Home > Consumer Reviews > Canon PowerShot SX10 IS Digital Camera - Black (10MP, 20x Optical Zoom) 2.5 inch Vari-angle LCD

Brought this camera before a two week trip to India (North and South).

Had about two weeks to familiarise myself with the camera, and have to say it performed absolutely brilliantly, capturing both landscapes and seascapes, portraits, buildings, wildlife, flowers (in macro mode) and the obligatory Goan sunsets, to perfection.

Electronic viewfinder is adequate for composing most shots, although obviously not as detailed as the LCD picture. Colours are superb, telephoto is fantastic, as proved by my tiger shots in Ranthambore...

Haven't tried any manual settings yet, but when the automatic functions are this good...!

Any quibbles? Well, only that it munches batteries (compared to my old print film camera anyway) even using the EVF as opposed to LCD, so always make sure you have spares; and battery compartment is a struggle to close when loaded with batteries.

Camera does not come with a separate AC power supply (but one is available via Canon), so use a card reader to transfer photos to PC (I got one included as part of a bundle from Kamera Express in Altrincham), rather then run down your batteries.

This is the fourth Canon camera I have bought (over 3 decades) which does I think say something about the quality of their products. For me it is a good step up from my Powershot A710 IS in terms of specification, however, I have to say that the controls are less well laid out than the A710. After a few days of intensive usage I find that I am constantly inadvertently selecting the ISO settings (not a problem on the A710 due to them being elsewhere) and I have also found the dial to select changes in exposure compensation (and set apertures/speeds in AV/TV/M) difficult to use - often it doesn't seem to respond well to my twidling at all, and can equally result in me selecting another function entirely! Hopefully I'll get used to this, but both these niggles are disappointing.

In terms of photos I have been pleased with the results so far, and despite comments elsewhere have found the viewfinder a real bonus, though it can be a bit contrasty at times. When compared with the A710 I have found it vastly better - at times with the latter I was effectively shooting blind when there was any sun in the sky!

The SX10 powers up very quickly, and I haven't found any problems with the large zoom range in terms of framing. Perhaps the practise I have had with the A710 has helped.

From a photographic point of view the limiting minimum apperture of f8 is frustrating, but this I think applies to all compacts and bridge cameras, and as I wanted a single camera to do everything this is a compromise I was willing to accept.

Overall a good product with an excellent specification, but let down by some fiddly and poorly laid out controls.

Canon PowerShot SX10 IS Digital Camera

I have used this camera extensively since purchasing before Xmas 08. Everything great - except I would have liked the option of 'Raw' and the Movie capture is in 'mov', not an easily recognizable format like 'Mpeg' or 'avi'. I cannot find a programme to download & edit the clips. Cannon recommend using a conversion programme which is another expence and time consuming.

This isn't a bad camera. Canon has jumped on the "20x optical zoom" bandwagon when it designed this camera, and when that's coupled with the sturdy design, the vari-position display screen and Canon's general experience with cameras, you end up with a good enough camera.

As other recent reviews have stated though, the lens cap needs work. For some unfathomale reason, it isn't possible to attach it to the camera, so if you're not careful, you'll knock it off, losing it forever. I've not seen any other camera like this with that particular styling point, which should've been a pointer for Canon as to what was expected of them.

The second this is that I found the zoom a bit of a nightmare to use. Till recently I used an Olympus SP-570 (I dropped it in a lake, never to be seen again), and with that camera it was pretty easy to get the zoom to do what you liked. With this one you're going back and forth umpteen times, till you hit something that approximates to something you like. This is a pain. I know you can do all sorts of tricks to the photo afterwards, but should you have too, when a decent zoom would reduce all the hassle?

Finally, I'm not altogether sure about the picture quality. The auto-focus isn't brilliant, especially at the longer end of the zoom range, and the pictures sometimes look a little soft to my eye (epecially when compared to the Olympus SP-570).

Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty good camera, just not as excellent as you might expect, given the Canon name.

As an amateur who wants to be able to do more just than 'point and click' but is not quite ready for a DSLR, I have found this camera to be perfect middle ground. The controls are quite intuitive and well laid out. The spinny wheel on the back does take a bit of practice for the first few goes, but it soon becomes easy enough to use (the advantage of the wheel is that lots of settings are in one place rather than having buttons all over the camera which - on other cameras - can be too easy to turn on accidentally). The viewfinder is large and very clear and the LCD screen which flips over is excellent. The pictures I have taken in both manual and auto modes have been fantastically clear and I am really pleased with the results. It has some nice features, such as face detection and colour accenting and the macro settings produce really good results. The images taken with the zoom at full 20x are also excellent. Apart from a few minor niggles (not being able to attach the lens cap to the camera unlike other Canon cameras, and no hard copy of the manual provided) I absolutely love this camera! It's worth spending a bit of time either playing with the controls (or reading the manual!) to fully utilise the potential of this camera.