Canon PowerShot S80

Viewfinder (3.5)
The Canon PowerShot S80 has an optical zoom viewfinder, which is more and more becoming a rare artifact on a digital camera. Perhaps Canon included it to somehow highlight the camera’s hybrid capabilities. Either way, they didn't include it for its great quality because it really isn’t that effective. It is only 80 percent accurate, so the view doesn’t really show what is being captured in the picture. In the wide angle, photographers can see the lens in the bottom of the frame. The viewfinder crops the picture from the bottom and left edges, so carefully centering your subjects will be for naught. In the telephoto angle, the top of the view is cut off so your human portrait subjects will appear from the nose on down.

This horribly inaccurate viewfinder is protected by the sliding door on the front of the camera and is located to the top left of the lens when viewing the S80 from the front. The S80’s viewfinder can be used in dire emergencies when battery power is running low – and this may very well happen as the S80’s battery only gets 200 shots per charge. In such situations, users can turn off the LCD using the Disp. button. The viewfinder is located above the LCD on a little raised platform and it has two LEDs next to it. These light and flash various colors to indicate several different things that can only be translated with the help of the user manual.

LCD Screen (6.5)
The Canon PowerShot S80 has a 2.5-inch LCD screen that is framed on a raised platform on the back of the camera. The size of the screen is great, but its resolution is not. The screen is made up of only 115,000 pixels, which is half of what many competing models offer. Users can actually perceive individual green, blue and red dots as if they were looking at a Lichtenstein painting.

Still, the screen itself is pretty decent. It has wide viewing angles in both the horizontal and vertical directions, so users can take pictures above their heads, or at their hips, and still see the image being captured. It also has a 100 percent view of the captured image, far superior to the optical viewfinder’s 80 percent.

At the bottom right corner of the LCD monitor is a moon-shaped button labeled Disp. This button switches the view on the screen from plain view to a view with shooting info to a view with a histogram and to off. Canon’s older S70 had a 1.8-inch LCD screen, so the S80’s is definitely larger but its resolution isn’t as good. The S70 had 118,000 pixels on a smaller area and the S80 spreads 115,000 pixels over 2.5 inches. The surface of the screen is great, but not its resolution or imagery.

Flash (6.75)
The sliding lens cover protects the odd-shaped flash of the Canon S80. When opened, users can see the rectangular flash that has a rounded edge in the top right corner. The built-in flash has a decent range for its size. It can reach from 1.8-13.8 ft. in wide and 1.8-6.6 ft. in telephoto. The flash modes can be changed with the right portion of the multi-selector. Auto, On, Off and Slow Synchro modes are available.

There are plenty of other flash adjustments that can be made. The red-eye reduction can be turned on and off in the recording menu. There is a flash sync option in the recording menu that has 1st and 2nd curtain choices. The 1st curtain option is the default and fires the flash just after the shutter is opened. The 2nd curtain fires the flash just before the shutter closes. The Canon S80’s tiny flash can be adjusted in three steps when the Manual flash adjust setting is chosen. The lowest setting is good for macro shots because the automatic setting blows subjects out.

The S80 flash recharge time depends on the flash adjustment setting. When the flash is on full power, it takes a long ten seconds to recharge and fire for its next shot. Just one step down though, and it only takes about 3 seconds; a significant difference when time is of the essence. The lowest setting captures a shot about every two seconds.

The Canon PowerShot S80’s built-in flash is quite powerful for such a compact digital camera, but its power needs to be considered when shooting subjects that are nearby. As long as users remember to push the Func./Set button to adjust the flash setting, pictures should be well lit without blowing out. The flash lights subjects evenly, although the edges of the frame are a bit darker than the rest.

Zoom Lens (7.00)
The Canon S80 has a 3.6x optical zoom lens that uses UA lens technology to provide a 28-100mm range. The 28mm wide end of the lens is a wider view than what most cameras offer. A sacrifice is made, however, at the 100mm telephoto end, as most cameras reach to 114mm or so. The lens extends from the camera body in three segments – and does so noisily. The lens is humorously loud when starting up and zooming.

The zoom toggle looks like a light switch and is fairly sensitive. When tapped upward, there are eight steps from the widest to the most telephoto end of the zoom range. Tapping between these stops is a noisy process. As for the quality of the glass, there is some barrel distortion. This is common for compact digital cameras, but this is a bit much for a $549 model. The zoom lens has an aperture of f/2.8 in wide, which is great. However, the aperture shrinks to f/5.3 in telephoto – making tightly framed low light shots quite difficult.