Canon S3 IS Performance

Good speed for a consumer camera.

For a long zoom, the Canon PowerShot S3 IS's performance is quite good here, with a very quick start up time of 1.7 seconds and a shutter response at any focal length that's somewhat better than average, even by today's somewhat improved shutter-response standards. If you "prefocus" the camera by half-pressing and holding down the shutter button before the final exposure, it's very fast, with a shutter delay of only 0.09 second. Shot-to-shot cycle times are about average, at about 1.43 seconds for large/superfine JPEGs, and it clears the buffer after each shot. Continuous-mode gives you two options, Continuous Low mode and Continuous High mode. Continuous Low mode is a little slower than average, with a 0.66-second frame time and corresponding 1.51 frame rate, but the camera should be able to maintain this rate indefinitely, with even moderately fast memory cards. Continuous High mode is faster, at only 0.43 seconds per frame, or 2.3 frames per second. The Canon S3 IS won't generally be able to maintain this higher frame rate indefinitely, but with a 120x Kingston SD card we clicked off 20 shots of a hard-to-compress noise test pattern without a break, after which the camera finished writing to the card in a bit under 2 seconds. The flash takes about 10 seconds to recharge after a full-power shot, below average for this class of camera, but that's the price you pay for a flash that's got more pop than most built-in digicam flashes. Connected to a computer, download speeds are fast enough you won't need a card reader. Bottom line, the Canon PowerShot S3 IS is quite responsive, as good a choice as most any consumer digicam for fast-breaking action.

Battery

Excellent battery life.

The Canon PowerShot S3 IS uses four AA batteries. The table above shows Canon's battery-life figures, based on the CIPA test standards. They don't specify the mAh rating of the NiMH cells they base the 550 shot figure on, but if you use good-quality NiMH batteries you should have no trouble matching this performance. In playback mode, the Canon PowerShot S3 IS's run times are really excellent by any measure.

As you can see from the rated battery life in capture mode, NiMH cells pack a lot more juice than disposable Alkaline batteries. That's why we always recommend purchasing a couple of sets of high-power NiMH batteries and a good-quality charger: The modest investment in batteries and charger will be repaid many times over relative to the cost of disposable Alkaline cells.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))

Storage

A 16MB SD memory card is included with the Canon PowerShot S3 IS.

The Canon PowerShot S3 IS stores its photos on SD or MMC memory cards, and a 16MB card is included with the camera. This is just a ridiculously small card, about enough to turn the camera on and check that it works after unpacking it. We strongly recommend buying a large capacity SD/MMC memory card (at least a 128 MB card, preferably a 256 MB one) right along with the camera, to give yourself enough space for extended outings.