Summary

See the distortion and vignetting pages for detailed conclusions.

Although each metric can be analyzed on its own, ultimately, there are trade-offs between the two cameras in terms of their overall performance. One camera performs better in some aspects, while another performs better in some other aspects. The “better” camera depends on the application.

The average values are summarized in the table below.

	Canon SD500	Canon S50
Distortion	0.035	0.037
10-90% rise (pixels)	1.09	1.34
MTF50 (Cycles/Pixel)	0.421	0.338
Chromatic Aberration (area in pixels)	0.198	0.150

In the end, these effects can all be corrected for through image processing tools, as long as you are aware of them.