SX60HS - User review - Not quite there yet

I've been using SX50-HS for a few months to photograph birds. Very impressed with it, very capable sharp lens. Clean sensor (provided ISO limited to 500). Good image stabilisation. Decent auto-focus. SX50-HS had - in my experience - one key weakness, namely, shot-to-shot time when capturing raw. Basically you take picture, then the finder goes black, and you wait nearly a second to be able to compose the next picture. A second is a long time to wait when the moment is the perfect moment after you just clicked the shutter.

When SX60 HS was announced we learned it had a new much more powerful processor. And of course we expected everything about it would have improved. We waited two years, after all. And that's a long time these days. Unfortunately, and this is based on this user's experience, so depending on what prospective buyers need in a super-zoom camera, others may be perfectly satisfied, I am not. These are the areas ( I found ) in which we've actually gone backwards:

Image quality - I don't know if it's the lens or the sensor or both, but I'm just not blown away by it the way I've been by its predecessor. I've shot them side-by-side and it's just not quite there. Of course it reaches further, but it achieves nothing if it's not as clean at 1200mm as its predecessor. Yes it's slightly 'faster' i.e. f5.6 vs f6.5 at 1200mm but that, alone, isn't a deal-maker for me.

No dedicated ISO Button - ok so you can click the centre control to enter the quick menu button and adjust; but it doesn't feel ideal to enter a menu to adjust ISO. There's an assignable function button on top of the camera. Inexplicably Canon have not made it possible to assign ISO to this very conveniently placed button. What were they thinking?

When I saw that Canon had given us a top dial I rejoiced. But my joy was short lived for the dial is very stiff and not that easy to adjust quickly. I was even more disappointed when I found that turning the dial no longer flicks from image to image when you've zoomed in on an image. Why, Canon, why would this useful feature have been removed? Maybe this sounds trivial, but, when you're 'in the field' and want to quickly compare images for sharpness, well, that's impossible. You must now zoom all the way in, and, then, zoom all the way out again before being able to flick to the next image and begin to zoom in again. Almost a deal breaker.

Exposure compensation - the button for this is inconveniently too far beneath where the thumb is placed, and isn't easy to find by feel. Once you find it, you then have to scroll with the top wheel. It's not as quick/easy as the 'old SX50 HS' where one could get one's thumb to it, and immediately begin to spin the wheel with one's thumb. And the 'old' wheel was really easy to spin.

Shot-to-shot time: I had hoped that with the much more powerful processor we'd see seamless shot-to-shot times, at least up to, for example, FZ200. Unfortunately this is not the case. While it seems to be a little quicker than its predecessor, it is, by no means, quick. The black-out time has probably reduced from almost a second to just under half-a-second. However, the time taken to acquire focus has not improved; in fact achieving focus felt subjectively slightly slower. In summary it feels no quicker, overall, than its predecessor.

WIFI: I had no need for WIFI. But tried it quickly with my iPhone6. It was very easy to download the app and get it all linked up within five minutes.

Conclusion: I wish Canon had made the big step forward I'd hoped for. Unfortunately that's not the case. It's a good camera, but no longer great. It's no longer head and shoulders above the competition. Now would be a good time to pick up SX50 HS's at discounted prices if you don't need the WIFI that all the new ones seem to be rushing to add. I'd not rush out to buy the SX60 HS. Mine (for a week and a day) has been returned.