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

Having used mostly compact digital Canon cameras for the last 6 years, this camera looks and feels very familiar despite the obvious differences to compact. The controls are familiar (only minor changes from compacts) and the compositions are easily controlled. I photograph a huge variety of products and situations ranging from large promotional products (studio based) to minute hairline details and this camera serves well for both. It is fairly simple to use if you are used to Canon cameras and have lengthy camera experience but the PDF manual serves well if this is a new brand to you. Overall, the build and ease of use is what makes me come back to Canon and this is a decent intermediate level camera that will appeal.
I bought a 8GB Bytestor SD Card with reader at the time of purchase which has proved to be very quick and efficient. I decided to not use the image browser software (& USB cable) that comes with the camera (previous experience of this software is quite slow) and I now copy directly from the card on the reader to Finder on the Mac. Super fast!

Months of research suggests this camera is one of the best in it's class (Bridge, Prosumer) currently available. I haven't been using it long and cannot comment on all of it's capabilities. However, on a recent trip to the New Forest, Hampshire(UK) I had a sudden and unexpected opportunity to photograph a herd of wild deer about a quarter of a mile away. I used the telephone lens at max (560mm, hand held) and still managed to get a very presentable image. Let's see anyone do this with a DSLR! without a tripod and a "scaffold" to support the lens (to say nothing of the cost of purchase). I'll put it through it's paces more thoroughly in my next trip to Alaska in July.

i have had all the "s" series since the first one.. they are all great cameras and this one is of course the best... more pixels and more zoom mean that it can get some really good quality images - software is better and now i am used to the control layout i think the changes are good... i still manage to turn it on in my case though...

I upgraded from an old Canon A620 which I loved, but which unfortunately broke after much good service.

There are many things to like about the SX10is: just read the feature list. However, there are many things to dislike as well, and if you want to take good photos then it might be better to wait until the next version comes along.

Some issues:
Navigation seems to have become more confused rather than simpler. The spinny wheel selector is a joke: turn it by a quarter and your guess is as good as mine as to whether that will move you on by 3 settings or none. Didn't they test this? (Confirmed by other reviews as being a problem)
Can't connect to my old Windows XP machine (never had any problem with any other device), with more modern XP machine connects fine but pictures come across corrupted, which implies some kind of bug in the low level USB handling to me.
After a few months intensive use a hair has managed to work its way inside the lens: despite being kept religiously in a camera bag. Great design Canon!
Wide angle is great but there is no indication of 'normal' setting, so if you forget you shoot everything wide angle, which makes portrait shots look odd!
The viewfinder is pointless: the resolution is poor so you can't see what is or isn't in focus, and the colour rendition is appalling. When in the snow covered mountains recently (admittedly a tricky test) I had to continually keep reviewing on the main screen because through the viewfinder it looked completely blown out (in reality it coped very well with the conditions) - it almost begs the question why they bothered with a viewfinder at all.
But last and by all means MOST is that since I've had this camera 1 in 10 shots comes out not level. Prior to this camera I have never noticed a SINGLE shot that I've got the horizon not level, and we're talking up to 3 degrees out here. Even though I know about it and do me level best (excuse the pun) to be aware of it when shooting (in fact I have become obsessed by it), it still does its best to produce photos not on the level. In a recent trip to California I was left with hundreds of photos to re-level in photoshop. This is crazy, is the stabilisation system not working? Is the viewfinder not rendering correctly? There is definitely something very amiss here! I shall try swapping to shooting through the back screen, but if I'd wanted a camera that I need to use like that then I'd have bought one from Fisher Price.

All in all a lovely 'idea of a camera', but my patience has worn thin with it and frankly I'm starting to look for old stock of my original - on paper far less superior - camera because at the end of the day it took better photos!

A wonderful Zoom lens and an excellent camera generally. Minor criticisms:
no Manual - has to be downloaded from the PC - fiddling small AA batteries instead of rechargeable Lithium.