Canon PowerShot S95 Unboxing!

[Update: Sep 3, 2010 – see the first shots taken with my new Canon PowerShot S95!]

My new Canon PowerShot S95 arrived this afternoon from Amazon.com. As mentioned yesterday, my Canon S90 has been my favorite camera for the last year – and I’ve been looking forward to getting the new Canon S95 after ordering it on the day it was officially announced just over 10 days ago.

Here’s an unboxing sequence of photos (all taken with my trusty S90!):

Some of the external differences between the S90 and the S95 are interesting.

• The S95 is slightly thinner in thickness and a tad less wide. It’s an even better shirt pocket camera than the S90 has been.
• The Ring Func and On/Off buttons on the top of the camera have been reversed – with On/Off on the right and Ring Func on the left. The On/Off button is also smaller – now just a circle. The shutter button and the zoom control are also a wee bit smaller on the S95.
• Perhaps the biggest external change is the camera coating. The S90 was VERY slippery – with a smooth exterior coating. The S95 has a totally new coating on the outside that makes holding the S95 much more secure.
• On my S90 I had added the Richard Franiec Custom Grip for the S90 (highly recommended!). Not sure the S95 needs it with its new coating – and I also wonder how the S90 model of his grip might bond to the new coating on the S95?
• The thumb wheel control on the back of the camera now has a detented feel to it – unlike the S90’s which just freely rotated (and which many shooters found they shifted accidentally).
• The S90 also had a thumb rest on the camera back just below the settings dial – and that’s been eliminated on the S95. I’ll have to see how it feels in the field – but as I’m just getting acquainted with it the S95 feels much more secure in my hands given the new coating.
• The strap, instead of hooking into a loop at the midpoint of the right side of the S90, hooks into a loop either on the top right corner (where I put mine) or the top left corner. The step, thinner and smaller than that on the S90, needs a bit of help to make it through the loop – a paperclip helping push it through worked nicely!
• The LCD display on the S95 appears to be a bit wider and taller than the S90’s – and appears to have a different coating. The S90’s display has a blueish cast when powered off while the S95’s display is solid black.
• On the front of the S95, the lens details and the S95 logo have been considerably darkened – so they don’t jump out at they did on the S90. The Canon logo is identical on both models.
• Canon opted not to include a printed version of the S95 manual in the box. Instead, there’s a small “Getting Started” publication included which points to PDF versions of the manual on the included CD-ROM. Note that a PDF version of the S95 manual is also available online for download.

Tomorrow, we’ll fire up the S95 and take some photos out in the wild.

(Note: Amazon affiliate links included above.)