4 The Canon PowerShot S90 is a high-end point & shoot camera that takes great photos and provides great manual controls for serious shooters. The video it captures is not particularly impressive, though.
In terms of the specs of the two products, the Panasonic ZS3 is the top pick: it has a longer zoom (12x against the 3.8x of the Canon) and shoots HD video. But a camera is about more than specs, and the competition between the two is much closer in terms of how they perform. We found that the Canon was the superior performer in terms of the noise and resolution; the images it captured had lower noise and more detail. The Panasonic had slightly better color performance, though, and their image stabilization system was superior to the Canon, producing sharper shots at our tested shutter speed of 1/30 of a second.
The Canon S90 was the easier camera to use; the combination of the front control wheel and the control dial on the back of the camera made it much quicker to switch modes and change settings like the shutter speed, and the dial around the lens has an undeniable retro charm.
One area where the Panasonic clearly excels is in shooting movies: it records video at a much higher resolution with better detail, color and smoother movement. So if you are looking for a combination still and video device, the Panasonic is the best choice. But if you focus more on still images, the two cameras are very evenly matched.
