Pictures at night taken in auto or program are much better than the low light setting (there's no night scene mode we could find) which boosts ISO to a ridiculous setting. In our test shot we could barely tell the scene. The North Star is visible in our shots though.

The SX500’s 30x optical zoom offers the 35mm focal range equivalent of between 24-720mm, which is plenty wide enough to take large group shots at the wideangle end or to fill the frame with faraway objects at the telephoto end. Maximum aperture at 24mm is f/3.4 rising incrementally to f/5.8 at 720mm. Neither is particularly fast, although given the engineering constraints incurred by cramming such a large focal range into such a small optic, this isn’t wholly unexpected. The top end of the zoom doesn't actually end there either. There's a 60x smart zoom on top of the 30x optical zoom. Now the great thing about that is it uses the same resolution as the smaller zoom. However, the compression is much lower recording roughly half the information. There's also a digital zoom that crops into the sensor and enlarges it. Effectively pixels are then enlarged and the image quality suffers. The SX500 comes equipped with a good range of exposure modes. Those who prefer to let the camera do all the work can take advantage of the Smart Auto mode and let the camera choose a suitable setting from over 30 pre-programmed scenes. Those who want to take more direct control over the camera will find the full range of PASM modes to hand as well.Using the batteries and memory card format supplied with the camera (where included), except where indicated. Digital Approx. 4x (with Digital Tele-Converter Approx. 1.6x or 2.0x and Safety Zoom¹). Combined Approx. 120x In addition, the SX500 also offers a range of Creative Filters with which it’s possible to add digital effects to your images in-camera without the need for a computer or any specialist software. There’s no Raw image capture though, which means the SX500 is strictly JPEG only – you do get a choice of resolution settings, however, should you be looking to conserve space on your memory card, or if you’re just shooting non-critical snapshots destined solely for the internet. All data is based on Canon standard testing methods (according to CIPA Standards) except where indicated. Smart Auto (21 scenes detected), Standard, iFrame Movie, Program AE, Portrait, Snow, Fireworks, Miniature Effect, Monochrome, Super Vivid, Poster Effect

The following Speed Class memory cards are required for maximum record time: (HD) 1280 x 720 Speed Class 4 or above. (Full HD) 1920 x 1080 Speed Class 6 or above. (iFrame) 1280 x 720 Speed Class 6 or above. If you're after a little compact that gives you most of the features and control of a prosumer/DSLR then the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS is perfect. It has the large zoom to cover all eventualities as well as auto and manual controls to either let you express your inner artist or simply give control over to the camera so you don't have to worry. There are nifty little features such as the framing button on the side of the lens barrel and Zoom Plus (which could actually be useful) to help get the best pictures. Images are sharp enough on the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS without needing a boost in an editing suite. You can do it if that's what you prefer but if there's any noise in the image (which there generally is), it will boost it. Delving into the menu, it's simple enough to follow. All features have been put on one screen with just only a print menu as an addition. You can do some basic editing here, erase pictures, protect and rotate them. Emphasis isn't so much on sharing pictures as it is on some other cameras. There's a slide-show option but that's pretty much it. In the print menu, you can preset pictures that you want printing if you use the Pictbridge facility. Pictbridge is a universal connection for printers and cameras. It means that if you have a Canon printer, you don't necessarily need a Canon camera to direct print. And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Flash On or the Red-eye-Reduction settings caused any red-eye.Approx. 0.8 shots/sec. with AF: Approx. 0.5 shots/sec. LV: Approx. 0.6 shots/sec.(until memory card becomes full)¹² There are a number of ways to view the pictures you've already taken. You can look at the whole picture, view it with information, with detailed shooting information including a histogram, or a pixel peep option which we ended up using more than any other. It shows the picture in the top left corner with a zoomed in version in the bottom right. You can then crop into this and view the sharpness of the picture. Given the extended reach it’s good to know that the SX500 benefits from Canon’s own lens-based Intelligent IS stabilisation technology. This is designed to help keep images sharp at extended focal lengths and slower shutter speeds, where natural camera shake might otherwise show up as blurred images. And if 30x doesn’t sound like it offers quite enough telephoto reach then the SX500’s zoom can be further extended up to a maximum of 60x via Canon’s ‘ZoomPlus’ technology. It’s worth noting, however, that this involves an advanced pixel interpolation process, rather than anything purely optical, so don’t expect to achieve the same level of image quality when using it. With general use, the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS' pictures are good. They're sharp and well exposed. Colours could be better but they're close enough to realistic so we don't really have anything to complain about. The lab test shots, however, left a lot to be desired. We found noise at low ISO settings where there really shouldn't be any and chromatic aberrations that we didn't expect from a Canon. Yes, our expectations are high but they are one of the biggest manufacturers in the world and have a reputation to uphold, not to mention stiff competition to beat. While it’s a shame that the SX500 doesn’t offer the ability to record 1080p Full HD video, the movie capture mode otherwise performs quite well. You can choose from a range of different capture modes, and it’s also possible to apply some of the digital effects filters that are offered in stills mode should you want to. Elsewhere, the SX500 generally feels quite responsive, with little in the way of shutter lag noticeable.

