Canon SX230 HS Digital Camera Review

Canon SX230 HS Powershot Digital Point and Shoot Camera Review

Canon SX230 HS Digital Camera Major Features:

1/2.3" CMOS imager
12.1 Megapixels
Up to 3200 ISO
14x zoom lens
lion Battery
USB 2.0 interface
3" color LCD display
HD Movie modes
Face recognition
Built-in GPS

My experience:
The Canon SX230 HS is a point and shoot digital camera with 14x zoom. It starts up quick and is ready to go. It focuses fast and accurate with decent lighting. 14x may not be the longest reach right now, but it's more than enough for me. The zoom combined with the IS is quite good. Indoor photos using auto without flash has not yielded very good photos. I was able to hand held shoot some good sharp photos at 14x zoom. The white balance is very yellow under my CFL lighting. Using Tungsten or custom takes care of it though. The SX230 can be very sluggish taking indoor flash shots enough to think you didn't press the shutter button. In outdoor photos, it tends to over expose which blows out the highlights and makes the fringing worse. I'm finding it needs exposure correction of -2/3EV or more in outdoor shots to keep it under control. Even indoors I find at times it needs -1/3EV or more correction. The Fuji F100fd seems to handle exposure better in difficult conditions. The SX230's movie mode is far superior to the F100fd. It saves in .MOV format - I use Media Player classic with ffdshow to playback with very good results. One lacking feature in the Auto, P and M modes is no Max Auto ISO like the F100fd has.
Using the scene modes will give some control of the Maximum ISO without having to set a specific ISO.

Portrait - limits to ISO 400
Landscape - limits to ISO 400
Kids/Sports - limits to ISO 800

Unfortunately none of the settings made in P mode such as I-Contrast, AWB/My Colors etc. (except exposure comp) make it to the Auto and dial selected scene modes. This really eliminates the use of the Auto and dial selected scene modes except for average looking photos. I have never seen it go to 3200 ISO unless set manually - a good thing. Since the Auto and P modes don't get it right all the time, the addition of some additional P modes with seperate setting memory would be very usefull. The mistakes the camera makes require you to constantly make adjustments to compensate. The worst of which is the lack of Max ISO setting mentioned earlier and exposure issues. If you take photos in less than optimal lighting conditions the ISO is going to go up and the photos will be grainy. I find anything over 400 to be unsuitable for people's faces. So in P,AV or TV modes you will be forced to set the ISO manually. I did not test the GPS since I have no desire to use it. I would like less noise reduction at 800+ ISO's - though it's quite good for a Point & Shoot. ISO 800 is very close to the F100fd. ISO 1600 on the Canon is much better than the F100fd. At the lower ISO's the Fuji's shots are much sharper/clearer and more life like. Although the Canon's color balance outdoors seems to be more accurate than the Fuji.
View Canon SX230 HS ISO Image Noise comparision

Canon SX230 HS Powershot Digital Camera Pros:

Reasonably quick and accurate focus
Good quality indoor photos with tweaking
Not afraid to use it's higher ISO abilities
Optical Image stabilization
Good quality outdoor shots if you can keep the exposure under control
Full manual control if needed
14x zoom is great
Movie's look good

Canon SX230 HS Camera Cons:

Auto white balance not very accurate
Flash location is annoying
Some chromatic aberration
Tendency to blow out highlights (over exposure)
Slow in low light when using flash
Auto mode is just not very good - must use P,M,TV,AV or scene modes.
Would be much better to be able to set exposure compensation (and other settings) seperately for each mode.
No RAW mode
No adjustments in Auto and scene modes (except exposure)

Canon SX230 HS Powershot Digital Camera Spot Rating: 3 spots
This camera can take some nice shots and video with a nice 14x zoom. Unfortunately it has some quirks - over exposing, white balance issues and sluggish low light flash shots - make it a PITA sometimes. If you don't like playing with settings or post processing I would stay away from this camera. Using the preset dial selected scene modes will give you just average photos. If Canon can correct some of these issues (especially the exposure) with a firmware update this might be a keeper.

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