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Canon PowerShot SX20 IS Digital Camera (12.1 Megapixel, 20x Optical Zoom) 2.5 inch LCD
Canon
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Released: 2009-09-01 Rating:  More Details: Canon PowerShot SX20 IS Digital Camera (12.1 Megapixel, 20x Optical Zoom) 2.5 inch LCD Canon PowerShot SX20 IS Digital Camera (12.1 Megapixel, 20x Optical Zoom) 2.5 inch LCD @Amazon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS Digital Camera (12.1 Megapixel, 20x Optical Zoom) 2.5 inch LCD @aStore |
Features:
Product Description
The versatile 12.1 Megapixel PowerShot SX20 IS offers intelligent shooting power with a 20x wide-angle zoom, so you can really explore your creativity. Choose manual mode for full exposure and creative control or switch to Smart Auto for effortlessly great results across a wide range of shooting conditions. Either way a host of intelligent Canon technologies, including optical image stabilisation for blur free images even at super high zoom, ensure stunning pictures. Whats more you can quickly and easily shoot superb HD movies at the touch of a button.
Customer Reviews:
Eventually a good camera!
I studied several reviews on Bridge cameras before settling on this one. It had everything I needed in a neat compact package. But the results from the off were the worst of any camera I have ever used. The settings on Auto are simply dreadful, colours are completely un-natural. The camera hunted for focus, and exposures were all over the place. So rather than send it back, I spent a whole day testing shots between it and the computer, and now the results are simply stunning. There are plenty menus to tweak - and most need re-setting to get results. I now have the camera set up correctly and it was well worth the hassle. The instruction manual expects you to understand photography, so you need to know yourself which way to tweak this camera for your own purposes. Zoom quality even at its maximum is simply stunning, I even have fantastic hand-held shots of the craters on the moon! Well pleased now.
Great results. Recommended
I was really impressed with this camera. During my review tests I took shots side by side with a "5 star" digital SLR and I was much happier with the results the SX20 gave me. What I enjoyed most about this camera was the colour reproduction. I felt that my photos were vibrant and full of colour even when using the inbuilt flash (in my experience a bad flash can make a photo look washed out).
The physical zoom is excellent, packs plenty of punch and gave some impressive and pleasing results. The digital zoom however is as rubbish as I have come to expect from such things, filling shots with nasty pixel noise. So don't bother with that. My only real gripe with the zoom is over sensitive control buttons. There are no manual controls for it and the buttons take you very close very very quickly.
So I had decided I liked this camera - and then I took some video footage! In good light the video quality is as good as my Sony digital camcorder and it has stereo sound too. I was chuffed with the footage which is easily the best I have seen from a camera. In low light the video results are pretty poor - but this is often the case with digital video and the SX20 IS doesn't do any worse then a lot of others I've seen. Best of all, the in camera editing features actually work. They even turn the camera's control wheel into a jog shuttle, making frame by frame edits quick and easy, helping to get the most out of the space on your SD card.
I do have a few moans: it runs on regular batteries (which apparently some people like, not me!), the mini HDMI cable advertised is not mentioned on the box (nor is there on inside it), the video isn't HD, I couldn't find a way to hear the video in camera during play back, the flash has to be manually raised rather then popping up automatically when needed and the over sensitive zoom buttons. I found these to be niggles rather then big problems. These prevent me from giving this camera a perfect 5 stars but I certainly recommend it to people who love taking pictures and don't want all the bother of an SLR.
Canon SX20 IS
Had this camera for 2 weeks - just came back from a weeks holiday and used it to take a couple of hundred shots plus some video's.
I've owned quite a few digital camera's over the years and my wife has a canon ixus - the quality of these little camera's has always made me want to own a bigger canon and this one is certainly that - it is the size of a DSLR - but with a 20x zoom the lense has to sit somewhere!
Although I've tried a few of the settings out - not easy as Canon only provide the manual as a pdf - most of the photo's I've taken have been on auto and the results have been good - including some shots taken at 20x zoom hand held - and they are universally good (to my eye at least)with good colour reproduction and no blurring.
One thing that is really impressive is the recording of HD video - the results are stunning - this camera will make my camcorder redundant. However you need a large and very quick sd card as video on the highest quality seeting eats memory, I'm currently looking for a fast 16 or 32gb card.
One thing that took me a while to work out was that you have to manually push the flash up - I've used sony prosumer camera's for years and never had to do this - still once learned you do it without thinking - wish I had a manual to read! When using the flash though it really does light up a room.
On the downside - no memory card included, no HDMI cable in the box, the lens cap does not attach to the camera so I doubtless lose it and finding a decent case for it has been fruitless so far. The alkalines supplied are still going strong and I will swop them for a set of rechargables in due course - great though to be able to sling a set of AA's in when out and about. The build whilst initially looking good has some issues - the doors on some of the flaps are not a great fit and will surely get worse with extended use.
