russ, the reviewer of this camera, originally helped me get my latest Canon when I was living in LA. I'm pleased once again dear friend.

as originally written at Shut Your Friggin Gob

I
thought Canon's new G11 pro point-and-shoot—decked out with everything
but HD video, depressingly—would make me drool the most, but I was
wrong: Canon's pocketable pro point-and-shoot, the S90 is
fapfreakintastic.

The design is exactly what I want in a high
end point-and-shoot—it's svelte, but not too puny, and the black metal
finish feels sturdy, without the whole thing feeling like a little
brick. (I hope you like black, since it comes in black and…black.) It
really manages to achieve that zen balance level between feeling
professional and consumer, though it makes me want to run around
shooting only in black and white. What slew me, though, was the clicky
control ring around the lens, which you can use to adjust almost any
setting—it can change the ISO, focus or zoom. As you know, real gadget
people love dials and gauges things that actually click and feel like
they actually control things in this age of silent squeegee presses on
glass screens, and it taps into that pretty hard.

I almost don't
know why you'd even go for the G11 with the S90 on the table—the S90
uses the same high sensitivity sensor, meaning you should get the same
kind of image and low-light performance, which I can't wait to check
out in depth, since Canon's using the same size sensor as the G10 used
to use, but actually cut the megapixels down to get better light
sensitivity. The S90 also has a fast F/2.0 lens, and it's not the size
of a gorilla fist. Did I mention it was cheaper too? $430 to the G11's
$500.

The only real problem I see right now is that it doesn't
shoot HD video, just standard VGA. But if it shoots truly gorgeous
pictures—which we intend to find out shortly—I can let that go.