Canon PowerShot SX100IS 8MP Digital Camera with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black)

This is my first Digital Camera, and I am very happy with it. Ive had it for about 2 months now. It takes extremely sharp detailed pictures, which can easily be cropped and blown up and still retain their quality. The zoom is great, 10x optical and 40x if you add the digital zoom, although i normally wont go past the optical unless there's good lighting. It takes great pictures both indoors and out, but when indoors you will have to use the flash very often, unless the room is well lit.The video quality is not the greatest, but a very nice feature to have. You can zoom optically before you hit record, but can only zoom digitally while recording. The battery life with AA Alkaline batteries is very poor but with NiMH Recharbales it's great. I only get about a half hour of on time and 30 pictures off of one set of Alkaline batteries. Take everyones advice and get 2 sets of NiMH Rechargeable batteries off the bat they work wonders. I get over 200 pictures and several hours of on time from one charge. I bought Sony Quick Battery Charger with 4 AA Ni-MH Rechargeable Batteries as a pack and works great. The camera is very self explanatory and easy to use out of the box, and with a little reading the advanced options are easy enough to get the hang of. Some people were saying that when you change memory cards the batteries fall out, but that hasn't been an issue, if u get a large 2G or 4G sd card you wont have to change them very often, and just be careful. The one and only thing i don't like about this camera is the long delay between shots when using the flash. When using the flash it takes 5-8 seconds to recharge before you can take another shot. I don't know how long this recharge period would be on other digital cameras. However its not a very big deal and all of the other great things about this camera make up for it ten fold. A great camera well worth the money.

Bought this because all of the rave reviews I read here about the Canon SX100IS! First the good things: The few pictures that I took looked great and the zoom was wonderful. IS worked like a charm even after I shook the camera on purpose to TRY and create a blurry picture, but couldn't! Now the reasons I returned it: I hated the "wheel" on the back of the camera. While trying to spin it I would always end up clicking it and end-up somewhere else, total design flaw! I hated the feel of it. It felt like cheap plastic and did not feel sturdy in my hands. Always felt like it was slipping out! But the reason I returned it was because of the battery life, or lack there of. I used the batteries that came with it all of about 45 minutes. I then replaced them with re-chargable ones that came with the "accessory pack" ,that I bought from Amazon, and got about 5-6 minutes with those. Put the other set in and only got 2-3 minutes with those! Went and bought a brand new pair of lithium AA's and only got 20-25 minutes with those. WHAT GOOD IS A CAMERA IF YOU CAN'T TAKE PICTURES!!! Unacceptable. I returned to Amazon awaiting my refund! Bottom Line: This camera felt cheap and not sturdy in my hands. Battery life was a joke and not acceptable.

I'm not sure of why Canon introduced the SX100 IS. Its most distinctive feature is a 10x zoom of the usual Canon quality. It appears intended to compete with the Panasonic Lumix TZ series. Compared to the TZ, it is larger and heavier, but it does have a pop-up flash which can offer slightly better modeling and, more important, for many photographers, a manual exposure mode. Canon apparently intended the SX100 to fill what they perceive as the "gap" between the venerable (and excellent) A series and the DSLR lookalike, but not function alike, Powershot S5, which is also excellent. The SX100 has, in my opinion, one major design flaw. Instead of the more typical 4-way touch mechanism for function selection, the SX100 has a rotating wheel. This is, again in my opinion, a massive error since the wheel is very difficult to rotate accurately: fingers tend to slip off and either set a function prematurely or hit another button bringing up an unwanted function or, worst of all, both. Perhaps people with very small fingers and an acute sense of touch can reliably use this wheel. I cannot and see it as a major negative in the design of the SX100. Other than that flaw - which I think of as a showstopper for many people - the camera is typical Canon, which means very good value for the money. The 8 Megapixel images are crisp. As always, except for very expensive DSLRs, noise becomes a problem at higher ISO values, in this case starting at about ISO 200. If the choice is between having no picture at all and a noisy picture, the decision is obvious. The SX100 has face detection and it seems to work. The 2.5" LCD viewfinder is okay. There are a few specialized scene selectors, such as beach scene and portraits. In video mode, you can capture 640 x 480 video at 30fps. Audio quality is passable. But you cannot zoom while doing video. Up to one hour of video can be recorded. The zoom range is 36 - 360mm. I wish all the manufacturers would lop off the top end and make the wide angle wider. Shot to shot recyling times are a bit on the slow side, but not unusual for this class of camera. Flash recyling time is just plain awful and much slower than other similar cameras. The camera runs on two AA batteries, which I consider a plus since such batteries are available everywhere in the world. But make sure you carry extras because this camera eats batteries. Rechargeables are a must with this camera. Overall, this is a general purpose camera with no truly outstanding features. While image quality is high - and the primary reason for the 4-star rating - the rest of the camera is kind of ho-hum. You might want to carefully consider this camera in comparison to its competitors. Jerry

