Canon PowerShot SX230 HS 12.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with 14x Image Stabilized Zoom 28mm Wide-Angle Lens and 1080p Full-HD Video (Black) (OLD MODEL)

UPDATE: The video portion of my camera went dead, which I consider one of the better qualities. I just purchased another one to replace it. I'll give the older one to someone who only wants to take photos. I purposely bought this camera and housing for SCUBA. After spending $100 to $1,400 on cameras, I was stunned to see how great the pictures and videos came out. I added this video to show what it is like by simply selecting SCUBA mode (a little fish icon) and doing nothing else. You can get fancier with development of the `white balance', but I stuck to the basics. The sea lion scenes were at 20 feet and the rest of the dives were at 40-70 feet. The color was almost always balanced and the focus very crisp. The description of all the other functions of this camera are listed below, but I think the first reviewer here nailed the camera's qualities. It is an easy point `n shoot camera with some extras. The GPS is a gimmick, but it does work well in placing your photos if you want to display them on GOOGLE Earth. However, the housing restricts that feature. The 12.1 megapixels are great for even posters or flat screen televisions (I use mine through my Blu-ray disc player for YOUTUBE). The function set, display, menu and the dial are all easy and intuitive. The zoom is remarkably steady (I recommend a small tripod). I've never cared for Optical Zoom, but the 14X works as well as any. I do not care for the location of the flash. This surprised me, so you have to get used to keeping your left fingers from the top left of the camera. The HDMI A/V out cover is very flimsy and fortunately you may not have to use this much, but I can see it as being very fragile. This is really a remarkable camera for the price. I have yet to test the stereo microphones, but I can imagine that for the family filmmaker, this might be fun to watch and listen to on a television with stereo speakers. The software that is included is also very simple but important. The features are numerous and it's nice to have something that directly deals with the camera features other than just `Windows Movie Maker". If you ski, snorkel or particularly SCUBA, you will love this camera.

I needed a high zoom, compact camera, that I could slip into a jacket pocket. I own a Canon T2i DSLR so I was already comfortable with Canon's quality. I also own a Panasonic DMC-FH25, which is also a good quality, compact, high zoom camera (8x). What prompted me to purchase this camera was the CMOS sensor coupled with Canon's DIGIC 4 image processor (the same processor used in the T2i DSLR). My opinion; This is one fantastic little camera. When I do not want to haul out my DSLR and it's bag of associated lenses, this is my absolute favorite. The Panasonic FH25 has more pixels but, to me, it also has noticeably more noise. On a 4x6 print, I doubt that anyone could tell the difference (for daylight shots). This Canon excels at low light shots. I took a few test shots this morning, before sunrise, using the 'auto' mode with no flash. I pointed this at a store front and took a hand held 'auto mode' picture. It came out as f/3.1, 1/30 second, ISO1600 and was excellent quality. I then zoomed all the way in on the store's glass door and got another shot at the same settings. The picture quality amazed me. This little thing, at low light, equals or betters my older T2i for low noise. If you are thinking of purchasing a compact, hi zoom, camera, please consider this one. My Panasonic FH25 was priced (at the time of purchase) only about $50.00 less than this Canon. The extra $50 for this camera bought some very good features and extra performance. For the old school people (like me): The F stop has a good range of manual settings. You can do 'Program', 'Manual' or 'Tv/Av' settings as in a much higher priced camera. I did not buy this for videos, but, it will make a good quality HDTV video. Some nice things in that department; You can zoom while recording and this thing has two microphones on the front for that '2-channel' sound. It also has a dedicated 'record video' button. I am just super happy with the performance (for cost) of this thing. Ken

