Canon PowerShot SX120 IS

Shooting Modes (14.83)

Auto Mode Features

Focus

We found no major problems with the auto focus system of the SX120: it usually found the focus point within less than a second, even in low light. It did swim around a little if we disabled the AF illuminator (as it can be a little bright in a darkened room), but it generally had no problem finding the right spot to focus on. The system uses 9 focus points, and tries to get as many in focus as possible. There is, unfortunately, no way to choose a particular point to focus on if you are trying to get something off-center to be sharp: the camera goes with the focus point that gets as many focus points to be correct as possible.

Face Detection focusing is also offered: if you press the face detect button on the back of the camera, it will try and detect faces in the frame and focus and expose for one of them. If it picks the wrong one, you can press the face detect button again and it will pick the next one. The system can’t focus on multiple faces at once.

Exposure

The SX120 can add or subtract up to 2 stops of exposure compensation, measured out in 1/3 of a stop steps. There is no way to automatically bracket shots, though; if you want to get a range of exposures, you have to do it yourself.

Metering

The SX120 offers three exposure modes: evaluative, center weighted and spot metering.

Self-Timer

The SX120 offers a lot of options in its self timer feature. As well as the usual simple 10 and 2 second delays, the camera can take a number of photos (from 3 to 10) when it detects a face in the frame. There is also a custom option which allows you to set the delay (up to 30 seconds) and the number of shots that are taken (from 3 to 10). The one thing that is missing is an interval timer, where the camera takes a number of shots at a preset time interval.

Scene Modes

The SX120 offers a lot of modes to shoot in: there are 14 scene modes, plus program, aperture priority, shutter priority and a full manual mode. That should be enough for any shooting situation, and the inclusion of the full manual mode also means that creative photographers can take that last bit of control for themselves.

The scene modes on offer include a wide range, but the Portrait, Landscape, Night Portrait, Kids & Pets and Indoor modes have their own spots on the mode dial. Below this is an option for scene, which is where you can select the others. This approach provides a good balance between allowing for a quick switch between commonly used modes, but also providing a good selection of modes to use.

Picture Effects (3.00)

Picture Samples
My Colors Off Vivid Neutral Sepia Black & White Custom Color More...

Manual Controls (7.05)

The SX120 has 5 presets for white balance: Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent and Fluorescent H. Also included are a full auto mode and an evaluative mode, where you point the camera at a white object and it uses that to judge the white balance.

The lens of the SX120 has a slightly limited aperture range. While it is pretty wide at the widest zoom setting ( from f/2.8 to f/8.0 at the widest setting), it gets a bit more cramped at the telephoto end (f/4.0 to f/8.0).

In most modes, the shutter speed of the SX120 ranges from 1 second down to 1/2500 of a second. The slowest shutter speed extends out to 15 seconds in the manual mode, though.

Drive/Burst Mode (5.00)

The SX120 has two drive modes for taking multiple shots one after the other: there is the Continuous mode and the Continuous shooting SF mode. The difference (as the same suggests) is in the focusing; in the latter mode, the camera tries to refocus between shots, while it only focuses once in the first mode. We didn’t see any significant difference in the speed of the two modes, and in both the camera was capable of shooting a lot of images: if you hold down the shutter, it will keep shooting. Some other cameras can only shoot a small batch of photos before it has to pause to write the images out to the memory card. the Kodak Z950, for instance, can shoot three images in just over a second, but then has to stop and write them out to the memory card.

Shot to Shot (0.76)

The SX120 doesn’t shoot all that fast, though; we found that it only managed to shoot a rather pedestrian 0.76 frames a second. This means that you’ll probably miss the shot if you are relying on it to capture a football play or something similar.