Newbie moving up to an SX520HX
Apr 28, 2016
So, i'm a newbie to 'real' cameras, i've used P&S cameras in the past due to cost and portability...in the past, 99% of my pictures were "family and friends" for which a decent P&S was perfectly fine. I'm currently using a Nikon P310 (16MP, 4X optical zoom).
I anticipate wanting to do more sophisticated photography (for lack of a better word) doing more outdoor shooting as I have more time for vacations and such. I like photography, but have never had time before to worry about doing anything beyond P&S work. Not sure where i'll go from here, but I guess i'll see as I have more time, but I wanted to get a "better" camera to do some exploration with.
Found a reburb SX520HX on the canon website for $90, which seemed like a great deal on an upgrade (not ready yet for a full DSLR rig, not sure I ever will be). I took it on a trip out west and got some amazing zoom pictures (which was really the feature that I was attracted to..42X vs 4X..wow..what a difference!).
My question to you guys is...what other features of this camera would really make significantly "better" pictures as compared to my nikon? For "regular" pictures (snapshots of my wife from 10 feet away for example) the quality seemed similar, so it was easier to take a lot of those shots with my easy-to-carry smaller camera. What other kinds of situations would I find that I should use this camera instead of my smaller one? I know that's a broad question, but I can't even figure out how to test my new camera since i've never had anything similar.
Thanks for any suggestions!