You may think you’ve found the perfect digital camera with the Canon Powershot Pro Series S5. Especially if your looking for something more than a basic point and shoot, but something less than a complicated and expense digital SLR. But there’s a good chance your wrong. Canon generally makes some pretty nice digital cameras, but for some reason they’ve experienced some serious design miscues with the PowerShot Pro Series S5.

Image noise is a serious minus in the Pro Series S5 camera. Afraid of bucking a growing consumer trend towards more megapixels, Canon has unfortunately built the S5 with more megapixels than the image sensor can handle. A number of years ago, megapixels was a valid yardstick for measuring value in digital cameras. That time however has passed. Unless your planning on blowing your photographs up to poster size, anything over 5 or 6 megapixels is redundant. Or worse, as in this case, a serious detractor in image quality with the introduction of much too much image noise for a camera in this price range.

Red eye problems should really be a thing of the past in any camera over $200 these days. It seems, that the S5 digital camera, doesn’t employ even the most basic red eye preventative tactics (pre-flash) in the red eye battle. The S5 does come with red eye reduction software built it, but it’s less than stellar. Depending on the viewing angle of your subject, it may or may not remove the red eye artifact successfully.

Cheaper point and shoots, and even some more expensive point and shoots often have a problem with blurred or soft corners on their photographs. I wouldn’t expect to find that in a Pro Series Digital series camera, but there it is. If your main subject is generally framed in the center of the photo, this shouldn’t be a problem. If however you like to shoot a lot of landscape and big scenery photos, you won’t be happy with the results.

A few other issues with the Powershot S5 include:

- conspicuously absent auto focus assist

- no RAW or TIFF mode for the after photo editing fans

- gobbles up four double AA batteries at a time

- an old fashioned lens cap (sure to be lost, or left on)

Not to worry, from here things just get better. There’s an abundance of nicer cameras competing for your dollars in this category. Including the SX100IS, and Pro Series S3 . . . both from Canon. Canon generally make great cameras, just not this time.