Purchase Advise: Canon SX280 HS or SX260 HS or Other

I have the SX280 HS and find it to be a nice upgrade to the SX260 HS, which was already an excellent camera. Image quality on both is excellent but the 280 has better low light performance than the 260. One of the biggest differences is that the 280 focuses much faster and is more responsive overall in just about every way thanks to the brand new Digic 6 processor. A feature that I like is "Zoom Plus" which lets you zoom digitally past the optical limit of 20x to 40x while maintaining an incredible amount of detail. Beyond 40x though, it looks like most digital zoom modes, which is to say not very good. In a way you have a camera that will give very good results from 25mm to 1000mm, but 25-500mm with the optical zoom gives the best results. Video options are better than on the 260, but I tend to not use video too often. Some have complained about the lack of a touch screen such as on the Panasonic equivalent, as well as auto panorama modes also found on other similar cameras. While those features are indeed lacking on the 280, most reviews still give it the edge over the others in the area of image quality and for me that's what matters the most. High ISO performance is good, with images looking very good through ISO 1600. ISO 3200 is still pretty good but you can notice a loss of detail, and 6400 is very noisy and not advised. Still, ISO 1600 on a non-G series PowerShot is pretty impressive and not something any of us would have considered just a few short years ago! We own 7Ds, a G11, and a G15, and I find myself grabbing the 280 most of the time because of its sheer versatility and because I know that I can get great shots with it. With the improvements in AF speed and operation speed in general, plus the high ISO performance, I think it's almost the perfect camera to keep with you at all times. It's smaller than my iPhone (but thicker) and rides in my pocket just perfectly. If you find a 260 for an incredibly low price, you can't go wrong, but if you can spring the extra cash, then the SX280 HS is an awesome with noticeable improvements over the SX260 HS.

Andy