PowerShot SX500 IS
4.2
5
17
17
Great Birthday Gift
Received this for my birthday and I couldn't be happier. I have another Canon camera ( SX120 IS ) and I really like it but this camera with the 30X zoom is amazing in a small package. I take a lot of wildlife shots and this camera fills the bill. I also like the fact that I can do everything with a point and shoot and not have to carry extra lenses. I would amd have recommended Canon to family and friends.
April 7, 2013
Love this for videos and daylight pics
I bought this camera over Christmas break because I wanted a digital camera that was not quite as heavy-duty as a DSLR, but still had very good specs (I had been stalking this camera and another one for a few months before purchasing).
I was surprised at first at how light and compact this camera is. It is smaller than I had expected it to be.
I use this camera to record many functions and concerts at our high school to upload to youtube. I saw another reviewer had an issue with the audio and video not lining up and I have not encountered this problem (I have a mac and use imovie to edit all the clips).
I am thinking about getting a spare battery though as that has been my only issue when recording. The battery lasted over an hour while recording in HD, but I did not realize that I should have had a spare in order to record the whole event.
The zoom on this camera -for both stills and video- is amazing (especially when using a tripod). I stood 10+ feet away from a ping pong ball and on the mechanical zoom alone was able to clearly focus in on the company label on the ball. With the digital zoom, the camera zeroed in on one letter of said label while maintaining crisp quality.
I love the automatic macro setting. Initially my brother and I thought that you had to be on a specific setting in order to be in macro mode, but the camera focuses automatically. You just have to have a little patience in order to focus it properly for the light/which object you want to focus on. It may take a couple times of half-way releasing the shutter and re-depressing it in order to get the proper focus.
My friend and I played around with the manual settings and they were fairly easy to figure out... you can't be scared to try adjusting settings and realize that you can undo almost anything if you click the wrong button.
For manual shooting, I would go to my 35mm every time and use this digital as more of an automatic though.
My only qualms with this camera is using it in low-light conditions, camera to computer quality, and no viewfinder. It is iffy about whether a good picture comes out or not and the flash is very good for indoor situations, but sometimes does not help with outdoor, low light situations. I literally had taken two pictures with the same exact settings and focus; one came out gorgeous and the other was grainy and unfocused (even though it appeared fine as I was focusing it). The camera to computer quality is odd with some images. It seems like for some of the images, the camera has too high of a megapixel rate. There are pictures I've taken with this camera that look fine on the camera body itself, but once it's transferred to the computer, it is a little grainy and appears like it is worse quality (as desktop wallpaper) than pictures taken with my very old 4mp camera. I would LOVE a viewfinder on this camera, but for all the other brilliant things about this camera, I would willingly let that little detail go.
The price of this camera is excellent especially considering what it is capable of. Even if you forgo the picture-taking aspects of it and use it primarily as a video camera, I believe it is still easily worth the price (though I do not know why you wouldn't take advantage of the wonderful pictures it can take).
Overall, I do love this camera and it is extremely easy to use and carry, but there are a couple of features that could have been a little bit better or just more consistent.
March 25, 2013
Ehh.
Ok so I got this camera for christmas and had been wanting a nice camera to photograph nature, self portraits and all that and just so i could get a good quality out of it. But this camera doesn't really satisfy me to be honest. The pictures are never grain free and I can't learn how to use it manually anywhere, they way i learned in photography class must not have been right because everytime i do it the lighting is just horrible. I really have a lot of sadness some times just because it kind of sucks compared to what I thought it was going to be, and I still can't figure out if I can find a detachable lense to go with it which would probably help a lot with the bloody focusing it has. This camera just adjitates me every time i talk about it lol
March 13, 2013
Young Photographer
I bought this camera for my teenage grandson and he loves it. He quickly was taking quality pictures with almost no trouble understanding the controls and settings. I would recommend this camera for new photographers. It is affordable and takes high quality pictures.
March 3, 2013
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