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Manual Control Options
The Canon PowerShot S3 IS is stacked with plenty of manual control options. Not only does it have manual adjustments for the shutter speed and aperture, it offers custom white balance and manual focus. A shortcut button on the camera’s back accesses one of the following frequently used settings: Resolution, Rec. Pixels/Frame rate for movies, Light Metering, White Balance, My Colors, IS Mode, AE Lock, AF Lock, Display Off, and Create Folder. The manual controls still don’t work the way they would on a DSLR – there is no jog dial to scroll through shutter speeds or focus ring on the lens to manually focus – but they are on the Canon S3 in some form.
Focus
Auto Focus – Using a through-the-lens auto focus system, the Canon PowerShot S3 is generally quick to focus. It takes a little longer in low light, when it shoots out a green auto focus assist beam (if activated in the setup menu). Options in auto focus mode include single or continuous control with a point fixed in the center as well as a movable focus point. The Set button fixes the focal point, which shows up as a green box on the screen that can move to 273 different spots around the frame. A bracketing option in the Function lets users snap three shots – one at the current focal position, one closer, and one farther away. The Canon S3 also has an AE Lock function that users can access by pushing the shutter release halfway, then pushing the ISO button to lock the focus so they can compose the shot without refocusing. This is a little non-intuitive, but is a nice feature nonetheless. Overall, the auto focus system is quick and reliable.
Manual Focus – Don’t expect the manual focus feature to be so quick or reliable. It takes a while to adjust; users have to push down the MF button on the left side of the lens while scrolling up and down with the multi-selector. This makes handling difficult. The display options on the Canon S3 don’t help either. The viewfinder has awful resolution, as does the 2-inch, 115k pixel LCD screen. Both displays look pixilated and make manual focusing nearly impossible – even with a magnified central view, which is available in the setup menu. It is nice to have the manual focus option for the rare occasion when the auto focus simply can’t focus through the front window, but the function itself isn’t very easy to use.
Exposure
The Canon PowerShot S3 IS lets users control the exposure with manual, priority, and program modes. Users who would rather leave the exposure up to the camera will also find plenty of automatic and scene modes – although the +/- 2 exposure compensation scale is available, in 1/3 increments. Exposure bracketing, grouped with the burst modes, is also available for those who can’t decide on an exposure value. For more advanced users, there is a live histogram available for checking exposure. However, it is difficult to use. The histogram itself is tiny; it is also colored white and is hard to see on light backgrounds.
Users can link the auto exposure to the center of the frame or the auto focus point in the recording menu. To ensure that users don’t mess pictures up with the priority modes, the Canon S3 has a Safety Shift function that automatically corrects the exposure; this feature can be turned on and off in the setup menu. As with other digital cameras, the exposure locks once the shutter release button is halfway down.
Metering
In the Function menu, users can pick and choose from the following standard metering choices: Evaluative, Center-weighted Average, and Spot. The first option is the camera’s default and uses multiple points around the frame to determine the exposure. Center-weighted uses only points in the center, while Spot meters from only one point. This point can be fixed to the center or linked with the auto focus point, which the Set button moves around the frame. With focus and proper exposure, this gives users plenty of flexibility, and could garner some cool effects for portraiture.
White Balance
The Function menu offers white balance options, keeping the icons at the left side and a large live view on the right side of the screen. The following options are available: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Flash, and Custom. Automatic mode looked fairly accurate in simple lighting indoors and outdoors, but a little off in mixed lighting, when the Custom setting comes in handy. The setting is easy to use: on-screen instructions direct users to push the Set button when they frame something white within the tiny central brackets on the frame. The white balance can be set in the manual, priority, and program modes – as well as the four scene modes located directly on the mode dial.
ISO
One of the biggest complaints about the PowerShot S2 was that it had a wimpy 50-400 sensitivity range. Canon addressed this by loading a 6-megapixel image sensor, which is optimized to handle higher sensitivities into the new S3. Thus the Canon PowerShot S3 IS has a wider 80-800 range. Manual options include 80, 100, 200, 400, and 800, and there are two automatic ISO options to boot; pushing the ISO button brings up all of these options. The S3 also has a standard Auto ISO setting, but couples it with a High ISO Auto mode, which extends the standard range so that beginners can get better pictures in limited lighting. This is a good move, because most automatic ranges hardly surpass 200 and therefore take awful pictures in low light. While the ISO range still isn’t as extensive as some of the Fujifilm cameras, it is definitely a big improvement over the S2’s.
Shutter Speed
The Canon PowerShot S3 IS has a wide shutter speed range of 15-1/3200th of a second, with 48 steps which can be manually set in the manual and shutter speed priority (Tv) modes. When users scroll through the range with the multi-selector, a live view makes the image brighter or darker.
Aperture
The live view also shows manual aperture adjustments. To make these, users must scroll right and left with the multi-selector. There are ten steps in the full aperture range, beginning with a maximum f/2.7 in the widest focal length and f/3.5 in the telephoto end of the lens. The smallest the aperture can go is f/8.
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