Canon PowerShot SX500 IS Digital Camera - Black (16.0 MP, 30x Optical Zoom) 3.0 inch LCD

Reviews

izzy

Camera modes include Smart Auto (32 scenes detected), Program AE, Shutter priority AE, Aperture priority AE, Manual, and Live View Control. However when I haven't got my camera with me, I'm more than happy to borrow this camera - there's no advantage to having a mass of superb dSLR kit if it's left at home because it's too intrusive and bulky for the location.

Charlie-CJ

The maximum resolution photo is 4608 x 3456 Large jpgs (there's no RAW) and a 32Gb SD HC card can hold 4,560 Large photos on the card (and it can work with Eye-fi cards). Fortunately there's the decent intelligent image stabilization built into the lens to iron-out any camera wobbles, so at least the photo should be in focus - indoors without the flash my wife can get a fair number of blurred shots, but these are due to focus lock failure rather than camera shake (she tends to press the shutter release too hard and takes a picture by mistake, but at least she knows the picture will be blurred and can take another). There's no SD HC card, case or lens hood supplied. The flash has to be manually pulled up to use (no auto pop-up), but at least that prevents the flash firing accidently.

Worse still the 16MP CCD sensor with Digic 4 processing is not as good dealing with low light as a 12-16 MP Megapixel CMOS detector with Digic 5 would be, so the camera is susceptible to image noise in the photos and streaking on video in bright light (but using a CMOS sensor would up the price). The lack of an LCD viewfinder (EVF) can be a problem in very bright sunshine as the rear LCD panel is all you have, but this camera's LCD screen is far superior to my wife's old Olympus u740 compact where you couldn't see anything at all in daylight. 4-5. OK image quality isn't as good as a decent bridge camera, there's noise on all images and this becomes very noticeable above ISO 400 or if you enlarge the photo.

1MP, 3 inch rear LCD) that has a 12. I bought a couple of Sandisk Ultra SDHC 16GB cards, and a spare Canon NB-6L battery as the battery is quite small and only lasts around 195 shots. You can switch off the autoexposure AE and autofocus AF lock, and there's an autofocus AF light and the option of manual focus. I've posted example photos under customer images.

Plus the camera has that problem with purple fringing in areas of high contrast, it's in just about every photo if you view at 100%. Although probably less sharp than the SX500's old 16MP CCD detector in daylight, the new back-illuminated 12MP CMOS detector in the SX510 increases low light sensitivity and so reduces image noise in lower light (still using Digic 4 processing), and the cameras ISO max has been increased from 1600 to ISO 3200.

That's pretty small and light for a camera with a massive 30x zoom - in fact this Canon SX500 is the smallest and lightest mega zoom camera currently available. My wife's review: `Actually this is a really good camera'. We purchased the official Canon DCC-950 camera case, nice but it lacks decent storage even for a spare battery, so we had to get a larger generic camera case as well.

The camera is perfectly useable hand held at full 30x zoom, particularly if the view is fairly static. That zoom is the 35mm dSLR equivalent of suitcase full of SLR lenses ranging from 24mm wide angle to 720mm telephoto, and there's the Canon's macro option that can focus from 0 cm. April 2014 update : This Canon SX500 IS has been replaced with the identical looking 30x zoom Canon PowerShot SX510 HS Camera (12.