Greetings-- since the release of this camera I have been following all the user reviews on Amazon and the consensus seemed to be overwhelmingly positive. Based on the user reviews and other research that I did, I pulled the trigger and bought one. I was really excited about getting this camera because it sounded like the next step up over what I currently have.
When I received the camera I began running it through it's paces. Very soon into it I began to see issues with the camera. Moving beyond those though, I started taking test pictures using all of the different settings available. I then loaded the images to my PC and began looking at them. What I viewed was very disappointing. First off, the images were not sharp. Secondly, the colors seemed muted and they were not very accurate to what the actual scene looked like. Lastly and on closer examination, I was stunned to see large amounts of purple fringing. This is a problem I would expect on earlier generations of digital cameras, but not now and not on a Canon. What is really sad is that purple fringing is most common in high contrast areas; with my test pictures high contrast scenes were not the case. The purple fringing explained the lack of punch, sharpness, and color accuracy. Thinking I may have received a defective camera I did some Googling. To my surprise I found other people were reporting the same problem with this camera.
I have to tell ya, prior to this Canon purchase I had used a Kodak Z650. The images I get from the Kodak blow away anything I got out of the Canon. Needless to say, the Canon was returned for refund. (I want to thank Amazon for the quick and painless processing of the return.)
Here are some other issues I found with this camera:
1. The selector wheel that is used to navigate within the menus did not translate properly. I found myself spinning it around several times before it would begin moving the cursor. Along with that there was a stickiness to it. It would stick and you'd have to apply more pressure for it to turn, this in turn caused the cursor to jump father than you wanted to go. It was frustrating to use. You can get around all that by pressing the dial down in the corners for the direction you want to go. That seemed to translate well but it is more time consuming. One click equals one position in the menu. If you want to reach the end of the menu you'd have to click your way through one position at a time.
2. I feel the menu layout and functionality was poorly designed and not very intuitive. There are too many layers to navigate through and too many ways to get where you want to go. Here again, my Kodak does a much better job in accessing the options and settings. And just to be clear, the Kodak has many of the same SLR functions to choose from. My point being, it's pretty much an apples and apples comparison. The Kodak is extremely easy to navigate and very easy to learn. Canon could take some lessons from them. I'm not trying to sell Kodak here. The Kodak has it's own issues. The one main thing going for the Kodak is that it is capable of producing some stunning images, and that is the very least I'd expect from a camera.
3. The camera is pretty heavy as others have reported. It's not a problem for me but I think it is worth mentioning again.
4. I found that the lens cap falling off was not a problem for me, but taking it off was. I found this primarily true when you are using the lens shield that Canon supplies. It was difficult for me to fit my fingers between the inner lens shield wall and the lens cap where the releases are located. It was very clumsy and difficult to squeeze the tabs in order to release the cap.
I would have overlooked notes 1 to 4 if the image quality had been there. Sadly for me it wasn't.
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Canon Powershot SX10IS 10MP Digital Camera with 20x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom.
