Back in Sept 2011 I preordered a silver S100 from Amazon then ordered a black version in Nov in hopes of getting one of either color by Christmas. Both orders sat unfilled as Christmas approached so I put in a request for a silver S100 with B&H. After Christmas, B&H notified me that the silver version was in stock so I ordered one. Two days later Amazon notified me that they were sending my separate orders which I tried to cancel but was too late. I ended up with three S100's and briefly but carefully tested each one along with my S95 for low light performance (ISO 1600) and outside daylight image quality at ISO 200. Best quality jpgs were used in all tests. My particular tests used aperture priority with all lenses wide open at wide angle (24mm eqiv at f2.0 on the S100 and 28mm equiv at f2.0 on the S95) and wide open at extreme telephoto (120mm equiv at f5.9 on the S100 and 105mm equiv at f4.9 on the S95). ISO 1600 noise was slightly lower on the S100 photos but so was fine detail resolution even in the center of the frame, indicating that stronger low-pass noise filtering was being applied by the S100 compared with the S95. At high ISO the S100 with 12MP produced less detail than the S95 with 10MP.
Another observation for all photos taken at low and high ISO was that S100 image quality deteriorated significantly anywhere close to the frame edges for both the wide-open wide angle and telephoto settings tested. The S95 produced very slight degradation near the edges but was much sharper near the edges with the lens wide open than any of the three S100's. These observations did not require pixel peeping at 100% but were very obvious with the photos sized to about 8" x 10". Among the three S100's one of the cameras had worse image quality than the other two at both wide angle and telephoto. Of the two better S100's, one performed better at wide angle and the other performed better at telephoto. None of the three S100's provided images as sharp across the frame as the S95 with the lens wide open. Although the lens on the S95 does not zoom quite as wide nor quite as long as that on the S100 it is close (28mm vs 24mm and 105mm vs 120mm). The reason to "upgrade" to the S100 was my hope to get at least equal low ISO image quality from the S100 but with slightly wider and longer zoom range and perhaps better low light performance as well. In my opinion the S100 is not an upgrade at all but uses an inferior lens design to that of the S95 which results in much worse image quality near the edges of the frame. Further, slightly smoother ISO 1600 images of the S100 resulted from more aggressive reduction in image detail.
I was very disappointed in my results and ended up sending all three S100 cameras back for refunds with explanations included. My one star rating may seem harsh but this camera is being falsely hyped by Canon as an evolutionary improvement or upgrade to the older model S95. A one star review is more likely to be read by careful buyers. It may also be read by current happy owners of the S100, some of whom will be upset that their purchase is not being adequately validated. I wish that I had better things to say.
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Originally Posted by mineral
