S100 Announced

Today Canon announced the launch of its latest PowerShot camera, the S100.  The S100 appears to be a significant upgrade to last year’s S95 and manages to squeeze quite a lot of features into a small package.  More details from Canon at the S100 page.

CanonRumors first predicted that the S100 would be announced Tuesday and then revised that prediction to be today.

In my own predictions, I was both right and wrong but missed many details.  First of all, my prediction was built around a successor to the G12 – which I called the G14.   However, I acknowledged that the emphasis would be on the successor to the S95 – which I correctly predicted would be called the S100.  (Seems obvious now but many thought that S100 would not be “reused” because of the S100 Digital Elph in 2000.)   I thought that the announcement would come in late August and would include both the G14 and S100.

I got the “Digic V” right (duh) and even the new sensor and 12MP but gave up too soon on Canon using CMOS in that size sensor.  Because I’d given up on CMOS, I did not predict full HD video.  I didn’t think to predict a lens both wider and longer for the S100.  On the other hand, I did predict GPS (for the G14).

In predicting the G14, I once again thought that it would be the last of the G series but now it appears that the G12 is the last G standing.  Or is it?  Canon has not said that the G series has ended.  Canon has simply not announced a new G series camera.  The new CMOS sensor in 1/1.7 inch format is a key consideration.  At this point, the only Canon cameras using the 1/1.7 inch sensor format are/were the S and G series.  If Canon does not continue with a CMOS G14 then the S100 will be their only camera using that sensor.  This makes me think that there will be a CMOS G14 in the near future (well, probably early next year).   Enticingly, that CMOS G14 probably out-specs the S100!

Dpreview has posted their hands-on preview of a pre-production S100.  Very interesting.