At first the Canon PowerShot S95 appear to be yet another point-and-shoot: small and compact, sleek and stylish. Then a brief look over the specs and external controls gets you to think otherwise.

Canon PowerShot S95 features:

10.0 megapixel CDD; fast f2 zoom lens that has a range from 28-105mm (corresponding to a 35 SLR equivalent).

With the exposure mode, it has Program AE and also shutter and aperture priority and also manual.
Using a hybrid IS system thecamera presents a more developed image stabilisation, decreasing camera shake by the equivalent of four f stops.

The camera has a High Dynamic Range mode executed by simultaneously taking 3 images with different kind of exposures, then combining them into a individual photo using in-camera software.

Maximum image size is 3648 - 2736 pixels, enabling a 31 - 23 cm print to be made at 300 dpi. Movies: 1280 - 720 pixels at 30 fps.

The marvelous news goes on: you may shoot pictures in RAW and JEPG as well as simultaneous RAW JPEG files saved to the smart card.

The down side is the maximum continuous speed is only 1.9 images/second with focus and exposure set before you take the picture; if you demand continuous focus, the capture rate is only 7 frames in 10 secs. The camera will continue shooting as long as you press down the shutter button.

• Quality: Pin sharp pics, fantastic tonal range.
• Startup Time: It took less than two seconds from power on to first shot. Follow-ons about 1 second apart.
• Distortion: There was not any sign of any distortion with the zoom lens set at wide and tele focal lenght. A decent performance.

In conclusion:
There's not much to disapprove of, with the exception the all-black finish makes the top power and shutter controls (also in black) being difficult to see.

I found the S95 a delight to use, very pro and quick.

Why you would buy the S95: you would like a vari-angle LCD screen; you have use RAW capture.
Why you wouldn't: the camera does not shoot Full HD 1920 - 1080 pixels; it does not offer Adobe RGB colour space.

Importantly though, this is a very memorable camera.