We really like the camera and are happy with the purchase

(Technical specs are at the end of this review. In the past, I've had other people tell me that my reviews lacked the technical info, so I'll include that info, but at the end.)

Our son was born in August and we finally admitted it was time to replace our one mega pixel Canon with a new camera. We'd been posting pictures to our website and printing some with so-so results, but when we started bringing some photos to the local Costco to print them at their lab we began to notice the limitations of our camera. We found this one on sale and the deal was too good to pass up.

I'll do my best to describe the camera but excuse me if I jump back and forth between topics that are somewhat related as they occur to me...

Neither of us is any more than an amateur photographer, but my wife has always wanted to learn more. I've taken some classes in college, but that was a long time ago - and basically I'm happy with "point and shoot" cameras. The s70 has the Auto button, which I like and the "creative zone" (as they call it in the owner's manual) for people like my wife that know how or want to learn to play with the camera's settings, such as Shutter Speed, Aperture Priority, Manual exposure, Manual Focus, Flash settings, and custom programming. Also to my liking are the Portrait, landscape, and night scene settings, each of which change the Auto settings according to the subject matter.

Since I am not able to explain the technical abilities of the camera, I'm just going to focus on what we've done so far and why we like the camera.

Right out of the box the battery only took a little over an hour to charge. The battery is the lithium ion type, so there should be no "memory effect" problems to contend with. The included memory card is only 32 megabytes. Our old camera used the same type of CF cards, so we had a few 64 meg cards lying around that we played with for a week before buying larger cards that we found on sale online.

We installed all the software the camera came with, which included software for organizing and editing the photos you take. No problems so far, but nothing special in that department. A nice feature, though, is that you can tell it what to do when you connect the camera to the usb cable. In my case I've set it up to automatically download all new photos to a folder of my choice, and to automatically create subfolders based on the date (year and month) and file names that also conform to date. That's pretty neat. Next, the program opens and I highlight the new folder, select all photos and choose export. I export all the photos to a temp directory, changing them to .jpgs at Medium quality, 640 by 480, that are suitable for uploading to our website. The end photos are approximately 75k (and they start out approximately 3.5 - 4 megs each!). All this takes under a minute for about 12 photos, which is the usual batch size I upload.

The 32 meg card the camera came with will only hold 8 or 9 photos at the highest quality setting of 3072 x 2304. We purchased a 512 mb card that yields about 160 photos at that setting.

There's probably really no reason for us to take the photos at that setting because our printer cannot print that high and we are not even sure if the equipment at the local Costco takes advantage of it, but since hard drive space is readily available and since we can burn our own backup cd's we figured it'll be better to save the photos at the highest setting in case future printer technology demands higher quality we'll be ready. Also, in case we ever want to print a photo larger than 8x10, we'll be able to do so with no loss in quality.

The camera takes photos very quickly. Our last camera took approximately 3 seconds from the moment we pressed the button until the picture was taken. This camera is basically instantaneous. Even at the highest setting, the camera is that fast. And, there's a "fast shutter" for fast action, "slow shutter" for making objects blurred, and "continuous shooting" setting that will allow you to take a couple photos per second.

We've done a lot of video clips with the camera, too. We've been using medium quality (320 by 240) to shoot video of our son for our website, and the quality is just fine. We've even taken some of those clips and included them on a dvd we burned of our home movies and the quality was just fine. There was a definite difference in the motion and the "feel" of the video clips, but they were acceptable. For the website, they were perfect.

At the medium quality you get about 90 seconds on the 32 meg card and up to about 15 minutes (1453 Seconds) on a 512 mb card, but I think the limit per clip is 3 minutes. At the highest setting (640 by 480) you would get 45 seconds on 32 megs and about 12 minutes on a 512 mb card. At 160 by 120 (low setting) you can get 241 seconds on a 32 meg card and 3906 seconds (65 minutes) on a 512 mb card.

The dial is easy to understand and you can quickly move from one setting to another without problems. Also, the other function buttons are easily accessible and their functions and menus are logically presented. If you're in Auto mode, you cannot change the iso, aperature, etc. settings. But, if you're in a 'creative' mode, you can see more choices in the menus.

There's a timer setting that's nice because you can set it to take the photo at 2 or 10 seconds. This way you can get into the photo, too!

The door to the battery and the memory card is smooth and easy to open and close. There are clips to hold the battery and the memory card in place, so removing or inserting one does not affect the other. Our other camera had two different places for these two items and the battery door broke years ago. It did not affect the camera's use, but it was a pain to remove the battery. This camera does not appear as though that will ever be a problem.

The battery charger is a nice compact portable charger that has its plug built into the back. You simply unfold the prongs and plug it into a wall jack. The batter snaps into it and you're charged in a little more than an hour.

The battery life for us has been about 100 photos with the lcd screen on and 5 or 6 minutes of video clips at the medium setting.

The camera comes with the cable you would use if you were to attach it to your tv to view your photos and videos, and they also include (of course) the USB cable you need. We were at my father-in-law's house on Thanksgiving and noticed that his camera (an Olympus) also used the same cable, so we were able to upload our photos to his computer while we were there. It was actually very simple - even without having installed ANY software. Windows XP recognized the camera, got it ready, and dad's photo program (Adobe something or other) included our s70 in it's list of "acquire from" choices. We were going to just snap our cf card into his printer, but when we realized the cable was the same, that seemed like an easier way to go, and it was.

