Canon S80: A Technical Marvel & The Best Small Digicam

Pros: Small for a digicam with such an extensive feature set, Full manual control options, extra wide lens, Superior Resolution at 8 Megapixels, 2.5" Color Screen, Great Battery Life, Durable Body & Above Average Build Quality, High quality video capture, DIGIC II Image Processing makes this camera ultra fast and responsive, fast start-up time and very little shutter lag, Fast Auto Focus, Intuitive Menus, All controls are accessible through buttons in addition to menus, Powerful Flash (User adjustable) Fast Lens (in Wide Angle Settings).
Cons: May be too bulky for those who want a tiny pocket digicam, No RAW capture option, Takes SD memory cards, instead of Compact Flash Type I and Type II microdrives, Lens is not that fast when using telephoto (compared to other digicams in this class)
My search for a portable pocket-able digital camera ended when the Canon Powershot S80 came on the market a few months ago. I wanted a truly portable high quality digicam that had full manual and automatic settings. Having the extra wide-angle lens capability was also a desirable feature for landscape and general photography requirements. Although Canon switched from an all aluminum casing body (on the Powershot S70) to one that is both aluminum and high impact plastic in a move I suspect to shave even more weight off the camera it still feels durable and has a nice heft to it. The image quality is several notches above the average 5-7 megapixel digicam in the $300-500 digicam class which I atttribute to the excellent lens and the DIGIC II Image Processing Engine. You can also crop and enlarge to a greater degree since the 8 megapixel resolution CCD provides sharper pictures. 11" x 14" will come outrazor sharp even after moderate crops. The wide angle lens will provide at least 15% more coverage than the competing point and shoot cameras so if you are shooting building interior and exteriors or landscapes, the added wide angle coverage will come in handy.
Bottom Line:
You will not find a better compact 8 Megapixel Digital Camera for the money. If you are looking for a portable digital camera that won't weigh you down like the typical DSLR, the Canon Powershot S80 cannot be beat.

Canon PowerShot S80

The camera is four years old and very good. I like the optical view for real sunny days at the beach and the option to make manual adjustments on aperture and speed, features the new cameras do not have.o
Sometimes newer is not necessarily better.

Great camera !

I am a professional photographer. I wanted a point & shoot whose zoom range started at 28mm. That narrowed the choices by 99%. Why have a camera that can't shoot a bit wide? It was of less importance to me that it has 8 megapixels - that's
a lot of juice for a point & shoot. It's about 1.5 times the thickness of a deck
of cards. Though it fits into a coat pocket, on warm days I put it into a Tamrac case and slip my belt through its belt loop. I don't even know it's there. I just hiked through 3 national parks like this with great comfort. I'm thinking that it may be important to shoot at 1/250 shutter speed because point & shoot's
are difficult to hold stable against your eye. I am not one of those people that
hold the camera 2 feet in front of them and look through the LCD screen.
The LCD screen is large, the same size as the Canon 30D and 5D. (Probably costs Canon 25 cents) Email me if you have any questions.

Beware- Design flaw in Canon powershot cameras.

I bought a Powershot s80 from Ebay 5 months ago. Great camera. Clear crisp pictures, Wide angle lens, easy to operate. They had one at work and I liked it so much I went out and bought my own after my Ricoh R2 bit the dust. Been looking for a solid reliable decent compact camera for a while now and until last week I believed I had found it in the s80.

While in its pouch, the lenz cover opened and the lenz extended- but was blocked by the pouch material. Rather than sense this obstruction and automatically retract the lenz, the whole thing locked up and will no longer fuction. On the display is E18 error.

Calling Canon service, they quoted me more than what I paid for it ($250) to get it fixed. Investigating 'S80 E18 error' with Google brought to light many complaints about canon lenses locking up after similar lens obstructions, the mildest of knocks, or sometimes no reason at all. Canon are not claiming responsibility even though it is apparently mentioned in their own service manual this is a design flaw. The E18 error also occurs with other canon powershot series cameras. But dont believe my word for it... Google 'powershot e18 error' or read up
http://www.e18error.com/

Generally, Compact digital cameras arnt built to last. The technology outdates extremely quickly and they go places where their sophisticated microelectronics and plastic innards are at risk from harsh elements.
The S80- while solid looking and feeling, modern with great picture quality- is NOT an exception. Dont be fooled into thinking you are buying reliable quality with this camera.

Great camera for hikers travellers & eBayers

Very happy with this used S80 despite that fact that it yipped and barked at me ... (original owner had an Irish setter & put in settings that included a picture and sound effects ... startling at first but not too hard to disable). I bought it as a replacement/backup for the same model which I had for 4+ years and dropped on the zoom.

Chose the S80 to begin with because of wide angle, size, and viewfinder - great for hiking, for travel pix better than snapshots (used to have a pre-digital Olympus), and for Thanksgiving family-at-the-table photos. Also b/c macro mode and "manual" capability. A user who has done some SLR could make use of manual mode (did some film SLR in years back, but have not used manual mode on the S80, just learned to fool the aperture priority or shutter priority modes. The different lighting modes available are great too. When I dropped the first one, I considered an S90 from Costco but decided instead to buy this used S80. Battery life seems very good to me. I don't think I'll ever outgrow this camera - for my purposes (now including selling on eBay) it's great. The one thing I would note is that there are so many features, there's probably no one who knows how to set all of them. But if you learn a basic ten or twelve things, you won't need to.

By the way, I was able to get the zoom repaired locally - the zoom gears can be replaced. Happy to have both in case of future accident!