Canon PowerShot SX200 IS

Manual Controls

Like its predecessor and most of its competitors the Canon PowerShot SX200 IS offers full manual controls, including Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and full Manual modes. These allow you to manually adjust the aperture or shutter speed and give you a lot more control over exposure than automatic modes. Once in a manual mode you make adjustments to the shutter speed and aperture using the rotating dial around the 4-way control. In full manual mode you switch between the two by pressing up on the 4-way.

Full manual mode is available on the SX200 IS.

Focus

The Canon PowerShot SX200 IS has standard autofocus, but also offers the ability to focus manually. To access this feature just press left on the 4-way control and choose Manual Focus from the list of options. Once in manual focus mode you can adjust the focus using the rotating dial around the 4-way control. You can also select Macro as a focus option, with a range of 0.8 inches, and Super Macro can be selected on the mode dial to give you a focus range between 0 and 0.8 inches.

Manual focus is a nice feature to see on a point and shoot.

ISO

ISO can be adjusted from the Function Set menu, with a range from 80 to 1600. There's also an ISO 3200 mode available as a scene mode. Frankly on a point and shoot like the SX200 IS we wouldn't recommend pushing ISO much past 400; in practice the higher ISO options are of limited utility.

ISO ranges from 80 to 1600.

White Balance

White balance can also be adjusted in the Function Set menu on the Canon PowerShot SX200 IS. Your options are Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H and Custom. That last allows you to manually set the white balance using a white card, or a piece of paper if nothing better is available.

There are seven white balance options available, including custom.

Metering

The Canon PowerShot SX200 IS offers three metering modes, which can be set using the now familiar Function Set menu. Your options are Evaluative, Center-Weighted Average, and Spot metering.

Evaluative, Center-Weighted and Spot metering are available.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speeds on the Canon PowerShot SX200 IS range from 15 seconds to 1/3200th of a second. This is a reasonable range for a point and shoot camera. Thanks to the manual controls you can adjust the shutter speed to your liking in shutter priority or full manual modes. We should note that at long exposure, over 1.3 seconds, the SX200 IS will use noise reduction. This doubles the amount of time takes to capture the photo, as the camera is actually taking two exposures, one with the shutter closed, and subtracting the noise from the non-image from the actual photo.

Aperture

The Canon PowerShot SX200 IS's aperture ranges from a maximum of f/3.4 at the maximum end to f/5.3 at the tele end. This is a lower maximum aperture than its predecessor, which was able to open a full stop more. The practical impact of this change is that you will need to use a slower shutter speed or higher ISO to compensate in low light situations. The latter will lead to more noise in your photos. As with shutter speed, the SX200 IS offers full manual control over aperture in aperture priority and full manual modes.

Image Stabilization

The Canon PowerShot SX200 IS offers optical image stabilization. Image stabilization helps to counteract camera shake by moving the lens elements. This is especially important when you're zoomed in, and of course the SX200 IS offers an impressive zoom range so this is particularly important for this camera.

Picture Quality & Size Options

The Canon PowerShot SX200 IS offers a maximum picture size of 4000 x 3000, which can be dropped down as low as 640 x 480 with three options in between. There are two quality options, Fine and Normal. At full resolution using Fine you can pack 626 photos into 2GB of storage.

Picture Effects

You can assign various picture effects to your photos either beforehand using the My Color feature or after the fact in Playback mode. The available effects are Vivid, Vivid Blue, Vivid Green, Vivid Red, Neutral, Sepia, Black & White, Positive Film, Lighter Skin Tone, Darker Skin Tone and Custom. That last will allow you to manually adjust colors.