You have the ability to record voice memos with your photos. We've not yet tested that feature, but think it would be useful on a vacation or sight-seeing trip where you don't want to waste all your memory on video, but might like some narration to go along withh the photos.

I read some of the other reviews and am unable to comment on the purple hue "problem" with this camera. i have not noticed anything wrong with our photos, but then again I'm an amateur. I have noticed, though, red-eye in a few more photos then I'd like. Our last camera never had red eye in the photos - and it did not have a red-eye flash. This camera has a red-eye prevention flash and we're now getting red eye in some photos. I tried to use the photo program to remove the red eye, but found it a little more difficult then I expected.. I'll have to take time to really try to learn that feature, but for now I'll just deal with the occasional bad photo.

The camera has the date & time, and it timestamps the photos so that windows (and I guess the photo editing software) knows when the photo was taken. I would like to have the date & time stamped onto my photos but have been unable to figure this out. I don't think you can do it with this camera - if you can, it's not clear how to do so.

The camera has the ability to stitch photos together, so that you can take several photos of something wider or taller than one photo and stitch them together into a panoramic view. The camera makes it incredibly easy by showing you the prior photo next to what you are about to shoot. You can line them up and shoot, then move to the next photo, etc. Each photo is taken side by side with the prior one so that you can get them extremely well lined up instead of the jagged edges we're all accustomed to seeing when we used to scotch-tape several photos together to do the same thing. The included software can take all the puzzle pieces and assemble them for you later.

The optical zoom is 3.6. That's a little more than we're used to and more than we need. The digital zoom brings it up to 15 zoom. Obviously the digital zoom is not as desirable, but it can come in handy for otherwise impossible to get photos. We've experimented with some 15 zoom photos and they're really not that bad, but they are noticeably pixilated if you really look close. Also, the flash is not effective enough at that range, so you need good light to zoom in like that.

The camera has options to allow you to change the background (startup) photo with one of your own, and the ability to change the different sounds associated with events, such as startup, shutter, timer, etc. We like the default settings for sound, but changed the startup photo.

The LCD display is crisp and clear, but for use outdoors it could be a little brighter. But, I've never really seen a digital camera where the screen was perfect outdoors.

The camera seems rugged and feels solid and well made. We really trust Canon because our last one was really knocked around a LOT over the past few years and except for the battery compartment (which was probably our fault) the camera never gave us any trouble.

We've only been playing for a couple weeks. As anything noteworthy happens or occurs to us we'll update this review. Please feel free to email us with specific questions, which we will be glad to try to answer.


AS PROMISED EARLIER, Product Specifications:
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Sensor: 1/1.8" CCD, 7.1 million effective pixels
Image processor: Canon DIGIC with iSAPS
Image sizes: (L)3072 x 2304, (M1)2592 x 1944, (M2)2048 x 1536 (M3) 1600 x 1200, (S)640 x 480
File formats: JPEG Exif 2.2, RAW, Digital Print Order Format (DPOF) Version 1.1 compliant; AVI (Motion JPEG & WAVE); WAVE (monaural)
Quality levels: Superfine, Fine, Normal or RAW (max. resolution only)
Movie clips: (L)640 x 480, 10fps; (M)320 x 240; (S)160 x 120, 15fps
Focal length: 5.8 to 20.7 millimeters
Aperture: F2.8-F5.3
Optical zoom: 3.6x
Digital zoom: 4.1x
Autofocus: 9-point AiAF, 1-point AF (Any position is available or fixed center)
Manual focus: Yes
AF assist beam: Yes
Closest focus: 4 centimeters
Shooting modes: Auto, Program AE, Shutter priority AE, Aperture priority AE, Manual, Custom, Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Fast Shutter, Slow Shutter, Stitch Assist, Movie
Photo effects: Vivid, Neutral, Low Sharpening, Sepia, Black & White, Custom
Metering: Evaluative, Center-weighted average, Spot (center or linked to focusing frame)
Sensitivity equivalent: Auto, ISO 50, ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 400
Exposure compensation: -2.0 to +2.0 EV, 0.3 EV steps
Shutter speed: 15 to 1/2000 second
White balance: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Flash, Underwater, Custom
Viewfinder: Optical
LCD monitor: 1.8-inch P-Si TFT LCD 118,000 pixels
Self-timer: 2 or 10 seconds
Flash: Auto, Manual Flash On/Off
Drive modes: Single, Continuous, Self-timer, Wireless control
Direct print: Canon Compact Photo Printers and PIXMA Printers supporting PictBridge (ID Photo Print, Movie Print supported on CP printers only)
Connectivity: USB 1.1 (mini-B), A/V out (NTSC/PAL)
Power: Rechargeable Li-ion Battery NB-2LH
Storage: CompactFlash Type I/II (Microdrive compatible), 32MB CompactFlash card supplied
Width: 4.4 inches
Height: 2.2 inches
Depth: 1.5 inches
Weight: 8.1 ounces
What's in the box: Canon S70, power cord, battery charger, NB-2LH rechargeable battery, USB cable, AV cable, wrist strap, 32MB CompactFlash memory card, CD software, and warranty/registration card
Warranty: 1 year, limited