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

Reviews

izzy

4-5. 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. The flash has to be manually pulled up to use (no auto pop-up), but at least that prevents the flash firing accidently. 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.

Charlie-CJ

The PowerShot SX500 IS measures 104 x 70 x 80mm and weighs 341g including battery. 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).

We also fitted an anti-reflection screen protector for the camera's rear LCD. 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.

We both rate the camera 5* for build and value, and 4* for photo quality. If you want better photo quality at high enlargement you'll have to forgo the massive 30x zoom or pay more and buy a larger camera. I know phones these days are good but still can’t hold a candle to this unit

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. The camera can also shoot movies at (HD) 1280 x 720, 25 fps, and video quality is fine for casual use. My wife's review: `Actually this is a really good camera'.

My wife has the option of both cameras, and now it's always this Canon SX500 that goes out with her despite it being more bulky - it's just so more usable in the field. Plus purple fringing can appear in areas of high contrast (an optical effect of that great zoom lens). The lens appears to have a screw thread for attachments and the camera can take the optional Canon HF-DC2 high power flash. 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.