The wildly successful Canon S95 will get an upgrade with the addition of the Canon S100.  It seems as though Canon listened to their video shooters who asked for full frame, 24p video in a camera that was easier to carry around than a full frame DSLR.Canon made a real effort to consider both pro still shooters and video pros using their larger cameras when they designed the S95 and S100.  There are many times you’d like to carry a camera, but just don’t want to haul the full size DSLR.Upgrades include a new f/2.0 5x zoom lens with a rated zoom range of 24mm on the wide end to 120mm on the zoom with optical image stabilization.  Backing that up is a 12.1-megapixel 1/1.7 in BSI-CMOS chip linked to the newer Digic 5 image processor.  The BSI-CMOS should improve low-light performance and deliver better noise reduction in conjunction with the new processor.

The combination of imaging components delivers a max resolution of 4000 x 3000 still photos, fairly respectable for a camera that fits in your pocket.

The S100 has a rated ISO of 80 to 6400 and has a pop-up flash for times when natural light just won’t cut it.  The imaging system has several built-in auto-focus functions, including contrast detect, tracking, and face detection.

Experienced shooters will appreciate being able to store images in either RAW or JPEG format and a full range of manual controls.  One feature that really helps in changing the camera functions is the lens control ring, which allows a user to keep both hands in a shooting position when changing camera menu options.

Users of Canon DSLR cameras for video will appreciate being able to shoot full 1080 video at 24 fps.  Reviewers labeling 30 fps as “better” don’t shoot a lot of video.  As we covered previously, you can’t mix 30 fps and 24 fps in the same time line.  You can try to match the frame rates with software like Twixtor, but it never blends quite right.  You either have to do the whole project in 30 fps or 24.

Those using their DSLRs primarily for video shoot almost exclusively 24p, so the lack of pocket cam with 24 fps support was wildly annoying.  The S95 was a relief, but was limited to 720 HD.  Finally, in the S100 video pros had their pocket cam with a matching resolution and frame rate.  Now they could whip out their pocket cam, grab a few seconds of video with confidence they would be able to fold it into their video editing work flow later.

Here is a sample of the full HD video from the S100.

At a price sub-$450 price point it looks like Canon has a worthy successor to the popular S100.