patthebeelvr
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In general, love this camera. I do not do videos. I bought it for the zoom and to take pictures of butterflies without having to approach them too closely. And to take pictures of plants, including flower closeups showing enough detail to be able to id them. I have taken over 2000 pictures with it, and many of them have been excellent, even fantastic, and highly zoomed. (I never use the digital range)
OK zoom, fabulous for two years. Until "lens error, restart", something very very expensive to fix, evidently. It has happened several times, but it is a harbinger of more trouble. If you Google this subject, you can find a lot about it, including fixes that have (or haven't) worked for some. Others have had it right out of the box and gotten either satisfactory replacements or not. If you've got an out-of-warranty camera, though, you are stuck, and my feeling is $640 is a lot to dish out for electronics that are not going to last a while. And I have to add that I have owned another Powershot A320 (?) or something like that, the one with the swivle viewer (which did fabulous macros) which also failed, focus-wise. I loved it so much I bought another after the first failed, but I don't think I'll be doing that again.
The automatic focus often does not work for me. The camera seems to prefer focusing on the background. I bought an SLR mainly for the focus conrol, but having to carry two lenses instead of one and a heavier camera really made me miss the SX1's zoom feature. Now I have to carry two cameras because I never know if the SX1 will refuse to work!
It seems not to want to focus at certain distances, and at these same distances neither the Macro nor Manual Focus seem to work, either. I have lost quite a few photos because of this.
The supposed Manual Focus is a joke, sorry Canon. It has two modes, feet and inches. Sometimes when I need inches it absolultely won't get off of feet into inches. And the magnification rectangle in the center, while a great idea, hides so much of the overall frame that it is difficult to compose the shot. In fact that little wheel can be frustrating when you accidentally press too hard when wanting to change the manual focus and go into some other function entirely, like Macro or ISO.
Another think that made me buy the SLR was the time when I had a hawk perch about 15 ft from my house, in excellent light. I got gorgeous photos of it with the SX1, BUT though the highlighted areas were fine, the feathers under the tail, even though not that heavily shaded, showed practically no definition at all. Just a grey haze. Another manifestation of much commented-on the low-light problems of this camera. Fortunately, a lot of my work is in full sunlight. This could be an issue for some.
There need to be more reviews by people who are not just testers of new cameras or using a camera they just bought, especially expert photographers as opposed to amateurs like me. Maybe it is unreasonable to expect good performance in both macro and zoom, good and bad light, with same system, as many of the experts have said elsewhere. But I don't think it is too much to expect an expensive camera to work reliably, whatever it does do, even after it is out of warranty!! Another question unanswered in my mind is whether Canon cameras have a greater problem with zoom failures than other cameras (after extended use)
Problems:
Lens error after 2 yrs of use (no mistreatment)
Automatic focus often does not lock on item in center
Manual Focus difficult to use.
OK zoom, fabulous for two years. Until "lens error, restart", something very very expensive to fix, evidently. It has happened several times, but it is a harbinger of more trouble. If you Google this subject, you can find a lot about it, including fixes that have (or haven't) worked for some. Others have had it right out of the box and gotten either satisfactory replacements or not. If you've got an out-of-warranty camera, though, you are stuck, and my feeling is $640 is a lot to dish out for electronics that are not going to last a while. And I have to add that I have owned another Powershot A320 (?) or something like that, the one with the swivle viewer (which did fabulous macros) which also failed, focus-wise. I loved it so much I bought another after the first failed, but I don't think I'll be doing that again.
The automatic focus often does not work for me. The camera seems to prefer focusing on the background. I bought an SLR mainly for the focus conrol, but having to carry two lenses instead of one and a heavier camera really made me miss the SX1's zoom feature. Now I have to carry two cameras because I never know if the SX1 will refuse to work!
It seems not to want to focus at certain distances, and at these same distances neither the Macro nor Manual Focus seem to work, either. I have lost quite a few photos because of this.
The supposed Manual Focus is a joke, sorry Canon. It has two modes, feet and inches. Sometimes when I need inches it absolultely won't get off of feet into inches. And the magnification rectangle in the center, while a great idea, hides so much of the overall frame that it is difficult to compose the shot. In fact that little wheel can be frustrating when you accidentally press too hard when wanting to change the manual focus and go into some other function entirely, like Macro or ISO.
Another think that made me buy the SLR was the time when I had a hawk perch about 15 ft from my house, in excellent light. I got gorgeous photos of it with the SX1, BUT though the highlighted areas were fine, the feathers under the tail, even though not that heavily shaded, showed practically no definition at all. Just a grey haze. Another manifestation of much commented-on the low-light problems of this camera. Fortunately, a lot of my work is in full sunlight. This could be an issue for some.
There need to be more reviews by people who are not just testers of new cameras or using a camera they just bought, especially expert photographers as opposed to amateurs like me. Maybe it is unreasonable to expect good performance in both macro and zoom, good and bad light, with same system, as many of the experts have said elsewhere. But I don't think it is too much to expect an expensive camera to work reliably, whatever it does do, even after it is out of warranty!! Another question unanswered in my mind is whether Canon cameras have a greater problem with zoom failures than other cameras (after extended use)
Problems:
Lens error after 2 yrs of use (no mistreatment)
Automatic focus often does not lock on item in center
Manual Focus difficult to use.