As for value - not entirely sure about it - but for the 300 quid Amazon are selling it at it represents good value - although (@ the suggested £400) it is getting mighty close to a large range of DSLR camera's.
So if you do buy budget for a large sd card, a set of AA rechargables, a case and a replacement lense cap and you'll be all set!
Fun to use, lovely zoom, great movies, reasonable photos
My first SLR camera was a Canon A1, and I thought it was wonderful. The SX20IS isn't an SLR, but it tries quite hard to behave like one. With a versatile lens like this one (with a 28mm to 560mm zoom in "35-mm equivalent" terms, although the aperture range is just f2.8 - f8), you probably don't need the versatility of exchangeable lenses anyway.
Holding the camera is just like an SLR. If you're like me, you hold the camera with your left hand under the body and your right hand grasping the right-hand side of the camera body. If you do this, there are a couple of little grips under the lens for your left forefinger and thumb to rest on (where Olympus used to put the aperture ring on their SLRs), which feels nice and comfortable.
The auto mode is completely auto - other than zoom and pressing the shutter button, you have no control over what the camera does. Program mode at least lets you choose some common settings, plus macro options. Choosing either aperture or shutter priority lets you turn a rather nice little wheel with your right thumb to alter your chosen parameter. If you choose manual, you need to toggle back and forth between aperture and shutter settings by pressing a button, because the same wheel is used for both. The camera gives you its expert opinion in the viewfinder about whether you're over- or under-exposing the shot and by how many stops. In aperture or shutter priority modes, you can set the camera to overexpose or underexpose by up to two stops, so you can bracket exposures if you so wish, or manually compensate for backlighting, etc. There's even an "auto-bracketing" (AEB) mode, which takes three exposures in succession with normal, under- and over-exposure.
To compose your shot, you have a choice. There's a viewfinder, which is disappointingly not an "infinity" finder - it's a little LCD display, focussed to about six inches, so if you need reading glasses, you may have trouble seeing it clearly. Or there's an LCD display, normally hidden, that you can fold out from the camera, and either have pointing forward for taking self-portraits (in which case, it shows a mirror-image, which makes composing the shot much easier) or you can turn it around and clip it back onto the back of the camera. It's not a huge screen, but it's plenty big enough.
There is a manual focus mode, but it's quite fiddly to use, and even though you see an enlarged image in the viewfinder, I still found it hard to tell when the focus was exactly where I wanted it. The autofocus is good, but I've noticed that it "hunts" a little. It's important to half-press the shutter and give the camera half a second to sort itself out before you take the picture, or you're liable to get a blurry image.
To turn the flash on and off, you just flip up the flash, which is directly above the lens. There's a button to force the flash to fire, and also to select "slow synchro" (ie. slow down the shutter-speed to brighten the background).
As far as I can tell, the 52mm screw-thread on the lens isn't actually a screw-thread - it's a series of concentric rings for clipping the lens cap on. Unfortunately I can't try, because my filters are all 49mm.
Battery life is quite reasonable, and as it uses standard AA batteries, it's not too expensive to run. It would be sensible to buy some NiMH rechargeables, though.
The "Large" image size gives you 4000 x 3000 JPEG (.jpg) images (the camera reckons it can fit 4,800 of these 12Mpixel images on my 16GB SD card). There is also a widescreen (16:9) option that yields 3840 x 2160 images (around 8Mpixel). If you blow them up to full size, some jpeg-artefacts are visible, and the images are slightly soft-edged. The lack of a non-lossy image format is the greatest weakness of this camera.
The movie mode is very good. It's not the highest of high-definition standards, but it is 1280x720p at 30fps, which is pretty good. It records in AVCHD format, which is better supported than AVCHD-Lite. The sound quality using the built-in microphones (there's no option for external microphones) is good, and the zoom and autofocus are fully-functional while recording. The movie start/stop button is on the back of the camera, which reduces shake when you press it. It's not far off being a camcorder, although it will apparently not record more than 30 minutes in a single take.
It's worth reading the manual, which comes in PDF format on a CD. There are loads of interesting things you can do with this camera if you have time to learn them all. It's the sort of camera that's fun to fiddle with and try things out.
The other CD has the software. I found the photo-transfer software unnecessary - I already have several software packages that are capable of copying the pictures and the movies to my computer.
All in all, it's a pretty good camera. If I still had an SLR, I don't think I'd use this one - it's too bulky for a coat-pocket, so it's not a great second camera. But as an SLR-replacement for casual photographers, it's not a bad choice at all.
A fantastic camera.
I have only had this camera a month & as far as I am concerned it ranks amongst the greats.
Brilliant sharp picture every time,also great macro feature,not to mention the lens.
And there is lots & lots to find out about this great Camera.
For me,I am glad I bought it,no regrets what so ever.
A smashing camera.
P.J.Bennett Cambridgeshire.
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