If you're looking for a good point and shoot camera that delivers stunning pictures without a lot of tweaking and such, this IS NOT IT. While it's true that this camera performs better in low light conditions than other point n shoots, that improvement comes at the cost of photo quality in every other shooting condition. Not a very good trade-off in my opinion, and even those low light shots are underwhelming to say the least. Most low light shots taken without the flash are still quite grainy, and most have an amber tint. Battery life on this model certainly IS all it's cracked up to be. In other words, it's dismal. The battery is quickly depleted and takes a little more than two hours to charge. You might also find this excerpt from the owner's manual section on charging the battery interesting: "The battery may develop a bulge. This is a normal characteristic of the battery and does not indicate a problem. However if the battery bulges to the point where it will no longer fit into the camera, please contact a Canon Customer Support Help Desk." (p. 15, bottom paragraph). Couldn't a major player like Canon come up with a better power solution than a battery with a known design flaw? What if the battery develops a bulge while it's in your camera? What about the meat and potatoes of any camera review, namely photo quality? Most of several hundred images I shot were blurry, grainy, and either washed out or amber tinted, depending on which settings the camera automatically chose based on shooting conditions. There were, admittedly, a few exceptions. They were brilliant, and if those exceptions were instead the rule, I'd be raving about the camera instead of panning it. At least the potential for that kind of photography is there, so I'll give it this: it has potential. But we aren't paying for potential, we're paying for performance. This camera frequently chooses inappropriate focal points, focusing on extraneous items in the composition space and blurring the intended subject. Sure, lots of shots taken with this Canon look pretty okay until they're viewed at full size on a computer screen. Then they're grainy as heck, with way too much loss of detail. I'm not talking about enlarging images, just about full size viewing on a computer screen, which is how all my photos will be viewed (on a computer screen). The position of the flash on the camera causes it to be obstructed by the extended lens when shooting close up/macro, resulting in the lens' shadow being projected on to the subject. That's the worst of it, but there's another problem with it that most reviewers have already pointed out - it's an ergonomic disaster. Because of its placement, there's just no good way to hold the camera stable when shooting. If you're not careful when you're turning the camera on, you'll wind up preventing the darn thing from even opening with your finger. The flash isn't just in a bad place on top of the camera, it actually curves around the corner just enough so that even when held on the side, you can easily obstruct the flash, causing it not to open. As far as all the tweaks and features, I bought the camera in spite of those, not for them. I couldn't care less about GPS, I'd NEVER settle for editing my photos on a tiny 3" screen, and I hate cheezy effects, which I find most on-board effects to be. On the positive side, Canon's photo import and edit software is really quite good compared to others, including my old Kodak's. Importing images to your hard drive is quick and as easy as pie. Basic editing tasks are too. No doubt some will tell me which settings I should have used and which ones I should have tweaked, but that's hardly the point of "point and shoot", is it? Granted, being able to tweak basic photographic settings comes in handy for shoots that are planned ahead of time, but shooting on the fly requires speed, and there's nothing speedy about navigating the complicated menu on this camera to get to those settings. I didn't buy this camera for studio work, I bought it for its supposed point and shoot capabilities, and they are woefully inadequate. My experience with Canon digital cameras has led me to conclude that they're overhyped, but there's no denying that they have a loyal following nonetheless. I wish I could say I'd joined their ranks as a result of buying this camera, but I can't, nor can I recommend it.

I hope I can get across to you how thrilled I am with this camera, it far exceeded my expectations. I appreciate how small it is, it is barely larger than my iPhone. This was a major factor to me, I wanted a camera that would fit easily into my pocket. Don't let the small size deter you, this camera takes excellent photos! I have used it primarily on Auto mode and have found it almost always does the job for me. If I need to go beyond that, it offers shutter and aperature priority modes. It can even do time exposures, those came in very handy for me when shooting Christmas lights. We have some small dogs at home. Whenever I use a flash to take their photo, they would have a very bad case of red-eye that I needed to compensate for. I can use this camera in Auto mode with the flash and the dogs' eyes come out perfrectly normal, no red eye at all! The 14X optical zoom is great! I attended a football game and took some photos of the people on the other side of the stadium from me. It was very easy to read what ti said on their shirts. I also took photos of the game: I was on the 45 yeard line and was able to get great close-ups of the action when they weree on the 10-yard line at the other end of the field. Need to do macro shots? If so, this is the camera for you. It does not have a Macro setting. Instead, it automatcially goes into Macro mode when you are taking a photo of a close-up object. I put a silver dollar on the table, put the camera into Auto mode, got within a few inches of the ooin and the camera automatically went into Macro mode. The photos I got were sharp and detailed. The camera shoots amazing HiDef video in stereo. It is so sharp I will no longer take my camcorder with me when I travel. Also, you can use the zoom while shooting video without hearing the noise of the camera zooming in. The worst thing I can say about the camera is that the flash is in a place where I would normally place my left hand to hold the camera; this however is a very small issue that I can work with. The overall excellence of this camera more than makes up for it.

I travel. A lot. For me, this is the combination of all things good: A fantastic camera that not only takes pictures, but makes sharing about the world easier. Where I'm from in the dirty South (New Orleans, LA), not a ton of people pick up one day and fly out to Syria. In fact, I'm the first in six generations to fly to another continent. When I got the camera, first thing I did was do a walk-through around the city. The geo-location tags were impeccable and the shots were... amazing. I tested out all the features - color specific, ISO increasing, multi-picture mode, you name it, Canon knows what they're doing. I tore down to my favorite wine shop last Sunday night, and for those of you who've seen "Treme", yes, Bacchanal does exist, just not in Treme, and through their backyard, lit only by a string of lights, I was able to take impeccable low-lit pictures without flash. Seriously, it was Tanga night, and in this four piece band there was no drum, just a beautiful lady clicking her heels on the wooden platform for percussion, and the pictures are simply put - splendid. I can't even believe this is a point and shoot. The next trip I take is going to be to Thailand in six weeks and I'll happily test the geo-tagging and report back with that and a wear-and-tear account, but so far, so good. The battery is lightly short lived if you keep GPS on even when you aren't using it. Recommendation- turn it off when you power down the camera, then re-enable. Yay Camera! **UPDATE** Back from South East Asia with some incredible pictures. Beware travelling through countries that don't allow GPS (like Vietnam!) but otherwise, awesome. The pictures are incredible. Not just that, but the camera was hardy and worked like a dream the whole time. I had one problem where the shutter was bent, but I re-bent it back with a penny and went about my business. It made it through two months of use and re-use, living in a backpack and getting tossed under busses and, generally, falling on the floor a few times, but still rugged as hell! Made it through and got home with over 4,000 pictures, mostly incredible.