Auto, Program, Shutter-speed priority, Aperture priority, Manual, Scene, Live View Control, Creative Filters, Discreet, Movie Several cameras in this class use AA-size batteries for power; the SX500 IS does not. Instead you get a small rechargeable lithium ion battery, which saves on space and weight and gives you good, if not great, battery life. Although it's rated for 190 shots, keep in mind that using the zoom lens a lot, raising the screen brightness, continuously shooting, or recording movies, among other things, will eat into that battery life. Canon SELPHY Compact Photo Printers and Canon Inkjet Printers supporting PictBridge (ID Photo Print, Fixed Size Print and Movie Print supported on SELPHY CP & ES printers only) With the flash off, the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS does suffer from some vignetting at wide-angle. This all but disappears as the camera is zoomed in. Using flash at wide-angle exacerbates the vignette but eradicates it at full zoom. In terms of video capture, the SX500 does offer the ability to record 720p HD video capture, although there’s no option to record 1080p Full HD movies, which is a little unusual – not to mention disappointing – for a camera of this type and price.

Conclusion

Smart Auto (32 scenes detected), Program AE, Shutter priority AE, Aperture priority AE, Manual, Live View Control, SCN (Portrait, FaceSelf-Timer, Low Light (4.0MP), Snow, Fireworks), Creative Filters (Fish-eye Effect, Miniature Effect, Toy Camera Effect, Monochrome, Super Vivid, Poster Effect), Discreet, Movie

Noise and artifacts are visible even at ISO 100 when pixel peeping, so if the quality at full size is something that matters to you, this camera will probably disappoint. On the other hand, up to ISO 200 you get good enough detail that you can still do some enlarging and cropping. Using the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS is a lot easier than you might think just by looking at it. After all, it's designed to look like something of higher specification than what it actually is. However, Canon have ensured that the user interface is simple but not to a dumbed down degree. We liked using it out and about and found it easy to get shots that we would normally have to walk to; thereby preventing a task that, frankly, we'd rather not do anyway. The build is good, we liked the design because everything seemed to fall into place as we used it.

Introduction

Start-up time is as fast as to be expected. We got times that we're used to seeing which is around 2.5 seconds. The Canon PowerShot SX500 IS shares the same sensor and processor as the PowerShot SX160 IS which we recently reviewed. That has a slow continuous shooting speed of around 0.5fps (frames per second) and we thought maybe the SX500 may have some tweaking done to speed it up a bit. Unfortunately not as it gives the same performance. All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 16 megapixel SuperFine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 6Mb. If you're new to photography, you want something a bit better than the cheapest models and you want to learn the art, then the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS will give you the features, modes and zoom you need. Give this camera a go. Speaking of things that use up your battery, the camera's flash does not pop up on its own, you have to lift it. That's probably not a big deal for many people, but if you're used to a camera that does everything for you, this might result in some missed shots. On the upside, the camera at least warns you to raise the flash when it's needed. English, German, French, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Italian, Greek, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Spanish, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, Chinese (traditional), Japanese, Korean, Thai, Arabic, Romanian, Farsi, Hindi, Malay, Indonesian, Vietnamese