Canon PowerShot S2 IS

I have used this model from 2005-2009 and i love this family series. My wildlife pictures came out great, easy to lug around and it was so practical for me. One cannot expect it to produce the sharpness like a SLR, because it ain't a SLR!

The only drawback is that this model is now consuming a lot of battery power as this camera gets older. Therefore, it was time for me to upgrade.

Because I had good experiences with this camera, I have now upgraded to Canon Powershot SX1 IS and is great!

I will miss my Canon Powershot S2 IS and hope this camera will serve well to its next new owner.

The Canon PowerShot S2 IS is too complicated, accessories are expensive, PC interface software never worked (even after following Canon's VERY specific, and once again, complicated instructions). Finally ended up having to use a card reader to recover images. It finally quit working (won't aquire images) altogether after being stored for 6 months. I had only put a total of about 30 hours on the beast, taking less than 500 images, over the 3 years I have owned it. The reason I chose this product was because I have 2 Canon printers and an old A20 Powershot that still work well.

Would not recommend it. Dont buy it after reading rave reviews of those who have used it for only a few weeks. I used it extensively for more than 2 years and it let me down. I'd never buy a Canon digital camera again.

I've used my Canon Powershot S2 IS on holiday in Malaysia for the last month after swapping it for my newly bought Fuji s9500. It does almost all of what the Fuji does without the bulk, hence you can take it with you without feeling you're on a photo shoot. Best feature has to be the superb zoom ,fitted into a tiny space with a maximum aperture as wide as the Fuji's. Image stabilisation is a blessing and it works (within limits). The Fuji was really hard work at long focal lengths in anything but strong sunlight. Nice to hold, instant start up, minimal shutter lag but sometimes slow on focussing. Manual focussing is a bit cumbersome but can be achieved for the odd tricky shot. Brilliant macro mode. Once you're familiar with it, manual controls are surprisingly easy to use - I generally use the P (Program) mode in preference to auto, which sometimes seems to select an inappropriately low ISO in low light, leading to underexposure. Screen can be hard to see in sunlight but there's always the decent electronic viewfinder, which I found myself using by choice much of the time, I'm surprised to say - it seems more natural to do so.

I own a Sony DSC-H1 and won some money (not much so don`t spam me - lol), so I decided to buy a Canon PowerShot S2 IS digital camera as I wanted a camera with a swivel screen. I was most disappointed it did not have a live histogram, which is very important now I come to not have it. The screen is terrible to see in bright light, and I have no problems at all with the Sony. I also had both cameras out one day and took some pictures of a huge overhead crane. All the glass surround had chromatic aberration taken with the Canon, but those taken with the Sony at the same time, had none whatsoever. Picture quality is equal, apart from that I would say.

I have the hood and extender so I can use filters, but because of the way it is designed it causes vignetting at wide angles, which is not so with the superb Sony design. I don`t know what Canon was thinking of in that respect, and I see they have done it again with the S3.

I would not recommend this camera over the Sony on those major and very important points. I am marking features overall at zero as I think the lack of live histogram deserves that, especially from Canon, and there is still no live histogram on the S3.

I have been taking photographs for 50 years and have owned dozens of small and large format cameras. When I think of all the extra gear that I used to carry around to achieve the type of results that the Canon PowerShot produces; one cannot ask for much more. I take a lot of pictures of animals and birds and find that the 2.4fps mode to be very useful. I have a 2gb card so the 776 shots at SL quality is a decent quantity.

If I am taking night shots at full zoom, I usually set the self timer to 1 second which does help. The results with the image stabilizer on are always sharp. I have used all the facilities on the camera in the one month of ownership and have found them all to be very good, especially the "Swap Colours" and "Colour Accent" modes.

A set of batteries will last for over 500 shots before recharging and being AA's is a bonus. I have taken over 5000 pictures in the one month of ownership and have not found any faults. "MY LENSCAP DOES NOT FALL OFF!" which appears to happen with some users. Looking forward to many more years of use with this camera.

This is my first digital camera. I bought it because I needed a camera that powered off AA batteries and had a big zoom. With it I bought a 1Gb Sandisk Ultra II SD and 8 (2 sets) 2500mAH rechargeables. It is very satisfying to use and easy once you know your way round the standard digital camera controls.

Its rich feature set does mean that there are lots of options but for everyday operation the controls are readily at hand. I am very impressed with being able to use an equivalent 400mm+ zoom without tripod. On a 2 week holiday we took 170+ pics, a few minutes of video, some sound recordings and my son did lots of "playing" with it. One set of rechargeables lasted the 16 day duration with spare to review all the pics on the tv back home and there was plenty of space left in the memory. Downloading to the PC is quick and easy, taking only a couple of minutes for everything. I am using Windows XP, and I have not as yet installed any of the Canon supplied software.

There are similar cameras with a faster (and slower) response time but I found it fine, except when taking pictures of moving objects like car racing. The "half press" and some anticipation were a must and were made harder by the less than clear viewfinder. I also have fingerprints on the lense thanks to the annoying lense cap falling off.

Overall, I am absolutely thrilled with the camera and have no regrets for waiting for it to come onto market or its cost.

Canon PowerShot S2 IS - Great camera with too many features to list. Takes great photos in auto mode and can be used manually with fantastic results. High quality video and audio capture.

For a person like myself who has never owned a digital camera, this takes quite a bit of learning to use it proficiently. The lens is fantastic and zoom is great. I bought this camera to take shots of my kids playing sport and dancing performances. The healthy 12 times zoom performed magnificently and the optical image stabilization is fantastic.

I waited a long time for a special digital camera to come along, this Canon PowerShot S2 IS Digital Camera was worth the wait. Apart from the above mentioned bad points, this camera comes very highly recommended. There is nothing that it can't do well.