Update 02/10/2012 -- No change to my rating, but I learned the hard way that you have to treat this camera as though it is more fragile than glass and more slippery than soap. ALWAYS use a hand or neck strap, or you will drop it, and it will be toast or need substantial repair. I think any product at this price point should be more sturdy, but apparently this is a longstanding issue with most point-and-shoot cameras. If they can't engineer them to withstand a short drop, I would suggest they be sold with a high-quality strap already installed and a conspicuous warning sticker that STRAP MUST BE USED AT ALL TIMES. I don't much like the one that came with this camera, and now have the following strap carefully tied onto it: COSMOS ® Black Detachable Neck Strap Band Lanyard For Camera Cell phone ipod mp3 mp4 PSP Wii and other Electronic Devices + Cosmos cable tie ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Before buying, I researched and compared various low-budget cameras, and was leaning toward the Canon ELPH 300 over the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-WX9. Planning to use whatever I bought as a backup camcorder, I watched a lot of videos created by these and numerous other cameras. I also looked at many photos users had taken, and read a plethora of buyer and pro reviews. Of those two topping my sub-$200 short list, it seemed the Canon ELPH maybe had a slight advantage on photos. The Sony was looking a little better on videos, except I was concerned its audio might be more susceptible to clipping at concerts and wind noise outdoors. About the time I was ready to buy the ELPH, the Canon SX230HS dropped into my price range. After studying it for awhile, the evidence suggested it should produce results at least as good as the ELPH, with the added benefit of a big zoom in a small case (and one not as noisy for videos as, say, a bulky Fuji super-zoom). So, it really wasn't a difficult decision to go with the SX230HS at that point. I was fully aware from the reviews that battery life wasn't going to be great, the flash was in an awkward spot, and that there would be a learning curve before getting the best results. After receiving the product, I first charged the battery and then tried to install it, which wasn't as intuitive as I'd hoped - it took a few minutes to figure out how to open the compartment and a few more to get the battery locked in, all the while hoping I didn't break something. Probably, it was just me, and there were no further problems after the first time. I did get the memory card inserted from the start without issues. On the initial battery charge, I snapped about 150 photos and recorded several short video clips. At least one-third of the pictures were taken with flash, and the GPS may also have been on for about that many. This all occurred in three separate sessions over a few days (with the camera turned on continuously once a session began), and total time was likely about an hour and a half before the battery died. That's not great, but should be fine for my usage pattern. I bought a couple of the cheap spares in case I ever need to extend my daily shooting time. The main difficulty I've had thus far is in knowing when and how to control the flash. As someone mentioned, you can get yellowing under certain circumstances. For example, I would get good colors on the main objects in the foreground, yet the off-white wall in the back would sometimes have a yellowish tint. This seemed to happen primarily when shooting indoor objects that were within a few feet and fairly well lit already. Auto mode was firing the flash anyway. I switched to Program mode to stop it, and this gave better results. Having the flash active for well-lit objects at greater distances didn't seem to matter as much, and I also got true colors using the flash when there was very little light (usually had to hold the button down a second before it would fire, though). I should note that Kids/Pets mode appeared to work reasonably well outside, but there was some trouble with the flash slowing it down inside. Non-action outdoor shots were fine when using Auto mode, other than I may need to experiment on the settings for using wide-angle on drab, cloudy days (the pictures were pretty, but may have been automatically color-enhanced). Extra zoom is nice to have, and the pictures seemed pretty sharp, even when going beyond the 14x optical to somewhat over 20x total. You may want to steady the camera against something or use a tripod for the higher zoom levels. Overall, maybe 80 percent of my shots have been fine, and I have a good idea of what went wrong on most of the rest. I'm still learning, but this camera seems to be pretty much what I expected, so I'm pleased. While it's possibly not the best at any one given feature, it seems capable of doing many things very well, making it a well-rounded choice. I do want to test the video aspect more before commenting on that, but if it's as good as in samples I've watched, without draining the battery excessively, that will be icing on the cake to have a camera that can compete with some low-end HD camcorders. A little practice and experimentation seems to go a long way with this unit, so that's how I intend to continue approaching it.

