Canon PowerShot S80

Manual Control Options
The Canon PowerShot S80 has plenty of manual controls, including the traditional aperture and shutter speed adjustments. Focus, white balance, ISO, and metering can also be manually set. If this is too intimidating for users, there are semi-automatic functions. There are shutter speed priority and aperture priority modes and an exposure compensation setting. Most of the exposure settings have live views; making the right selection a lot easier with live views to help. The S80 has lots of manual control but finding where it’s all located could take awhile.

Focus
Auto Focus (6.5)
The Canon PowerShot S80 has a slow zoom lens with a slow auto focus system. It works decently in low light, especially when it shoots out its orange AF assist beam. The through-the-lens AF system can operate for a single picture or continuously. The S80 can focus from 1.6 inches in the wide macro mode and 11.8 inches in the telephoto macro mode. In either macro setting, it can only focus to 1.4 ft. At that point, the normal auto focus system takes over and can focus to infinity. The camera focuses in the center of the frame as its default, but by selecting the Spot AE Point option in the shooting menu users can change the focus area. With this, users can scroll around the frame in 242 different areas and the camera will focus in the selected area.

Manual Focus (2.0)
The manual focus can be used by pushing the bottom of the multi-selector. A bar with distances (metric can be turned on or off in the setup menu) appears at the right side of the LCD screen and users move up and down the bar – and thus focus – using the rotary dial. In the setup menu, users can select the MF-Point Zoom feature that zooms in upon the center of the image. The good thing about this is that users can theoretically see a little better, although the screen resolution doesn’t complement this very well. Unfortunately, this limits users to focusing on subjects only in the center of the frame.

Metering (7.0)
In the manual, priority and programmed modes, users can select the metering mode. Evaluative, center weighted average and spot options are available. There is a live view when users scroll through the options, so choosing the correct mode isn’t difficult. In spot mode there are brackets to show exactly where the camera is measuring light from; the area is linked to the AF frame.

Exposure (7.5)
There are plenty of exposure modes on the Canon PowerShot S80. The following modes are located directly on the mode dial: Manual, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Programmed AE, Auto, Scene, My Colors, Stitch Assist, Movie and Custom. There are modes within modes as well. There are 12 scene modes within the Scene position on the mode dial. There are nine modes within the My Colors menu.

The exposure can be controlled manually with the shutter speed and aperture, or semi-automatically with the exposure compensation setting. This can be adjusted by the button to the top right of the multi-selector. The typical +/- 2 range is available in 1/3 step increments. When the adjustments are made, there is a live view. To further aid users, a live histogram is displayed when the Disp. button is pushed.

White Balance (7.75)
The white balance is quite easy to find with its location at the top of the Func./Set menu. Users then have access to the following options: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Flash, Underwater and Custom. The automatic white balance seemed to work okay except in low light, where it made pictures and videos with a slight warm hue. The custom setting works even better. The camera has on-screen prompts that make setting the white balance quite easy. The underwater white balance mode is intriguing but not especially useful in most shooting situations. When users scroll through the options, there is a live view here as well, which, again, makes selecting the right setting simple.

ISO (7.0)
The Canon PowerShot S80 has a standard ISO range of 50-400 that is very typical of compact models. There is also an automatic ISO setting available. The ISO cannot be changed in the recording menu or by pushing the Func./Set button. Instead, it can be accessed by pushing the top portion of the multi-selector. Doing this shows a live view of the selected ISO setting, which is very helpful.

Shutter Speed (7.5)
The Canon PowerShot S80 has a fairly standard shutter speed range from 15-1/2000th of a second. In the slower shutter speeds from 1.3-15 seconds, the camera automatically activates its noise reduction system. When users scroll through the shutter speeds with the rotary dial, there is a live view. Once the shutter speed is set, a push of the Jump button makes the dial rotate through aperture settings. Just a note: the fastest shutter speed is 1/1250th of a second, when the aperture is set at f/3.5 or wider.

Aperture (7.0)
The S80 has a Canon lens that offers a wide maximum aperture of f/2.8. This is at its widest focal length, though. Once the camera is zoomed to its telephoto end, the aperture shrinks to a disappointingly small f/5.3. Many compact lenses do much better than this. The minimum aperture throughout the entire range is f/8. The S80’s aperture is set with the rotary dial and the jump button and live views are available. The tiny aperture in telephoto means users will want to avoid zooming in low light.