Canon PowerShot S110 Digital Camera Review

Motion

It's probably an understatement to say that we were pleasantly surprised by the video performance we saw from the Canon S110. Both it and the Canon G15 were capable of some very sharp, very smooth video in our test labs. Our motion rig, in particular, looked great in bright light, with very little image degradation. More on how CamcorderInfo tests motion.

Video Sharpness

The sharpness results were also quite promising, with 650 line widths per picture height of vertical sharpness and 625 horizontal. When perfectly still the camera could exceed that, but any movement and the image tended to suffer from increased moire and artifacting, limiting sharpness. More on how CamcorderInfo tests video sharpness.

In low light the S110's sharpness performance dipped slightly horizontally, though it stayed at 650 lw/ph horizontal sharpness. The biggest issue seemed to be the increased noise due to the auto ISO kicking up, which reduced sharpness significantly. We did note that moire was practically nonexistant in low light, however.

Low Light Sensitivity

Rather surprisingly, the Canon S110 produced exceptional results in our low light sensitivity test. We found it was able to produce an image reaching 50 IRE on a waveform monitor (a standard broadcast measure of brightness) with a target illuminated to just 4 lux of light. That's territory typically reserved for DSLRs with much larger image sensors, and it's quite impressive given how compact the S110 is.