Canon PowerShot S100 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 5x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Silver)

Below is an email that I have just received from Canon weeks after registering my camera on their website. ****************************************************** Dear Michael, This service notification e-mail contains important information about your Canon PowerShot S100. Please note that product service announcement e-mails contain advisory or informational content that may be critical to the proper operation of your product, including safety, update, and instructional messages. Please carefully review the information in this e-mail as it relates to your Canon product. Thank you for using Canon products. It has been confirmed that some PowerShot S100 digital cameras encounter a lens error caused by a disconnected part inside the camera. This announcement conveys the details of the issue and Canon's service policy for affected cameras. Canon continuously strives to provide our customers with high quality, reliable products that can be used with confidence. We offer our sincerest apologies to any customers who have been inconvenienced. Phenomenon Some PowerShot S100 units (with the serial numbers listed below) may encounter a lens error due to a part becoming disconnected inside the lens. In particular, this lens error may occur when the camera is used in certain environmental conditions such as high temperature and/or humidity. Affected Product: Some PowerShot S100 Digital Cameras within the following serial number range: The first and second digits of the camera's serial number are any number from "29" through "41". For example: "29xxxxxxxxxx", "30xxxxxxxxxx"........."41xxxxxxxxxx" (The [x] characters shown above represent the remaining characters of the product's serial number.) Market Support Affected products that exhibit this phenomenon will be repaired free of charge, regardless of the warranty status, if it is confirmed that the lens error has been caused by disconnection of the part inside the lens. However, please note that affected products which are received by Canon after their service period ends (the period during which such products are expected to be serviceable), will no longer be eligible for free repair service and will be handled in accordance with Canon's then general repair standards and regulations Support This information is for residents of the United States and Puerto Rico only. If you do not reside in the USA or Puerto Rico, please contact the Canon Customer Support Center in your region. Thank you, Customer Support Operations Canon U.S.A., Inc. Contact Information for Inquiries: Canon Customer Support Center Phone: 1-800-OK-CANON (toll free) 1-800-652-2666 TTD: 1-866-251-3752 (toll free) E-mail: [email protected] For additional support options:[...] ****************************************************************** I luckily received a camera with a serial number that should be unaffected by the lens errors some others are having. I am really liking my camera so far so I have no reason to give it anything other than 5 stars. I know my way around the manual settings of this camera, but I am far from a professional so I will hold off on a lengthy review. The programmable control ring really makes the manual settings easily changeable. Between the control ring and the sleek black color, its obvious you've got yourself something a little more substantial than a digital Elph. This camera just does everything it is supposed to do very well. The 5x zoom is inadequate for long distance shots, but that is not what this camera is for. If you are interested in carrying a compact digital camera with all the major settings of your DSLR, this is a great option. I think this camera makes a great compact alternative and companion to a DSLR because it is easily pocketable and has great manual settings. I recommend that you register your camera on Canon's website immediately because it guarantees you support and has provided me with this useful information that I would not have known otherwise. I plan on updating this review. UPDATE #1 In every way, I have found this camera to be a vast improvement over my previous compact digital camera, a 10.1MP Powershot ELPH SD88IS, however; it is not without issues. Notably, the battery life is very poor when the default GPS mode is active. I could not tell you exactly how many shots I have been able to get per charge, but it has been noticeably less than I would expect. I already ordered a backup battery and am considering toggling the GPS as I need it. This battery is the same basic battery that was in my 4-5 year old Elph. I think it is time Canon looks at updating these NB5L batteries. In addition, while the image quality for day shots is tremendous, I was not overly impressed shooting with a tripod at night. I could not get more than a few half decent shots of a full moon for the life of me. Despite my best efforts, I was having issues with exposure and focus. I found underexposing and bracketing the focus to make for the best shots. Reviewer Sheraz A. Choudhary states "NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHERS: a major con for me is that the s100 is locked to ISO80 for shutter speeds over 1sec. May not matter to most people but I loved shooting 15sec ISO400 shots with my s90." This certainly did not help me either. It was a real pain to see ISO80 keep flashing up as I slowed my shutter speed. If you are mainly concerned with shooting close range shots at night, you wont have a problem, but shooting stunning nighttime nature shots seems to be an issue. Neither one of these issues is a real deal-breaker for me, but I have mentally subtracted a half star off this camera and well, I'd kind of like to get my hands on the Sony DSC-RX100. Because it is almost $300 more expensive, I still feel good about my purchase of this camera.

並行輸入品ということだが、 画面表示は、メニュー操作で日本語に切り替えられるし、 取扱説明書もメーカーのＨＰからダウンロードすることができるので 何の問題も無い。 基本性能は定評通り素晴らしい。 しかし、高級機は実際手にした時に判るものだ。 手にした瞬間に高級のオーラが伝わってくる。 コンパクトながらがっちりとした造り、ずっしりとした感触 シルバーならではのメカニックな手触りは、まさに快感だ・・・。 手にする喜びが味わえる。 ポケットに忍ばせて毎日持ち歩けるこの幸せを、あなたも感じてほしい。

I am a professional photographer tired of never having a camera handy for fun family and pet moments. My nephew, an electrical engineer, meanwhile has been taking great shots with an S95. He found that camera after exhaustive research. Anyway, he convinced me to buy a S100 and while it is about as much as I would want to spend for a little camera, it really delivers. In biz, I use Nikon exclusively so I am a little slow getting on to the Canon menus and buttons but by and large this is exactly what I wanted.

