Preview: Canon PowerShot SX50 HS

Friday, September 21, 2012

Camera Review

Canon’s PowerShot SX50 HS is a bulbous image snapper. Its large size is partly because of its optical zoom, which is the industry’s first to reach 50x. Who needs a telescope when you have a camera with specs like that? Read DxOMark’s preview to find out more highlights of the PowerShot SX50 HS.

Canon’s new bridge camera, the 12.1-megapixel PowerShot SX50 HS is a portly looking thing, especially considering the miniaturization trends influencing everything from DSCs to DSLRs. Its bulky size – weighing 595 grams and measuring 122.5 x 87.3 x 105.5 mm – can partly be explained by its optical zoom, which is the industry’s first to reach a whopping 50x, or a 35mm equivalent of 24-1200mm! Despite the camera’s eye-popping telescopic-like focal length, it is slightly hindered by its aperture range of f/3.4-f/6.5. The restricting apertures could prove difficult in low light environments, but Canon provides SX50 HS users with ISO settings spanning 100-6400, in addition to optical image stabilization.

The SX50 HS also gets some of its girth from its articulating 2.8-inch LCD screen. The monitor has a display resolution of 461k-dots, a little on the low side considering newer DSC models are approaching 1-million-dots in resolution. The display also isn’t a touchscreen, another oddity that goes against current conventional DSC wisdom. Regardless, the swiveling LCD screen of the SX50 HS will assist users in shooting video, which delivers 1080p Full HD quality.

A rundown of top specs for the PowerShot SX50 HS include:

• Optical zoom with a 35mm equivalent to 24-1200mm!

• Its 12.1-megapixel CMOS sensor.

• Its DIGIC 5 image processor.

• RAW and JPEG image formats.

• ISO range of 100-6400.

• 2.2-frames-per-second.

• Built-in flash.

• 2.8-inch articulating LCD touchscreen with 461k-dot resolution.

• Full HD 1080p video with stereo sound.

Comments

Added by HNEPLEX | January 17

Great sensor but the max. aperture of the lens...

This would be a fantastic bridge camera if the optics were faster. Max. aperture "only" f/3.4 @24mm - f/6.5 @1200mm.

Assuming the max. aperture grows linearly when zooming in, you get f/5 @600mm. Panasonic FZ200 has f/2.8 @ 600mm! This means 2 2/3 EV advantage, in other words shooting FZ200 @600mm f/2.8 & ISO400 would mean @600mm SX50 f/5 & around ISO 1300! That high ISO will destroy the image badly.

Of course, you cannot enjoy the long end of the zoom 600mm - 1200mm with FZ200...

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First replies for this comment

Added by Mikedie | January 22

Re: Great sensor but the max. aperture of the lens...

Well, the f2.8 of the FZ200 sounds better than it is in reality.
Compare to the SX50, the noise performence of the FZ200 is much worse.
For example, when you zoom to 600mm with the FZ200 in F2.8 iso100
and you have.. lets say a shutterspeed of 1/120s ...
you just can put the SX50 in ISO400 easily and still have the same noise performence as the FZ200.
The very good noise performence of the SX50 compare to the FZ200 is kind of
an equalizer to the constant aperture of the FZ200.
The SX50 delivers a better imagequality in general. i would say the best of all
bridge/megazooms so far.

in addition.. iso1600 is still very good usable on the SX50(especially in raw).. on the FZ200 its total crap.

Added by fashaoding | January 17

well done!

great performance for a small cmos!