I have had this camera for three weeks and believe it is the best Canon product I have owned. My wife owns the SX 210 and I bought the SX 200 when it first was introduced. The 230 takes superior photos especially in low light conditions and with action (my dog and grandchildren) pictures and is very fast. I do a lot of international traveling and the size is perfect for putting into my pants pocket during day trips. The macro is very, very good and when traveling or walking in my neighborhood, I always take lots close-ups of flowers. This camera blows away the 200 and 210 in terms of focusing speed and color accuracy. I may be wrong, but I think the lower number of mexapixels on the 230 and newer CMOS are reasons for the increase of both factors. The zoom is terrific for taking far away landscape photos, portaits of people and for macro close-ups. Very accurate and easy to acquire the image quickly. Some reviewers have mentioned the battery drains quickly but I am able to get approximately 250 pictures on a single charge. I always turn the camera off after taking a photo and don't the GPS or video which may contribute to the longer battery life. I only use the auto or program modes and these seem to work the best for me. The 'kids and pets' option works great, especially for photos of the grandcildren and my dog which never can seems to sit still for longer than 5 seconds. All the light fixtures in my home are stained glass and the camera captured the correct colors without using the flash in the evening. Some others have mentioned the pop up flash as being a negative. With the SX200 the flash was unable to be placed back into the frame of the camera, but Canon changed this in the SX210 and the SX 230 so it will be back into the camera. For me, this was a huge improvement over SX200 plus the smaller size of the SX230. It is somewhat ackward when first using this camera, but I was able to easily and 'automatically' push the flash back in after a short time of using it daily. This has been the camera I have been waiting for since my first Canon Elph purchased 10 years ago. Great zoom, low light ease of use, great color accuracy, quick focusing and small size. The only drawback is the lack of a full manual like Canon used to provide with all their cameras. I always took the manual along when traveling and found it useful to tweak camera settings I normally did not use at home. The manual is available on Canon's website for download though. If you have not owned a Canon before, I would suggest reading it thoroughly as you will get superior photos no matter what the shooting conditions.

My husband and I LOVE this camera! We wanted to upgrade from a Canon Powershot A620, and tried (and were extremely disappointed with) both the Nikon L105 and the Canon ELPH 300 before giving this camera a shot. After being so disappointed by the ELPH 300 (which sounded like such a GREAT camera and has such a large volume of positive reviews, yet every picture we took was soft and grainy no matter how much we played with the settings), I was about ready to give up on getting a camera at this point because there didn't seem to be any great, affordable options. However, after seeing the photos taken with this camera that were uploaded by other buyers, I decided I had to give this camera a shot and see if the uploaded photos and reviews were accurate. Let me tell you, they are. Unlike the Nikon L105 and the Canon ELPH 300, this camera takes crystal clear photos that are not at all soft or grainy; and that's even with the zoom fully extended! Many of these photos have even been taken in low-light settings or settings with no natural light. I was hesitant to spend this much on a camera because I really wanted to stay closer to $100, but I decided that I would be willing to spend a bit more as long as I absolutely loved the camera. I absolutely love this camera. It feels like a huge upgrade from my Powershot A620 which is a decent point-and-shoot but about 6 years old (the Nikon L105 and Canon ELPH 300 definitely did not feel like a big enough upgrade to justify spending $100+); and even though I think $188 is pricey for a point-and-shoot (though $188 is a great deal for what amazon says is a $300 camera!), I definitely feel like it is worth the money. I am by no means an experienced photographer, but this camera is giving me exactly what I want: it takes great, clear photos off the bat, and I can already start to see how taking it off auto and manually changing the settings improves the quality even more. This seems like the perfect camera for both people who don't want to mess around with the settings at all but still get good photos, and people who want to start learning how to manually compose a photo without committing to an expensive DSLR. This camera is heavier than I expected, but not so heavy that I don't want to take it with me places. The pop-up flash is mildly irritating, but I tend not to use the flash, anyway, so when I do forget to hold the camera the "right" way and prevent the pop-up flash from popping up it really doesn't matter. I also don't think it's terribly awkward to hold the camera when the flash IS up, but maybe that's because reading all the reviews prepared me for that. We have the GPS feature turned off (so I can't speak for the quality of that feature), and the battery life has been great/reasonable in my opinion. We still have a full charge and if I had to guess, I'd say we've taken around 100 photos the last several days.

Preforms the way I thought it would for a point and shoot camera.

Love the camera, foot pictures, right size, very impressed

Thankw

I am happy with my purchase of the Canon SX230 HS camera. The photos have excellent clarity and I get compliments when I attached a photo in an email. Also very user friendly!