Gadgetory

hey everybody Mike Perlman here for TechnoBuffalo with a review of the Canon Powershot SX 260 HS is this power pack jack-of-all-trades the model for you find out in my full review ladies and gentlemen welcome to my Canon Powershot SX 260 HS review this camera is going to be very popular on the shelves at Best Buy your local electronics store and I'll tell you why throughout this review the sx260 HS replaces last year's SX 230 HS a camera that brought GPS and a few other advanced features to the table for 2012 Canon has added quite a few new features to its compact mega zoom camera first we'll discuss design the Canon Powershot SX 260 HS now has a rubberized right hand grip so it's a little bit easier to hold and Canon also abolished that unsightly GPS hump that was found on the SX 230 now the top of the camera is nice and flush the zoom has been increased from a 14 X optical now to a 20x optical zoom and the lens has a wide-angle capability of 25 millimeters compared to last year's 28 on the downside the sx260 HS now has a slower base aperture it has an F 3.5 aperture compared to the SX 230 s f 3.1 aperture that's about a stop difference and I believe it made an impact in low-light shooting although the camera's battery performance was not one of the best I've seen I found that this battery pack offered a little bit more juice than the SX 230 s one of the best things about the sx260 HS is that the flash does not pop up automatically when you power the camera on it only pops up when you select flash in the menu system now with this extra space on top I think Canon should have taken the mode dial and migrated it up here because it's very easy to inadvertently select modes while you're trying to fiddle with the shutter button or zoom toggle and lastly Canon carried over the same 460 k3 inch display as found on the SX 230 HS and since this camera is $50 more I think we needed at least bare-bones minimum on 921,000 pixel display Canon packed a lot of new and intriguing features into this model first off we'll start with the Smart Auto mode which has been increased from 32 predefined scenes to 58 predefined scenes what I found was a better auto mode that proved itself as one of the best auto modes in the point-and-shoot market this camera still has those fun lovable digital filter effects like toy camera miniature and color accent there are a gaggle of scene modes on the sx260 HS and we could still make color filter adjustments now for manual controls this cameras pretty power packed it has a 15 second shutter it has an ISO that goes up to 3200 and it has plenty of white balance options on the downside I found the aperture range to be very short f3 point 5 2 F 8.0 is really nothing to write home about I also wasn't crazy about the manual focus with this LCD screen resolution is very difficult to really fine-tune the focus and overall I found this camera to be a little bit slower than its competition slow to autofocus slow to make some menu adjustments lastly the GPS feature works very well on this camera it takes a little while to get an initial signal maybe 5 to 10 minutes but once you do the Canon map utility with Google Maps is a fantastic program just be sure if you do GPS logging to turn it off before you go to bed because you'll wake up with a dead canon in the morning now let's talk about some of the more unconventional features Canon injected into the sx260 HS first off there's a new face ID system this camera can actually record up to 12 predefined faces all you have to do is take a picture of the subject fill in a little information about them as far as their name and their birthday and every time that same subject appears in frame their name will appear and the camera will adjust the exposure and the focus to their beautiful visage gimmicky yes but I did find that it worked then there's a new live mode in live mode the camera gives you sliders you can go dark to light neutral to vivid cool to warm this is very similar to Nikon slider system that they debuted a couple years ago on their coolpix point-and-shoot lineup and then there was a discreet mode in discreet mode which is signified by an icon of what I assume to be a librarian executing the gesture all camera sounds an operation volume are completely silenced I renamed discrete mode to paparazzi mode and then I renamed that to stalker mode so overall the canon powershot sx60 HS is one of the most power packed as far as features go from a compact mega zoom camera and now it's image quality time what's under the hood of the canon powershot sx60 HS we have a 1 over 2.3 inch HSC MOS sensor the same sensor found on last year's SX 230 HS but the one difference is that we now have a new digit 5 processor it's faster what does that mean high-speed burst HQ shooting that's ten point three frames per second burst mode at full resolution the results were very great so if you're planning on taking a lot of fast action shots this is a great camera to do it with now when it came to the great spectrum of photography this camera was great in ideal lighting situations that includes well-lit macro scenarios and subdued landscapes but in several dynamic shooting scenes where you had a big backlight and a shadowy foreground this camera tended to overexpose and blow out so a lot of the times I had to rely on the exposure compensation now that's an easy adjustment for an advanced shooter to make but most beginners will think that exposure compensation is some kind of deep psychological complex low-light exposure was pretty decent with the sx260 HS however certain high ISO images were a bit muddy as far as noise goes another thing about low-light is that the auto white balance on the Canon Powershot SX 260 HS is fairly weak everything exposed yellow so I had to rely on a manual white balance in many low-light scenarios the sx260 HS shoots 1080p 24 frames per second videos HD videos the quality is very good I was quite impressed with the videos from this camera but I needed a more extensive video control suite like you find on Panasonic's and Panasonic's are shooting a VC HD video at 60 frames per second that's pretty superior to what you find with 24 frames per second so as far as image quality goes with the Canon Powershot SX 2 6 ths it's a very good performer however it needs a little it needs user input in order for you to get the most out of this camera and that's not going to be a good thing for most beginners now it's time for the buffalo call with the canon powershot essex 260 HS my advice is to go for a Canon Powershot SX 230 HS because the price will likely drop now or wait for my review of the panasonic lumix DMC cs20 coming up soon but for now this has been the Canon Powershot SX - 6 ths review for all image samples and videos be sure to go to TechnoBuffalo comm I'm Mike Pearlman I'll see you guys later what did it do to die today at a minute or two to two a thing distinctly hard to say it harder still to do she beat it a 2 at 22 to with the rata tatata tatata 2 and the dragon will come and here is a drum and a minute to tootle 2 today a minute or two to do it's how I warm up for these