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Cameras seem to have lots of abbreviated technical jiggery pokery attached to them to make them sound good.
The new Canon S5 (IS USM UD) is no exception…so let's break it down a little bit.
Basically if you ever see these abbreviations when looking at a camera, here's what to expect (as per above):
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IS - Image Stabilisation. That old nugget, essentially assists in the stabilisation of the image to reduce blur. So you get sharper images when, conventionally, you wouldn't have.
USM - Ultra Sonic Motor. This is to do with the mechanical focusing mechanism - sometimes it can be a bit loud in auto focus. USM, essentially, muffles that noise to near silence.
UD - Ultra-low Dispersion. This is to do with the glass in the lens. Low dispersion glass helps tackle chromatic aberrations. Chromatic aberrations? - it's the shift in colour that you might get, say, at the edges of areas in the image due to the shape of the glass not equally dispersing the multiple frequencies of light. Or quite simply, 'purple fringing' as you may have seen around the edges. So UD means you should get a faithful colour reproduction throughout without any unwanted ghosts.
Now we're up to speed - with the Canon S5 IS you get all of the above in a neat little bridge camera package.
Expect 12x optical zoom for an extensive range to shoot your pictures, 8.0Megapixels - now with an increased sensitivity of ISO 80-1600.
Plus there's all the up-to-date Red Eye Correction and Face Detection technology thrown in too.
Drawbacks? - Well, the improved screen size and hot shoe addition over the S3 are good, but there's still no RAW support.
Priced £410, available July.
