Canon SX710 ~ a Walking Review

It's a "Walking Review" because it's a "Let's do it" review. First some details; but, in awhile, results from the field. I'll add things as we go walking with the camera, and it gives us its best shots.

With her Canon SX200 showing a few ruinous light bars across pictures, mi esposa kept the faith and purchased an SX710 from BestBuy.ca last evening. She could have saved a few bucks by getting the "safer" SX700 from Amazon, but she managed a $30 savings from BB and return is simple if the camera doesn't perform.

By "safer" I meant the SX710's 20.3mp on its 1/2.3-inch type CMOS chip, versus last year's SX700's resolution of 16 megapixels. I'll let you know/see some results, especially photos taken in poor light.

megapixels

All I had seen myself so far were "can't be done" comments from experts who had never held the camera in their hands. Such comments themselves "can't be done" in my opinion; they are garbage. The "sensors" I grew up with were 35mm film.

On the other hand, I've previously returned two cameras—a Sony DSC HX30v and a Canon SX60—which in my opinion were stumbling over their megapixels. I was pleased to go back to a Canon SX50, returning from 16.1 to 12.1mp. Now we'll be playing with 20.3mp, which will shine on a sunny day, but which will have their work cut out for them in less ideal circumstances. Jenny accompanies me into Costa Rican cloudforests, and we encounter oodless of unideal circumstances in those Edens.

battery charger

In helping her with the camera's setup, so far I've noticed the battery charger is identical to Canon's battery charger for the earlier SX270, which I own. All the math is the same, with output: 4.2V, 0.7A. Not only can you interchange chargers, but their only difference is in their serial numbers.

batteries

My SX270 did well with its NB-6L batteries. And whereas Sony's HX30 refused to accept superior Amazonics (superior because their performance was the same and better, at a quarter the cost), the Canon had no such snobbery. That was another reason I so gladly went over to Canon, generally, after Sony.

But the later Canon SX280, so I've read, devoured its batteries. Now the SX710 has a battery to handle the load; NB-6LH. H for hefty, maybe. $45-$75, mas o menos, on Amazon; versus a mere smidgen of that price for NB-6L un-hefties.

The camera accepts both NB-6L and NB-6LH batteries. The manual lists only NB-6LH. Let's see how well the NB-6L batteries do, along the way.

custom settings

I've become used to having C-1 and C-2 settings on my Canon SX50. I love those two customize-and-save personal settings categories. On the littler SX710, they don't exist, so we'll have to see how useful the P category is. The myriad possible settings on the SX710's DIGIC 6 Image Processor are way, way too intricate to fool with in the moment; it is essential that the photographer can pre-set his best-guess settings well in advance.

60p video (…is for the birds)

I also notice the camera is coy about its important 1920 x 1080 (full HD) video resolution available at 60p. It is available, but not amongst the standard listing of settings. You have to turn the dial to the movie icon, as though the camera is reluctant to do that dance. Why? I guess Canon wants to keep this highly compact camera's functions—which might well make it a superb little camera for bird-watchers—secret. The camera can do 25-750mm, that 750mm max tele being about 15X (750÷50) max (equivalent to your binocular power of likely 8X). Of course, binoculars are brighter and faster, but the camera's max 15X is nothing to sneeze at. My SX50 goes out to a max equivalent telephoto of 24X, and has an eyepiece to greatly help finding a moving bird so the picture is possible. But the SX710 might make an excellent more compact camera, and, for birds that move in split seconds, 60p video is far better than 24p or 30p.

(Canon, please take note; and my apologies for giving out the true power ratings for your maximum telephotos, rather than staying with the conventional lies used by marketing the unimportant zoom extremes, intentionally wrongly, as if they were telephoto reach.)

okay, let's take some pictures

Her camera is pretty much all set to go, now. I am a bit nervous about those P-settings staying empowered, but I hope they do. Today hopefully we'll get some pictures, and we'll begin to see whether the little SX710 can handle those 20mps—basically, we'll see if the camera is a keeper or not.

Okay, come with me for a walk around Lost Lagoon. I spent an hour and a half there this morning, taking 178 pictures to test out some everyday competence of the little Canon SX710.

I've uploaded two dozen pictures:

http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/2318521768/albums/canon-sx710-a-walking-review

This is my first time using a gallery here to do a "walking review", and, if I've blundered somewhere along the way, I welcome the DPReview moderator folks to tell me the error of my ways. Maybe this whole thread is supposed to be under "Reviews". I did have a few minor problems doing the upload.

It's for people who might be deciding whether to buy this camera. The very heavy criticism has been that its 20 megapixels are way too many for its tiny 1/2.3" sensor. Quite a few people are so outraged by Canon's attempting that, that they have emotionally condemned the camera without even requiring a test. It's just too many pixels in too teensy a sensor. Anybody in an armchair knows that. And they are more than willing to let you know.

Well, the flip-flop of that, or the corollary, is that these pictures are all pretty bad. They have to be, as they were taken with all those pixels.

The pictures in this gallery are not extremely good photos. I don't care. I enjoyed my walk this morning. My Honey likes her new Canon SX710. Maybe you are wondering whether to buy the SX710, and so here are some photos.

Every picture is a SOOC. Every picture was taken at ISO 100.

(I'm new to this, but you do realize you have to click a couple of times on each picture in the gallery, in order to get some size out of it.)

First of all, I really enjoyed this review. It made for great reading while enjoying a Friday IPA (Lagunitas Maximus Ale for anyone interested; really good stuff!) and sounded like a really nice real-world assessment of the 710. The pictures actually look pretty decent with very good sharpness, certainly comparable to the 700 and the 280, which I happen to like more than the SX700 HS. I would certainly like to see some shots at the high ISOs to see how well it does under low light circumstances. Thank you very much for sharing this.

Andy

Thank you, Andy. Later I'll add some high-ISO shots. I can tell you now, though, that these cameras more or less require low ISO settings. I would suggest they are going to deliver best below ISO 400.

My setting of just 100 was a mistake. I wasn't familiar with the controls. Even so, it's good to see the results of an all-100 ISO selection.

A million years ago, when we used mainly 35mm slide film, we preferred ASA 25 to ASA 64; and ASA 100 seemed pretty second-rate. We could go up to ASA 400, but the graininess was immediately apparent. So now it seems sort of like old times: you can go way above 400, but your picture quality will pay for it.

Anyway, for interest, I'll take more pictures to see how they turn out at high ISO ratings.