There’s certainly plenty of detail in the shots and only the slightest fringing given the high contrast subject matter.

Pixel peepers will however notice the finest smattering of noise here – nothing to be overly concerned about, but it’s certainly not a perfectly clean result.

The crops again reveal lots of fine detail, but there’s noticeable red fringing on high contrast subjects near the edge of the frame.

This effect plagues many of the S5 IS images, but you’d only notice on big prints or enlargements.

This has allowed us to get close to the action here, although even at 100 ISO there’s slight noise in flat colour or shadow areas.

There’s also some evidence of the red fringing.

There’s also a reduction in contrast, but perhaps the biggest concern is the red fringing, again apparent in high contrast areas towards the edges.

Once again though, these wouldn’t be an issue on smaller prints.

This is an uncropped shot taken with the S5 IS fully zoomed-in at a sensitivity of 200 ISO.

The crops reveal fine details, but also visible textures from noise. Unlike many super-zooms, Canon has chosen to take a mild approach to noise reduction.

As such there’s little smearing at higher sensitivities, but there are visible speckles.

The S5 IS has done a good job of balancing the ambient and flash light.

Pixel peepers will again notice visible noise in areas of flat colour.

Getting that close can be tricky without casting shadows, but this shot was taken as close as the components allowed at a sensitivity of 400 ISO.

There’s an increase in noise, but this subject matter is quite forgiving.

A steady breeze was wobbling the flowers so we used a sensitivity of 400 ISO to allow a fast shutter speed and avoid motion blur.

Here the increased noise levels are more obvious than in the previous example, but there’s still a decent amount of detail.

Often this location results in underexposed images, but the S5 IS did a good job of metering the shot.

Pixel peepers will notice quite visible noise artefacts at 100%.

Again these won’t be a big issue on smaller prints, but those who like viewing on-screen at 100% should stick to lower sensitivities.

As you’d expect, there’s an increase in noise, but unlike many cameras which attempt to smear out any evidence of noise speckles, Canon has left them here.

As such, there’s still quite a lot of detail in the image and you have the choice of applying noise reduction later if desired.

Here the noise levels have increased to a point where they’re visible even in the reduced-size image, so unsurprisingly the 100% crops leave much to be desired. 1600 ISO is really only for very small prints or emergency use.

it is interesting though to see Canon’s hands-off approach to noise reduction when rivals would smear it out at any cost.