I purchased this camera to replace an older Canon Powershot (a 3 Megapixel version.) I was looking for a very portable camera (but not credit card sized) to take decent pictures - something to compliment my 35mm film SLR. Recently I went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park and figured this would be a good test of the camera. I was pleasantly surprised at how great the pictures came out. Usually I end up doing a little color correction on my digital photos but I will hardly have to touch the over 100 shots I took. I brought them into work the next day to show people and EVERYBODY kept asking me what was the model and make of my camera. The images are crisp and clean. The digital zoom works wonderfully and you can get some very clean closeups. I was able to get head and shoulder shots of a cheetah over 500 feet away. The image stabilization worked well. I took a few shots of some animals in a slowly moving vehicle. I fully expected the images to blur but they didn't. The only thing I didn't test was the video capture mode but I expect it to work well from what I found. One slight warning for anyone that plans to use the stitch assist (for panorama shots.) My previous camera had this feature and it assembled the photo as you went along (creating a very small picture in a small LCD on the camera back.) This camera assembles the pictures in your computer once you get back and download them ... but it does it much easier. Before you had to line up the pictures in the small LCD screen. With this camera you just have to get it close and the software will line it up automatically. Both cameras show the previous picture taken so you know where to line up the next shot but this time the software just asks what order the pictures were taken (which I guess means you can take them out of order) and then you click assemble and they all line up. It is quite easy. I would highly recommend this camera for anyone interested in a very portable camera. I think the days of not using my film camera are getting closer and closer.

Horrible doesn’t even come with a charger, and it delivered late. it’s not turning off as well

I have used this camera for one month and will comment on my observations. First the zoom lens is superb. It works smoothly and is easy to operate. I use it all the time. The pictures at full optical zoom (10X) were crisp, detailed and clear. The color was bright, warm and true to life. I found myself saying, "Wow, wow, wow. I can't believe how great these pictures look ". They are superior to the ones I take with my Canon S2 1S. One brght and sunny day, I took some pictures of a near by river and pedestrians who were at least 100 yards away. I used the digital zoom to enlarge the pictures 40X. They were surprisingly good..again couldn't believe it. However, on a gray day this was not the case. The pictures were pixilated and of poor quality. However, the 10X optical zoom pictures were always excellent. The superb image stabilization system contributed greatly to the quality of the zoomed pictures. My Canon Powershot SD 1000 is a wonderful pocket sized camera but at times frustrated me because it only has 3X optical zoom without image stabilization. The macro setting of the SX100 IS is superb and easy to use. The picture quality caused more "Wow, I can't believe how good they are." Some of my most exciting pictures have been in the macro setting. The camera is small enough to fit in my pants pocket albeit with a noticable bulge. I have been carrying it this way for the past month even though I have a carrying case for it. I wanted a camera with a decent zoom lens to carry with me on most days. It works but it is definitely not as portable as the Canon Powershsot SD 1000. I don't mind the increased size because I love the zoom. Thus far the unprotected LCD screen has not been damaged in my pocket. The screen itself is good size, easily cleaned and scratch resistant. The screen in no way reproduces the fine quality of the pictures as seen on a computer or when printed out. The screen has fewer pixels than the SD 1000 screen. This is not a problem for me. There is no viewfinder but the screen works reasonably well for me in bright sunlight. The camera has a solid feel which I like and is relatively easy to hold steady for zoom shots. The battery and SD card cover at first felt a bit fragile but on repeated use it seems to work just fine. The movie function is average at best. The low resolution movie setting takes poor quality movie that are unacceptable to me. At the high resolution setting the movies are o.k. You can zoom during a movie but it goes out of focus. If I want a close up movie shot, I zoom first in the camera mode and then switch to the movie mode and shot the movie. The results are o.k. My Canon S2 1S zooms while shooting a movie which I like. I have not used the manual controls so I can't comment on them. I have use the programed shooting modes for evening and inside shooting etc and they work just fine. This is a great camera albeit not perfect. For me, the picture quality is it's greatest asset. It is a pleasure to give it a 5 star rating.

I have had this camera more than 2 years and I continue to be disappointed. It is good outdoors and for Video but indoors it is just bad. Don't use the flash and your pictures have a 50 50 chance of turning out. Use the flash and it is ungodly slow. I have had 100 dollar cameras that warm up quicker. I will keep this camera for videos and buy another for photos. I miss out on way to many photos waiting on this camera flash to be ready or just to warm up for the next photo. I tried several different sd cards thinking it was slow because of them but it has made no difference. I read here that people like how small it is. It is not that small. Pros for me Good outdoor photos Good video clips AA batteries(use enerloops) Cons SLOOOOOOW bad indoor photos kind of bulky

I got this camera as a gift for Christmas a few years ago after doing a lot of research. I am into taking somewhat artsy photos, but am not fimilar with all the different settings and options it requires to take a great picture, so I thought this would be a great camera for me as it seemed pretty simply to figure out. I guess I was looking for something with similar features to a digital slr without the size (and price). I think this camera probably is compareable to that, but I feel like unless you really know what you are doing, or take time to memorize the manual, it is really hard to get what you are looking for when taking a photo. There have been several instances where I've had the manual out, testing out a setting, only to forget it the next time I use my camera. It was a little disappointing to say the least, as I would have liked to used this as a "regular" shot camera as well as some art type shots, but mostly have just used it for the latter. Another con to this camera is the flash takes rediculously long to recycle. I have used the camera a lot to take photos of friends and whatnot, and a lot of times you sit there for what seems like forever for the picture to actually be taken because the flash takes soooo long. Several times I have missed a great shot because of this, and it's really annoying when trying to take a photo of someone as they are standing there for so long waiting for the picture to be taken. It really makes it hard to capture the "moment" in a photograph. Besides my two complaints, overall this camera takes great photographs and video. I think I would recommend this camera for someone who is more fimilar with the different settings (shutter speed, iso, all that technical stuff) or someone who will be able to take the time to learn them. Thank god for the "auto" feature. I do get some really great pictures from this camera, though.