The Canon PowerShot S500 is compact, but pretty heavy for its size as it has durable metal body and the battery is not light either. The lens is flush with the camera body when the camera is powered off and extends when the camera is powered on. There is no external lens cap - the doors over the lens open automatically.
You will need a sturdy pocket to carry it or opt for a camera case, because the camera is on the heavy side. The back of the camera has the 1.5-inch LCD screen, menu (and other) control buttons and an optical viewfinder (with no diopter adjustment, surprisingly).
There is a rotary mode dial there as well and it is pretty difficult to operate. It requires way too much effort to rotate and does not provide much grip. The back also houses the switch between the shooting mode and preview mode. I like this approach (a separate switches for camera modes and the shoot/preview switch).
Lens
The S500 features a lens with 3x optical zoom (36-108 mm in 35-mm equivalent) with maximum aperture of f/2.8 (wide) and f/4.9 (telephoto). The wide angle of 36mm (35-mm equivalent) is pretty typical for the point-and-shoot models, although I wish it could go lower.
The zooming is a bit noisy and slow (and feels slightly imprecise to boot), at least comparing to Panasonic FZ cameras or Canon's own USM-equipped zooms (e.g. Canon S1 IS). But this camera is compact and generally less expensive, so it is difficult to expect too much.
The shutter speeds are 1/2,000-15 sec. using combination mechanical+electronic shutter.
The focusing distance is 1.5 ft (46 cm) to infinity in normal mode or 2 inches to 1.5 feet (5-46 cm) in Macro mode.
LCD
The camera has a fixed (non-rotating) 1.5-inch LCD screen on the back panel. The main complaint I have with it is its visibility in general. The visibility in sunlight is good, but to achieve this, the overall visibility was sacrificed. To be able to see shadow detail, you have to hold the camera at a specific angle (90 degrees).
The more you deviate from this angle, the less detail you see. Obviously, it is a tradeoff - if you want to see well in sunlight, you cannot see well at an angle other than 90 degrees and vice versa. And since the camera has optical viewfinder and the LCD is the only place you can see camera information (camera mode and indicators), it was probably the right decision, but it is pretty annoying nonetheless.
Additionally, the numerous icons on the LCD take up a lot of useful screen space and do so in a manner that bothers me much more than how Panasonic or Olympus cameras do.
Viewfinder
The S500's optical viewfinder can be used to conserve the battery power (if you switch the LCD off). Unfortunately, the viewfinder does not show the useful information about the camera's current state and mode and you cannot see where the camera focuses. I find that the LCD is more convenient to use as well.
Controls
The camera is powered on and off by pushing and holding the small Power button on the top deck (next to the larger shutter release button). The main rotary control switch lets you switch it between modes and the sliding switch on the back panel switches it between shooting and review modes.
The S500's controls have pretty hefty feel to them. The rotary mode dial doesn't provide much grip and exhibits too much resistance to rotation. The zoom control takes too much effort as well. This, combined with the slightly slow and noisy zoom that doesn't stop immediately, gives controls imprecise feel. There is no comparison with precise zoom, main control switch and shutter release feel of the Panasonic FZ series cameras.
Additionally, the menu system is the least easy to use menus I have seen in a while. It is especially disappointing to see this menu system after using Panasonic cameras, where menus are very intuitive and easy to use. This camera's menus seem designed for a person who will read the manual first and will have no problem memorizing how to do different tasks.
I have never read the manual and still was able to use the camera and adjust various settings through its menus, but it was more annoying than doing the same with many other cameras and the process was more error-prone.
Flexibility
The camera provides excellent flexibility for its small size. In fact, some of its flexibility seems a bit of an overkill. For example, there are 12 different combination of resolution and compression settings. You can combine Super Fine, Fine or Standard JPEG compression with any of the camera's picture resolutions: 2,592x1,944 (Large), 2048x1536 (Medium2), 1,600x1,200 (Medium2) and 640x480 (Small). This changes the quality and resolution of the resultant pictures along with the number of pictures you can fit on the Compact Flash (CF) card.
As far as metering goes, the S500 lets you select between Evaluative, Center-weighted average and Spot metering. You can adjust exposure compensation +/- 2EV in 1/3EV steps increments.
It may be useful to know that Canon uses pretty conservative ISO ratings and the ISO 50 on this camera has sensitivity similar to ISO 100 of many other manufacturers, which is a good thing since the noise levels are pretty low in relation to the "adjusted ISO". The ISO can be set to Auto, 50, 100, 200 and 400. The white balance (WB) can be set to automatic, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H or Custom (using white or gray card).
You also can select so-called Photo Effect Modes: Vivid (high contrast and color saturation), Neutral (lower contrast and saturation), Low Sharpening (use lower sharpening than normal), B/W and Sepia.
