As mentioned already, the Canon SX210 makes a great little traveling companion and I spent several sunny days traipsing around New York City with it, photographing and shooting movies of friends, family, children, dogs, street life, parks, and even a concert. Though it's packed with features including its impressive 14x zoom lens, the Canon SX210 fit easily into my inside coat pocket right next to my iPhone.
Wide-angle. It's not as wide as some, but the Canon SX210's 28mm is pretty useful nonetheless.
On the subway ride down to meet an old friend for lunch, I pulled the camera out of my pocket and inconspicuously fired off a few candid shots of my fellow subway riders. Since it's virtually silent when you turn the sound off and keep the flash pressed down, no one seemed the wiser that I was photographing them. The lighting in the subway was poor so I cranked the ISO to 800, set the optical image stabilizer to Continuous, and fired away.
While none of these shots were masterpieces -- Walker Evans can rest easy -- they were decent, and at ISO 800, image noise was noticeable but not distracting. At ISO 1,600, there was a lot more noise but considering that the Canon SX210 squeezes 14 megapixels onto such a small image sensor, it could've been much worse. Lighting in the restaurant was better than it had been on the subway but was still a bit dark, and even though I could've added a little fill with the camera's small and slightly underpowered pop-up flash, I decided to keep it down.
Flashless. The beauty inherent in more and more cameras is excellent high ISO performance, which allows indoor shots like this. Impressive, especially from a 14x long zoom.
My flashless, ISO 800 shots of my friend and her three-year-old son weren't as crisp as I may have liked -- a little bit of motion blur despite the high ISO and image stabilizer -- but they weren't bad either. I especially liked the natural, candid look of the photos with bold, but not over-saturated color and accurate skin tones.
If there's one shortcoming to the Canon SX210 as a candid shooter is it's overall sluggishness. It takes about a second or two to start up, a second or two to focus in low light, and a second or two to cycle from shot to shot. All told that adds up to a lot of seconds, so if you're planning to photograph a skittish subject with the Canon SX210 -- my friend's son had missed his nap time and was getting restless -- you're going to have to do a lot of pre-focusing to keep up. (Once you've prefocused, shutter lag isn't a problem.)
Quick. Got a few shots of this proud pup.
Out on the street in the daylight, the Canon SX210 was faster, if not quite a speed demon. While walking down a street in Chelsea, I spotted a cute dog carrying a newspaper in its mouth. After asking the owner if it was okay to take the photo, I bent down and got a couple of frame-worthy shots of the dog.
Wider? At times I wished for a 24mm.
I then brought the camera to the High Line, a park in Manhattan that was created from old, elevated subway tracks. When I pulled the zoom back to 28mm, it was certainly wide enough to photograph the park and the surrounding cityscape, but I would've liked it to be just a notch or two wider, as on some competing models that go as wide as 24mm. OK, maybe that's asking a lot from a camera that already offers an abundance of riches, but it would be nice for the follow-up model.
HD movie. 1280x720p H.264 movie with stereo sound. (Click to download 42MB .MOV file)
In the evening, I brought the camera to a concert, and its discrete design, surprisingly good low light abilities, and long zoom let me sneak some shots and videos of the performers without causing too much of a ruckus. Speaking of videos, the 720p HD movie setting produced bright and sharp footage that stayed steady even when zoomed in to 14x. Fortunately, unlike the previous model, you can optically zoom while shooting movies.
Tele. What the Canon SX210 lacks at wide-angle it makes up for with squirrel-grabbing telephoto.
As an outdoor landscape and nature camera, the Canon SX210 fared well and I was able to get some nice shots of the Hudson River, George Washington Bridge, and surrounding wildlife including birds and squirrels. I do wish it was a better Macro camera, though. While many of my shots of flowers and plant life look sharp and colorful on the Canon SX210's 3-inch screen, they were surprisingly soft when I viewed them on my computer screen.
Overall, though, shooting with the Canon SX210 was a very pleasurable experience, and if you're looking for a compact and relatively inexpensive "do-everything" camera, this latest SX-series model from Canon has the goods.
See below for the results of our laboratory test shots and final conclusion.
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