Canon Powershot S90 Review Indoor Crops

Canon Powershot S90

Indoor ISO Cropped Images

Here are sample crops from an artificially-lit scene at each of the Canon Powershot S90's ISO settings. Next to each of these crops, there is a crop from the Fuji Finepix F200 EXR at the same ISO setting. This is the flagship Fuji ultra-compact which currently produces the best image quality of any fixed lens camera. Both these have manual controls and stabilized wide-angle lenses. Images below are all unmodified 100% crops from their respective cameras. The ISO sensitivity and white-balance were set on camera, the remaining settings were left on automatic or on their default values. These crops help determine which ISO settings can be acceptably used on these cameras. As noise increases, most cameras compensate with noise reduction which introduces softness. The result is that, while you can partly reduce noise at the expense of details, the maximum acceptable print size gets smaller as ISO is increased. The point at which a print become unacceptably noisy is a matter of personal taste.
Canon Powershot S90	Fuji Finepix F200 EXR
ISO 80
ISO 100	ISO 100
ISO 200	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 800
ISO 1600	ISO 1600
ISO 3200	ISO 3200
With the Powershot S90 and G11, Canon took a bold step to reduce the resolution of their flagship cameras from 14 to 10 megapixels. This is exactly where it pays off. For the first time, an ultra-compact is getting close in ISO performance to a Fuji F-series camera. Although the Canon Powershot S90 still appears about one step behind the Fuji Finepix F200EXR, considering the compromise between details retention and noise reduction, the S90's ace is an F2 lens which can shoot up to one stop faster than the Fuji's. This means that in a given situation, the Canon can match the F200EXR's output quality more or less. It is worth noting that the G11 does not feature such a fast lens.	ISO 6400
There is more to image quality than image noise, which we can observe from the crops above. These shots are all done using custom white-balance it shows that the Fuji can deliver better color accuracy. When using AWB though, the Canon's system is more reliable though, so when left on their own the S90 will generally have better color accuracy. Detail retention is better on the Fuji as well.	ISO 12800