Canon has put out a lot of exciting pieces in their time, but I find myself somewhat unnerved by the mere existence of the S90IS, a piece that is comparable to the Sony DSC-HX1 in a lot of ways, not all of them good.

The Canon S90IS is a ten megapixel camera that boasts a 3.8x optical zoom with augmenting 4x digital zoom, a three inch LCD display, Digic 4 image processor, image stabilization, face detection, a variety of scene and white balance modes, a panorama mode to let you shoot panoramic scenes, autofocus, auto flash, movie shooting capability, compatibility with Secure Digital and MultiMediaCard memory cards, USB and AV outputs, direct printing, a  design resistant to both cold and shock, and editing software.

This doesn’t sound like a bad camera, right?  And nor IS it a bad camera.  The controls are pretty simple to handle and there’s plenty of utility here, but where this camera really suffers is in terms of value.

The Canon S90IS will set you back fully four hundred bucks at Best Buy.

And for the life of me I can’t tell why.  Sure, the camera is a good camera, and the controls are nice and the zoom’s pretty long for a compact digital camera, but this?  For four hundred bucks?  I don’t see it.  And when I can’t see a value, I can’t recommend the camera.  There’s better out there, folks–lots better in fact–and the Canon S90IS is just way too much cash for way too little camera.

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