日本語の使用説明書がなく，何故かネット上にもこの機種の使用説明書ＰＤＦが見つからないのが残念です。 似たような機種の使用説明書ＰＤＦで対応してますが，，，

I suppose that I am "late to the party" regarding the Canon PS S100. The S110 is already out as its replacement, and it is, of course, a fine camera. The time finally came to replace my venerable Digital Elph S50, and I did an enormous amount of research trying to decide what to replace it with for my "pocketable" walk-around camera. I tend to prefer Nikon for SLRs and Canon for small cameras (both are excellent), and my research continued to support the notion that Canon is right at the forefront for small cameras. Many recent reviewers have concentrated their reviews on comparing the S110 and the S100. I mostly will not. Since I have been absent from the small camera market scene for seven years, this review will instead mostly dwell on the improvements of the S100 over the earlier models, which observations I hope that someone will find useful. Very briefly, with respect to the excellent S110, for me the deciding factor in favor of the S100 are the analog controls and the non-presence of a touchscreen. Ergonomically I like the big shutter button and the all-analog controls of the S100. I tend to find touchscreen control of a camera non-intuitive; perhaps I am just a product of the baby-boomer generation. To further date myself, I miss the optical viewfinder that used to be standard on cameras of this class. Like almost all of its competition, the S100 uses the rear LCD as an electronic viewfinder. This is the wave of the future and the S100 is no exception. I am adapting. Examining the S100 I can see that Canon has improved much over the earlier generation of cameras. The first thing I am going to comment upon is the image quality -- it is very, very good. Almost astounding, in fact for a camera of this size. Digital SLRs of a decade ago would be hard-pressed to take on the S100. Somehow Canon has squeezed a lot of performance out of the relatively small lens on the S100; partly due to its excellent sensor. This camera will effortlessly produce excellent images even under difficult light conditions. The image stabilization ("IS") feature (together with this camera's excellent high ISO performance) made it possible for me to take reasonably sharp photos of nighttime Christmas lights, which is something my older pocket cameras could never accomplish to my satisfaction. The next improvement that I found pleasing on the S100 is the user interface. It is very intuitive. Canon has knocked most or all of the rough edges off of its interface. I found it very easy to quickly adapt to it, which was not true of my earlier Canon circa 2002. The AUTO function allows the user to be taking pictures right out of the box in a matter of minutes. The "P" (Program) mode has many more features but nevertheless is easy to figure out and master. To my surprise both aperture and speed priority settings are right there on the top control dial, so users who wish to really control their photos, e.g. depth of field or action blurring shots, will be at home with this camera. My final main observation concerning the S100 is its amazing feature set. As noted above, it features both Program, Aperture, and Focus-priority settings. Like a full-blown SLR it allows center-weighted metering, "evaluative" metering, and spot metering. It has a variety of different focusing modes. It also has scene settings mode and a "filter effects" mode which allows a number of interesting effects such as B&W, sepia, vivid colors, and other effects. This camera allows the photographer to approach his or her shooting in a variety of different ways, and you really have to work at it to produce poor pictures with this camera. The AUTO or Scene settings will allow the shooter to let the camera make most of the decisions or, alternatively, the camera allows about as much flexibility as an SLR camera. Using a 32GB SD card the S100 will take approximately 10,000 photos, depending upon whether the shooter elects to shoot RAW, JPEG, or RAW+JPEG. Pretty amazing considering that only a decade or so ago we were all shooting 36 images on film and then paying ten dollars to get it developed so that we could see how our pictures turned out. There is no reason other than backup to worry about one's images on any vacation with this camera. I elected to go with the black version of the S100 and I am well-pleased with it. The black looks very snappy and professional. The aluminum body has a nice anti-skid texture that is very pleasing to the eyes and to the touch, and there is a rubber grip on the front that further aids in gripping the camera. The one issue as far as handling is concerned is that I do occasionally find my left hand blocking the pop-up flash at times. You have to watch that with this camera. Another nit: there is no recess or protective lip for the beautiful LCD viewfinder on the back of this camera. Buying one of the after-market protective products is an absolute must if you wish to avoid scratching this screen. Many are available and I recommend that users buy one at the same time as buying this camera. Last nit: this camera is a bit of a battery hog. Buying a spare battery is a good idea. A must, in fact, for the serious photographer. The camera features a 24-120 zoom lens that is F 2.0 when wide open. The lens becomes slower as you zoom in which is an inevitable trade-off for the smaller lens, but still, this is a fast lens for a camera of this class. Experienced users will know that to take good portrait shots a little zooming in from 24mm is a good idea; otherwise human subjects will be distorted. But for landscapes and other tight shots, 24mm is very nice to have. Canon has packed a lot of performance and features into the S100 and things have improved a lot since the last time I looked at the "pocketable" digital camera market. RJB.