In the Box
You get the camera itself, 3Mb CF memory card, battery and charger, USB cable, A/V cable, camera strap, CD-ROMs with software and manuals.
Media
The camera uses Compact Flash memory cards, which is larger than SD Cards or xD-Picture cards, but feel more sturdy (the 32-Megabyte card is included). The number of pictures you can fit on the supplied card grows from 11 at highest resolution and lowest compression to 337 at 640x480 in normal mode. But you can get a card of larger capacity pretty cheaply now - less than $50 for a 512-Mb card.
Computer Connectivity
Keep in mind that you will need to use the CD-ROM provided with the camera to install the USB driver. Although recent Panasonic and Olympus cameras were instantly recognized my Windows 2000 computer, surprisingly Canon wasn't. You have to install the USB driver.
Battery
The S500 uses a proprietary rechargeable NB-1LH Li-Ion battery, which is supplied along with a charger for it. The charger lets you charge the battery outside the camera.
Performance
The S500 is pretty fast in operation and the focusing was slow only in dim environments when the subjects were too far for the autofocus assist illuminator to reach. Such situations are rare and the focusing was generally fast. You can switch the 9-point auto focus off (it favors subjects in close proximity) and use auto focusing using the brackets in the center of the frame.
During prefocusing, the LCD freezes for an instant, but it is not troubling enough to be a drawback.
One interesting feature/quirk was the fact that the camera doesn't have the pre-programmed scene modes, but has 3 different modes for different focusing situations (normal, macro and landscape). Landscape, for instance, when activated, displays an icon that looks like mountain on the LCD (upper row of icons) and is well-suited for landscapes as it focuses to infinity (I believe the focus locks on hyperfocal distance, giving you wide depth of field).
There is no dedicated portrait mode, however, or slow synch, night portrait or sports mode. It is strange that Canon with all their expertise did not include such an, easy to implement, feature.
The camera can use slow shutter speeds (you have to use the tripod, of course) and uses noise reduction at shutter speeds between 1.3 and 15 seconds.
The flash is on the weak side and its proximity to the optical axis of the lens causes red-eye problems. The shutter lag is virtually unnoticeable when pre-focused. The photos have pleasing colors and excellent sharpness and contrast. In auto white balance mode, some photos of people taken with the built-in flash were too bluish, but it was easy to correct in Photoshop.
The lens exhibits slight vignetting at wide angle and maximum aperture (f/2.8) - the corners of the picture are slightly darker than the center. I have seen this (vignetting at wide angle and maximum aperture) on many cameras and lenses. It is not extremely visible or annoying and only happens when there is not enough light and camera has to use its widest aperture.
When viewed at full resolution, you can see slight purple fringing (chromatic aberrations) around subjects that have bright background behind them (e.g. bright sky). The same purple fringing can be seen on the photos taken by the similar Canon S410 (example: click here to see a photo I took with Canon S410 and look at the roof of the building in lower right corner). It is pretty minor and is not seen on the photos once they are printed.
Histogram
In the review mode, you can see the histogram if the photos taken by pressing DISP button. Although there is no live histogram, the histogram during the review is useful when assessing exposure.
Overall Ease of Use
Aside from uncooperative, force requiring, controls and the less than intuitive menus, the camera is easy to use. The controls are well spaced and located where you wxpect to find them.
A useful feature of this camera is that it understands how the camera is oriented during the shooting and saves the files with the EXIF tag for the proper orientation. For example, if you are shooting holding the camera vertically, the images (JPEG files) will have an EXIF tag set to vertical orientation and once you open them on your computer, you don't have to rotate them to see them vertically. It works in many programs (it worked even in my old ACDSee version 2.0 as well as in newer ACDSee 6.0).
The camera also shows you where it currently focuses by displaying a green rectangle over one of the 9 autofocus points.
Pros
Compact size,
Sturdy metal case and controls,
Good LCD visibility in sunlight,
Good photo quality with pleasing colors and generally good auto focus and exposure,
Automatic photo rotation,
Useful features,
Easy to use as a point-and-shoot.
Uses inexpensive CompactFlash cards,
5-Megapixel resolution,
Conservative ISO ratings with low noise, comparing to competition.
Why, Canon, Why?
And the cons are:
LCD visibility at angles of view other than 90 degrees,
Too much force is required to operate the camera's controls,
Main mode switch, in addition to being difficult to rotate, doesn't have enough grip,
Strangely arranged menu system,
No pre-programmed modes aside from Macro, Landscape and Normal (not even Portrait or Sports),
Weak flash,
Heavy case,
No diopter adjustment for the optical viewfinder,
Imprecise, noisy zooming .
Bottom Line
The Canon PowerShot S500 is a sturdy and capable camera in a compact body. It has many useful features and produces very good images. Aside from some questionable ergonomics and user interface issues, it is a good choice.
Recommended
Yes
(above average)