Canon PowerShot SX110 IS Digital Camera Review

Canon PowerShot SX110 IS

Digital Camera Review

Dec 08, 2008 - By Tim Barribeau
2.1 The PowerShot SX110 IS from Canon is a new point-and-shoot with an impressive 10x zoom in a reasonably portable package. It shoots at 9-megapixel resolution, and offers optical image stabilization to make handheld telephoto shots practical. It didn't score very well in our extensive lab testing, with the exception of color accuracy, but we were very impressed by the excellent user interface and significant degree of manual control. The SX110 IS is currently available for $249.99 in black or silver;  the full review follows.
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Auto Mode (9.00)
There are two levels of automatic mode on the Canon PowerShot SX110 IS. The first is Easy mode, which removes almost all user control. Once you're in this mode, you can zoom, and use the flash, but that's it. Interestingly, if you flip over to Playback while in Easy, you're also given an easy playback mode, where you can look through your photos, zoom, delete and start a slideshow. If you want a smidgen more control, you can flip over to Auto, which lets you change a few more settings. You can alter the type of auto ISO (normal or high, the latter of which limits the auto ISO to an unspecified higher setting). You also control burst, focus mode (normal or macro), face detection and image quality. Then you can move onto Program mode, Shutter priority (Tv), Aperture priority (Av) or full Manual control, based on your skills and desires.

Movie Mode (7.75)
Movies can be shoot at three different resolutions: 640x480, 320x240 and the absolutely tiny 160x120. Videos can last up to one hour or 4GB in the larger two formats, whichever comes first. 160x120 mode can only shoot up to three minutes. If you ever want to record absolutely tiny clips, for a minimal length of time, maybe you'll find some joy here.

While recording video, the optical zoom is disabled, most likely due to the whirring of the servos, which would be quite loud once recorded. You have access to a few other controls: focus can be set to normal, macro or manual. You can set a self timer to delay the start of video recording. Full white balance controls are available in movie mode, as are color settings. Pressing the ISO button brings up a small slider on screen, which is used to adjust the scene brightness.

Drive / Burst Mode (9.00)
The Canon offers quite a decent variety of burst modes and timers. You have single shot, continuous (1.2 frames per second), and continuous autofocus (which refocuses for every shot, and takes 0.7 frames per second). We especially liked the ability to customize the timer. You can use the traditional 10- or 2-second timer, but you can also set up one to your own specifications, with a delay of 1-30 seconds, and it can take 1-10 shots. This is an unusually flexible arrangement that could prove useful in a varety of shooting situations.

Playback Mode (8.00)
Pressing DISP while in Playback mode change sthe screen's information display. You can view just the picture; date and time the shot was taken; all shooting details, brightness histogram and over exposed areas highlighted; and finally focus check, which enlarges the center of the image so you can see if you have your photo is tack sharp. Zooming in provides up to 10x magnification, at which point you can use the scroll wheel to switch between images at the same level of enlargement. Zooming out takes you to a thumbnail view of nine images at a time, and zooming out again lets you go through pages of nine images per page.

If you're looking at an image at normal magnification, rotating the wheel will jump thtake you to a list of all the stored pictures sorted by date. If you press up on the wheel, you can scroll through images on a number of criteria:  shot date, jump 100 images, jump 10 images, jump to movie or jump to folder.

Pictures will also auto-rotate if you tilt the camera 90° in either direction.

Custom Image Presets (6.83)
Five of the image presets are located on the mode dial itself, and a sixth scene mode setting lets you choose from additional options. The list of choices isn't shockingly huge, but it should cover most eventualities. On the dial are portrait, landscape, night snapshot, kids and pets, and indoor mode. If you flip over to Scene Mode, you can use ISO 3200 (at reduced resolution), night scene, sunset, foliage, snow, beach, fireworks or aquarium. This last one is represented by a fish, but please don't think this camera is waterproof, because it isn't.

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