Canon SX50IS Best Prosumer in the Class

After my latest review for its lower class brother, let us see the true champion of prosumer camera the SX50 IS. This one assures you to get the feel of DSLR on your hand with a plenty useful features. First, let’s take a look of its body. I would say it’s designed more “space efficient”. Vary-angle LCD is very useful in capturing moments when you cannot put your eyes properly behind the camera. As usual, its select button also have a function as shortcut to ISO, WB, timer, and AF mode. I haven’t notice the menu but surely its gonna be very user friendly. The rounded handgrip gives a comfortable handling.

This might sound exaggerated but truly its equipped with 50x optical zoom lens (24-1200mm). Well I never really try it but if you are zoom lens fanatic you’d be doubtlessly consider this one. Good news it covered with Intelligent IS feature. Once more, the wide angle aperture start from 3.4, not so satisfying for lowlight. However it consistently keep the aperture opened good (6.5) at the longest zoomrange of 1200mm. Another good news is the CMOS sensor inside the body for better lowlight handling. It would be hard to focusing on moving objects while taking a very long zoom. So the company put the Zoom Framing Assist Seek button on the camera. It works by zooming out to include a wider angle view, enabling us to locate the moving object. Once you find it you just need to release the seek button to return to its original zoom position. Canon doesn’t mention the shutter lag time for this camera but the company claims that their High-Speed AF remarkably responsive to gives you 13 fps at full resolution with reduced lag time. Wanted to judge it personally, check its specification below:

Specifications for PowerShot SX50 HS

Imaging Processor	DIGIC 5
Image Sensor
Camera Effective Pixels	Approx 12.1 Million pixels
Lens
Focal Length	50x zoom: 4.3 (W) - 215 (T)mm (35mm film equivalent: 24 (W) - 1200 (T)mm)
Focusing Range	0cm (0in.) - infinity (W), 1.3m (4.3in.) - infinity (T)
	Macro:	0 - 50cm (0in. - 1.6ft.) (W), 30cm - 50cm (12in. - 1.6ft.) (T)
Image Stabilizer (IS) System	Len-shift type
LCD Monitor
Size	2.8-inch type (Approx. 461,000 dots)
Aspect Ratio	4:3
Features	Variangle
Electronic Viewfinder	Approx 202,000 dots
Focus
Control System	Continuous AF, Servo AF, Manual Focus
AF frame	Face Detect, Tracking AF, Center, FlexiZone
Metering System	Evaluative, Center-weighted average, Spot
ISO Speed (Standard Output Sensitivity, Recommended Exposure Index)	Auto, ISO 80 - 6400 1/3 step increments
Shutter
Speed	1 - 1/2000sec. 15 - 1/2000sec. (in Tv and M Modes)
Aperture
Type	Iris type
f/number	f/3.4 - f/8.0 (W), f/6.5 - f/8.0 (T)
Flash
Modes	Auto, On, Slow Synchro, Off
Range	50cm - 5.5m (W), 1.4 - 3.0m (T) (1.6ft. - 18ft. (W), 4.6 - 9.8 (T))
Hot Shoe	Available
Shooting specifications
Shooting Modes	C1, C2, M, Av, Tv, P, Auto, Movie Digest, Sports, SCN*1, Creative Filters*2, Movie*3 *1 Portrait, Smooth Skin, Smart Shutter*4, High-speed Burst HQ, Handheld Night Scene, Snow, Fireworks, Stitch Assist *2 High Dynamic Range, Fish-eye Effect, Miniature effect, Toy Camera Effect, Soft Focus, Monochrome, Super Vivid, Poster Effect, Color Accent, Color Swap *3 Standard, iFrame Movie, Super Slow Motion Movie *4 Smile, Wink Self-timer, Face Self-Timer
Continuous shooting	In P mode:	Approx. 2.2 shots/sec.
	In High-speed Burst HQ mode:	Approx 13 shots/sec.
Number of Recording Pixels	Still Images:	4:3 Large: 4000 x 3000, Medium 1: 2816 x 2112, Medium 2: 1600 x 1200, Small: 640 x 480, RAW: 4000 x 3000
	Movies:	iFrame Movie & Movie Digest: 1280 x 720 Super Slow Motion Movie: 640 x 480 / 320 x 240 Miniature effect: 1280 x 720 / 640 x 480 Others: 1920 x 1080 / 1280 x 720 / 640 x 480
Power Source	Battery pack NB-10L
Number of Shots (CIPA Compliant)	Approx. 315 (with LCD on)
Movie Recoding Time (Actual Usage Time)	Approx. 1hr. 15mins. (with LCD on)
Dimensions (CIPA compliant)	122.5 x 87.3 x 105.5mm (4.82 x 3.44 x 4.15in.)
Weight (CIPA compliant)	Approx. 595g (21oz.) (including the battery and memory card) Approx. 551g (19.4oz.) (camera body only)

If you think of buying it, you could have it with price around $ 567. At this range of price I would have a DSLR for better image quality. But if you need a versatile camera, this one I recommend it.