Canon PowerShot SX30 IS Digital Camera Review

There have been superzooms in past times that have promised to get you right into the action, but the SX30 from Canon is about to beat every one of them, offering an incredible 24mm-840mm focal length range. That’s a 35x optical zoom atop the generous 24mm wide angle. If you thought the macro option might suffer as a consequence of this then think again. It’s rated at 0cm. That’s right, you can push the lens right up against the subject. So, the numbers sound amazing, just how well does it stand up in the cold light of day?

Canon PowerShot SX30 IS: Features
The SX30 is just by pointing out zoom. Everything is based around it. Naturally with such a colossal range your aperture, image stabilisation and ISO range become very important. Fortunately that at the wide angle end you get f/2.7 and in the end of the telephoto it’s f/5.8. There’s lens-shift image stabilisation in the system that consists of one Hi-UD lens, one UD lens and one double-sided aspherical lens. Canon has put a lot of effort into getting as good a quality lens as possible onto the camera. The 14.1Mp CCD sensor is backed up by the DIGIC 4 with iSAPS processing engine and there’s an enhanced i-Contrast feature for brightening shadows. On the back, the LCD screen is 2.7in but only has 230k dots (not pixels) which makes it pretty mediocre. It does flip out and rotate to help with tricky shots, especially macro ones though. There’s also an EV as well but no automatic switching between the two. In fact it requires two presses of the display button to change between them and to change back. The first press adds a histogram to the present display.

See that this camera is clearly gonna be aimed at the photographer rather than happy snapper, the mode dial concentrates on programmed modes. There are three specific scene modes and a general scene mode option, but with two custom settings and AP, SP and M modes, the target user is fairly clear

Canon PowerShot SX30 IS: Handling
There have been some complaints that it’s quite plasticky. Well, it isn’t that bad, but neither is it great quality. It does feel heavy in the hand at 601g and it’s fairly bulky. The handling is fine for shooting, but the dial on the back instead of having a proper control wheel is irritating because the feedback from it is sloppy. Because the zoom is so long it’s easy to lose track of things, so there’s a quick pull back out button to provide you with a wide view before returning to the focal length you were at. Unfortunately it’s next to the thumb position making it all too easy to press against. Otherwise, handling is okay to get stable shots. The ultrasonic motor for the lens ensures it’s fairly quick and not too loud. The buttons on the back are all a decent size and easy to operate.

Canon PowerShot SX30 IS: Performance
It’s only when you're getting a camera out in the field during the day you will get a good feel for how easy it using and how well it performs. So let’s say straight off, the camera exposes for the ground and unless you meter off something bordering the sky – like trees – then you risk getting a white sky. Shooting a sunlit (low on the horizon, not strong) landscape with a nice blue sky should be easy work for any digital camera, but the SX30 was a constant fight to retain the sky resulting in underexposed foregrounds. There is an i-Contrast option that brightens up shadows but this only works to a modest degree. Even so, it’s absolutely essential to use. All the metering modes were tried and even the evaluative ones weren’t fond of the sky.

There’s also an issue with colour fringing. Shooting dark objects against a white sky might be expected but objects against blue ones is particularly poor. Thankfully the lens stabilisation does a good job though invariably, at the long end of the zoom, more ISO is almost always needed.

Focussing, which is a key issue for this camera, is generally good. It’s not DSLR good, but it rarely had a problem with anything. There’s amount of options here, just moving the focus area slowly around, or using face detection. In fact, this is somewhat underwhelming as I would expect focus tracking as a minimum. Macro focussing at 0cm is commendable, but slightly misleading because the lens housing is fairly large so the front is some way from the CCD. More of an issue is avoiding shadows from the housing. But given along the optics, very handy.

Although there’s a sports scene mode, the burst mode of the SX30 is also fairly average. In a 10 second test it captured 7 hi-res images, so the touted frame rate of 0.6fps bore out. There’s also movies, but again, only at 1280x720, 30 fps, rather than full HD.

Canon SX30 IS Overview

The canon sx30is review IS follows up 2009's SX20 IS model -- itself an update of 2008's SX10 IS. Compared to the SX20 IS, Canon has again raised the resolution ever so slightly, taking the SX30 from a twelve-megapixel CCD sensor to a fourteen megapixel CCD, with the result still being handled by Canon's DIGIC 4 image processor.

Gone is the SX20's 20x optical zoom lens, replaced by a jaw-dropping 35x optical zoom, offering focal lengths ranging from a generous 24mm wide-angle to a "don't-you-need-a-tripod?" 840mm-equivalent telephoto. This lens includes one ultra-low dispersion lens element, and one high-index / ultra-low-dispersion lens element.

The lens design also includes ultrasonic and voice coil motors, aimed at reducing autofocus and zoom noise when recording movies. An optional lens filter adapter allows use of 67mm filters with the SX30 IS.

As the "IS" in the SX30 IS's name indicates, it includes Canon's Image Stabilization technology, helping fight the effects of blur from camera shake -- and it's said to be Canon's most powerful IS system, with a claimed 4.5 stop improvement. Still, at the longest focal lengths we'd expect camera shake to be an issue even with stabilization in under optimal lighting conditions.

Further recognizing the potential handling issues of such a long-zoom lens in a camera intended for consumer use, Canon has added a new Zoom Framing Assist button, which lets the user quickly zoom the lens out if they lose track of their subject, then zoom back in again once they've re-centered the subject in the image frame. A Smart Auto function automatically selects the appropriate scene mode from among 28 types, depending on subject matter.

Images are framed and reviewed on the canon sx30is review's 2.7-inch tilt / swivel LCD display -- just a touch larger than the SX20's 2.5-inch panel -- which has a resolution of approximately 230,000 dots. As well as still image capture, the Canon PowerShot SX30 IS retains its predecessor's high-definition 720p movie mode, with stereo sound recording.

A Dynamic IS mode available when recording movies aims to reduce camera shake when filming while moving, and a movie-mode variant of Smart Auto can recognize and configure the camera for 21 different scene types. There's also a variety of effects modes including Fish-eye, Miniature, Poster, and Super Vivid, of which the Miniature effect is available not just for still images, but also for movie recording. Like a similar mode available in some of Olympus' cameras, this strikes movie frame rate; Canon allows playback at either 6, 3, or 1.5 frames per second if the movie was recorded in miniature mode.

The PowerShot SX30 IS also retains the SX20's HDMI high definition video output. One other change of note is usually that the PowerShot SX30 IS now draws power from a proprietary lithium-ion battery pack, instead of the four AA batteries of its predecessor. And also the SX20's SD / SDHC card storage, the Canon SX30 now supports the latest generation SDXC cards. In addition, the Canon SX30 IS is now certified as Eye-Fi Connected, meaning it provides access to certain management features of the popular WiFi-capable SD cards in-camera.

The Canon PowerShot canon sx30is review IS retails for around US$430, more expensive than its predecessor by $30. The Canon PowerShot SX30 IS began shipping in late September 2010.