033&thread=32730540
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Recent comments
Comment from central squared: The variable aperture on the S90 is a bi...
Comment from AndersN: The camera with the movable pop-up flash...
Comment from Simon: aperture drop-off is huge towards the lo...
Comment from Libby: I noticed that pop up flash immediately....
Frank
3 years ago |Pity that the thing doesn’t have a m4/3 sensor, now THAT would be something !
Aaron
3 years ago |No hot shoe – that’s too bad. That’s part of what makes the g10 and lx3 such flexible cameras.
Frosti7
3 years ago |Since getting the plasma, i am not touching anything which is not at least 720p
Clayton O'Neill
3 years ago |The DPreview pages says it has a 1/1.7″ sensor vs 1/1.63″ for the LX3, so it’s competitive with the LX3 in sensor size.
marcram
3 years ago |Don’t forget the g11. SD video on that one too. Seems they really want people to buy their stills and camcorders separately. so happy with the ep1 purchase.
forester
3 years ago |first up. I own a Canon slr, but I want something small with great low light like the E-p1 ($900 is too much). it was suppose to be the G11 with a bigger sensor. funny, it’s specs looks like the S90 is closer to the LX3. Canon’s doing some weird things. maybe they have something like the E-p1 coming up. wink wink
as far as HD… Thinking that these tiny sensors in these cameras are giving you ‘real’ HD like a purpose built HD camera you are use to seeing on your plasma isn’t exactly right. a lower res camera with a bigger sensor will give you a much better picture than a tiny sensor with some processed out HD. these compact cameras take so much research to understand the details of their real numbers it could make your head spin.
forester
3 years ago |yes clayton, it’s close but the G11 lens is an F2.8. The LX3 and S90 has a F2… twice as much light.
marcram
3 years ago |Forgive me if I’m wrong, but most cannon consumer camcorders have small sensors also and get pretty good results with HD… see HV20, HF 10, etc. I really think they are making good products with handicaps in certain areas so that people buy the full range of products, i.e. professional camcorder, consumer camcorder, point and shoot, advanced point and shoot, slr. Before the e-p1, all I had was canon. I sold the G10 and HF10 to pay for the e-p1, so that I could get an all-in-one solution for my needs. Olympus had nothing to lose by providing good video. Panasonc did, I guess but figured there are few Panasonic-only followers. It will be interesting to see when Canon finally puts a standard HD format (not 20 fps) in a consumer-targeted still camera. I could have swarn it would have been in the G11, but guess I was wrong again with canon.
Libby
3 years ago |I noticed that pop up flash immediately. Now if they would just make it rotate some so you could bounce it up. There was a camera that did that, possibly film, but I can’t recall the model.
Simon
3 years ago |aperture drop-off is huge towards the long end. 4.9? So for low-light it’s wide-angle-only. I wonder if the pop-up flash automamically pops up anytime one turns the camera on – like the SX200 flash disturbingly does. Ah, well, did I mention there’s no HD video? No hotshoe?
Seems like Canon took all the right features, but then put parts of it in different cameras (G11 and S90) instead of all-in-one. Another marketing-crippled Canon cam.
AndersN
3 years ago |The camera with the movable pop-up flash was the Panasonic LC1/Leica Digilux 2, a 2/3″-sensor camera with a fixed 28-90mm (equivalent) F2.0-2.4 lens. (This isn’t quite as good as it sounds as the camera actually was larger than an E-P1 with the 14-42 lens attached.)
central squared
3 years ago |The variable aperture on the S90 is a big downer compared to the 2.0 to 2.8 on the LX3. Yeah, the S90 has a longer reach but 4.9 is really really slow. Maybe that’s why panasonic limited the lens…