14 DAY TRIAL // Canon decided this was a good moment to offer its Singapore customers a new photo and video camera that they may use to immortalize their holiday cheer.
In fact, the Powershot S100, while not the mightiest of cameras, has a couple of features that will appeal to anyone.
One of them is the Intelligent Image Stabilization (IS) system, which lets the camera automatically select between seven IS modes when a suitable scene is detected.
The other asset is the Slow motion Video mode, which records at 240 fps (frames per second) in Quarter Video Graphics Array (QVGA, 320 x 240) quality, or at 120 fps in VGA quality (640 x 480 pixels).
Prospective buyers shouldn't let those pixel numbers scare them off.
While the Slow Motion Movie mode has to settle for such low video quality, the normal operation has all it needs to shoot Full HD videos (1080p quality) at 24 fps, complete with zoom capabilities.
Speaking of hardware features, the Canon Powershot S100 has 5x optical zoom and a maximum aperture of f/2.0, plus a lens with ultra-wide coverage of 24mm.
Also, the low-light performance is said to be considerably high, thanks to the DIGIC 5 image processor and High-Sensitivity (HS) system.
Finally, Canon threw in integrated GPS (global positioning system), so that each photo may be location logged.
Likewise, the GPS will let the pictures indicate the journey taken between their capture.
In other words, this is a camera that travelers will get more out of than those buyers who choose to spend their holidays at home, with friends and family.
Today (December 7) is when Singapore stores will begin to offer the Powershot S100 camera, at S$699 ($545 / 405 Euro).
Now we can only hope this model, at least, won't get banned from touristic venues for being too advanced.