Alan Stafford

Canon PowerShot S40

Canon continues to set the pace for high-quality camera-body construction. Like the Canon PowerShot S110, the PowerShot S40 has a handsome, finely machined aluminum body that makes the camera feel more substantial than most other digital cameras. An aluminum panel covers and protects the lens; when you slide it open, the camera turns on and the 3X lens extends. A rechargeable battery and a compact stand-alone charger with fold-out electrical prongs instead of a cord saves space. The S40 takes outstanding pictures, too. In our taste tests, our judges gave it the best rating of all the cameras we've tested to date. It reproduced colors faithfully, getting the navy-blue blouse on our model just right, and distinguished red from orange as well as any camera we've yet seen. The camera puts its 4-megapixel CCD to good use: A cropped, magnified image allowed us to read tiny text (though it introduced a bit of color in narrow vertical bars). A slew of high-end features help the camera address almost any photographic situation. It offers several program modes, plus manual mode, aperture- and shutter-priority modes, and a usable movie mode (with sound). You can append audio notes to images, too. An on-board histogram shows you the light levels in an image, and it blinks to show overexposed areas. Even more useful: In some modes, the camera gives you three boxes in a row across the screen; selecting one of them forces the camera to focus based on what's in that portion of the screen. As with most cameras, not all of the advanced features work in all modes, but the documentation includes a matrix showing which features work with which modes. This is a complicated camera, but the documentation explains it quite well, with lots of illustrations and images.
Some of the S40's controls seem more stylish than functional. A tiny button on the front of the heavy, squarish body--where you can't see it--controls the zoom, while a much larger button on the back of the camera (placed where many other models locate their zooms) operates the menus. The rear button rocks left, right, up, and down (useful for navigating menus), but to select an option, you must push squarely in the middle of the button, which we couldn't seem to do reliably. For the most part, however, the camera's many controls are split up rather well between the menus and various buttons, so you don't gave to dig around in the menus to select every little function. We also had trouble getting the LED indicators down: This camera uses three LEDs, two near the optical viewfinder and one next to the power switch to indicate that it has set the focus and exposure, plus other status information. But the various combinations of flashing lights and different colors will have you holding the camera in one hand and the manual in another. For example, one of the indicators will shine green when the camera's ready to record an image, flash green if it's recording to the CompactFlash card, glow orange when it's ready to record and make the flash go off, and flash orange when it's ready to record but wants to warn you about camera shake. At the same time, the lower indicator (3 millimeters below the first one) will shine yellow when in macro or manual focus mode--even though the main LCD display shows those too--and it will flash yellow when the camera's having difficulty focusing. The power button will shine orange, green, or yellow, indicating still more operations. Furthermore, the auto-focus region selector in the LCD will shine green or orange to indicate the focus is locked or not, respectively. Other cameras do just fine with one LED and one or two colors. In our tests, the S40 took 173 shots, or only an hour of shooting time--low for the over-$500 cameras we've seen, and half that of the Canon PowerShot G2. You might want a second battery, but the proprietary NB-2L that the S40 uses costs about $70--ouch!
The S40 can capture images in a 30-bit RAW file instead of the uncompressed TIFF format that many other cameras offer. RAW files are about a fourth the size of a TIFF, and according to Canon, are compressed, but can regain all the information typically lost during compression, unlike JPEG images. The higher bit depth also should result in better color, especially in shadows. You must use an included application to convert the image from the RAW format into a TIFF that an image application can use. Doing so is easy, but after examining several RAW images side-by-side with JPEGs, we saw little difference. Canon's photo-stitching mode, which helps you line up images as you shoot for later assembly in software, has more features in this camera than in less-expensive Canon models--in addition to horizontal stitching, you can line up vertical and even four-up layouts. If you're hesitant about spending $599 on the S40, consider the PowerShot S30--it's nearly identical, but with a 3.3-megapixel CCD and a $499 price tag.
Learning how to use the fairly pricey PowerShot S40 (and to work around its quirks) can take some time, but its impressive pictures and case design make it worth the investment.

Buying Information

Canon PowerShot S40 4.1 megapixels, 2272 by 1704 maximum resolution, 35mm-105mm focal range (35mm equivalent), f2.8 to f8 aperture range, shutter speeds from 15 seconds to 1/1000 second, optical and LCD viewfinders, USB and video connections, 16MB CompactFlash media, one rechargeable lithium ion battery, 11.1 ounces with batteries; PhotoRecord, ZoomBrowser EX, PhotoStitch software. One-year parts and labor warranty, toll-call support for 11 hours on weekdays. $ 599 4.1 megapixels, 2272 by 1704 maximum resolution, 35mm-105mm focal range (35mm equivalent), f2.8 to f8 aperture range, shutter speeds from 15 seconds to 1/1000 second, optical and LCD viewfinders, USB and video connections, 16MB CompactFlash media, one rechargeable lithium ion battery, 11.1 ounces with batteries; PhotoRecord, ZoomBrowser EX, PhotoStitch software. One-year parts and labor warranty, toll-call support for 11 hours on weekdays. http://www.powershot.com 800/652-2666